The Kiss Thief

My mind began to reel. Was he letting me go? He slept with someone else. He saw me nearly making out with my childhood sweetheart. And surely, after he’d seen the mess I’d made in his closet, his feelings toward me would only take a nosedive, if that were even possible. I made my way to the walk-in closet, crouching down and grabbing the shears for protection, just in case. I plastered my back against a row of drawers and tried to regulate my breathing.

I heard the clink of his tumbler as it hit the glass bar, then his approaching steps. My pulse kicked up a notch. He stopped on the threshold and stared at me emotionlessly, his jaw granite, his eyes steel. The pile underneath me mounted up to my lower thighs. There was no mistaking how I’d spent the better half of my afternoon.

“Do you know how much money you just destroyed?” he asked, his tenor reserved and detached as ever. He didn’t care that I ruined his clothes, and that made me feel hopeless and lost. He felt completely untouchable and out of reach, a lonely star hanging in the sky, twinkling bright, galaxies away from my violent hands that demanded retaliation.

“Not enough to cost me my pride,” I snipped the air with the shears, feeling my nostrils flaring.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe.

“What’s eating you, Nemesis? The fact that your boyfriend had a date yesterday, or the part where I fucked said date?”

So now I got an admission out of him. For whatever reason, part of me wanted to give Senator Keaton the benefit of the doubt about what happened with Emily behind closed doors. But now it was real, and it hurt. God, it shouldn’t hurt as much as it did. Like a punch to my empty stomach. Betrayal, no matter by whom, cracks something deep inside you. Then you have to live with the pieces rattling in the pit of your stomach.

Senator Keaton was nothing to me.

No. That wasn’t true, either.

He was everything bad that’d ever happened to me.

“Angelo, of course,” I huffed incredulously, my fingers tightening around the shears. His eyes darted to my white-knuckled grip over my weapon. He shot me a smirk that said he could disarm me with only a blink, let alone his entire body.

“Liar,” he said tonelessly. “And a lousy one at that.”

“Why would I be jealous of you being with Emily when you were hardly jealous when Angelo cornered me?” I fought the tears that clogged my throat.

“For one thing, because she was a fantastic lay, and Angelo is a very lucky guy to have her sweet, expert mouth at his disposal,” he taunted, unbuttoning the first button of his dress shirt. Heat slashed through my veins, making my body hit temperatures more fitting for a furnace. He’d never spoken any sexual words to me, and until now, our marriage felt more like a punishment than a real thing. When the second button released, a hint of dark chest hair peeked back at me.

“Second, because I was not, in fact, happy with your little display of affection. I gave you a chance at a proper goodbye. Which, judging by the way you two held each other when I left the restroom, you took in both hands. Did you enjoy it?”

I blinked, trying to untangle the meaning of his words. Did he think that Angelo and I…? Christ, he did. His passive expression did nothing to hide the earlier emotion I caught in his eyes. He thought I’d slept with Angelo at the wedding, and he was reacting against a crime he did not even try me for.

Fury gripped every bone in my malnourished body. Walking into this room today, I couldn’t believe I’d ever hate him more than I did. But I stood corrected.

Now this? This was real hatred.

I didn’t correct his assumption. It made the humiliation of being cheated on a tad less painful. The balance between our sins now more even. I squared my shoulders, owning up to this for no other reason than wanting him to hurt as much as I did.

“Oh, I’d slept with Angelo plenty of times,” I lied. “He’s the best lover in The Outfit, and of course, I personally checked.” I laid it on thick. Maybe if he thought he’d gotten himself a rotten deal with an easy woman, he’d let me leave.

Wolfe cocked his head, his stare stripping me of whatever leftover confidence I’d had in me.

“How peculiar. I could have sworn you said that you wanted to kiss him at the masquerade and nothing more.”

I swallowed, trying to think fast. I could count on one hand the amount of times I’d lied in my life.

“As per the note. I was only following tradition. I’d kissed him a thousand times before,” I quipped. “But that night was about fate.”