True, Roland was not Daniel. But Roland was kind and elegant, distinguished, worldly and traveled, and Monica would never burn with rage if he looked at another. She wouldn’t be consumed by hurt if he went to bed with another. She’d move on. For he would be a luxury to her, not a necessity like … the man she was in bed with.
She studied him with an awful knot in her chest, his muscles glorious even at rest, his lashes resting against his cheekbones. Her mind went back and forth for hours, until she rose to get dressed.
“Daniel,” she said softly as she sat on the edge of the bed, watching his eyelids flutter, his gaze sharpening with alarming precision the instant he noticed she was dressed. He pushed up on one arm, scraping the other folded which had been across his face, his triceps flexing.
“What time is it?” His voice was bedroomy, grazing along her skin.
“Six a.m.”
“Come back to bed, baby,” he said, draping an arm around her.
“I can’t.” She wiggled him off and impulsively clasped his face between her hands, softening her voice. “I can’t do this, Daniel.”
He groaned and turned his head to nuzzle her palm with his lips, lightly nipping her before he tried gathering her against him again. “I can’t think right now, Monica. Come back to bed with me. This is the first good night’s sleep I’ve had in years. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
She resisted him, edging off the bed. “It is tomorrow. Daniel, I shouldn’t have spent the night.” Her voice wanted to crack on the last sentence when he slowly, slowly opened his eyes, and she couldn’t even hold that gaze.
It took every ounce of strength in her being to find the same girl, the same woman, who’d stood up before both judge and jury and related how she’d found her parents dead, after an hour’s shouting match and then another several of silence, how she had found them in the master bedroom with their wrists slit. Dad had also cut his throat. Or maybe mother had done it, she wasn’t sure.
Nobody was sure.
She felt the cold go through her again and said in a soft but toneless voice, as she stared at his throat, “I can’t do this. You’ve always known I can’t. I merely didn’t want to leave without telling you that whatever this is, it’s over.”
“Look at me when you talk to me,” he said, and then he gently grabbed her face and pulled it to him, her jaw cupped in his palm from ear to ear, thumb on one side, four fingers on the other. “That’s better. Now tell me, Monica.”
She clamped her teeth and, pushing his arm away, stood back at the ill-concealed anger in his voice. “I’m trying to fix this. It was wrong of me to ask you to sleep with me. We can’t do this anymore.”
“Why did you ask me, Monica? You really think I’m buying that you wanted a fuck buddy? Sex wasn’t the driving force here, princess, you just used it as an excuse to come to me at last.” He uncoiled from the bed like a snake, suddenly coming to his full height, his eyes and voice sharpening as he edged closer.
She held her ground, but inside she was shaking with the truth of his words, with his nearness, with the pain of being at odds with him minutes after being warm and content in his arms and in his bed.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Monica,” he said, his eyes fiercely tender as he stroked a loose sable hair and rubbed it between his fingers like it were precious. “Only the fact that the man you’re in love with is right here, and you want him with every bit of your being.”
She stiffened when he stroked his thumb along her lower lip, his voice dropping further. “Who is it you think of when you pleasure yourself? I know, Monica. I know who you think of, because it’s you who I think of, too.” He turned her face up to his when she tried to avoid his flaming green gaze. “Every woman to me is a mirage of you, but my God I’ve been eating grapes all my life and my body gets even hungrier when all it wants is this … fucking … red … apple … and I want you to feed it to me, my love. I want you to feed me every day of you, just you … my one obsession, my one sole addiction.”
She stepped back, her heart pounding, her systems trembling awake at his words. “Please don’t touch me. I can’t think when you touch me.” She raised her arms to hold him back, forcing herself to meet his gaze and the roiling force of the emotions flaming inside him, bearing herself to hold the weight of this startlingly new misery she was opening up inside her.
“You’re right. You’re right, Daniel,” she agreed, watching his face tighten at her admission. “My problem isn’t me, and it’s not them. My problem is for how long, how much, I’ve been trying to get over you.” His body tightened like a bowstring at the admission, and he took a hungry step forward, but she halted him with her hand again.
“Please, don’t. Don’t touch me.” She drew in a ragged breath. “Daniel, I thought if I caved in and found a way to be with you, it would ease. If you’re hungry, and eat, you feel it eased … but it doesn’t.” She shook her head. “My taxi is waiting. I just wanted to explain why I left and why I … can’t do this anymore. I need to step back and breathe.” He was staring at her with anger and frustration, holding himself as still as a statue with his hands tightly fisted at his sides. She impulsively cradled his jaw because she had to touch him, could not help it. “I can’t bear to think of us killing ourselves for each other like my parents.”
He caught her wrist and squeezed fiercely in a stunningly fast move, hissing through his teeth, “Have the balls to love me, Monica.”
“I can’t! You can’t feel for someone like this and not hurt each other, Daniel. You can’t feel this without doing something crazy. It’s so obvious to me now. I can’t even look at you without feeling … without feeling … undone!”
His eyes flashed with more hunger, more need, more frustration. “Baby, you undo me, too. The problem with your parents wasn’t that they loved each other too much, it was that they loved themselves more and were too damned proud to fucking forgive when the other screwed the hell up!”
The words, though oddly true, stung fierce as whiplashes. “How dare you judge my parents!” she gasped, then she was storming down the hall, unable to look at him any longer.