Yes, thank you, Mother-not-Mother, I wouldn’t have known that without your wonderful insight.
Your insight.
Honestly, it was probably well past time to consider if I was on the brink of losing my mind. I was, after all, host to a voice I had crafted in a moment of loneliness and desperation. Now, years later, it was still haunting me. The lines between it being its own separate being and the product of my mind had blurred a long time ago, and I was starting to think perhaps I needed to figure out a way to get rid of it.
Uh-huh, because you absolutely haven’t used me as a sounding board for your thoughts and ideas. But sure, go right on ahead and tell yourself you’re crazy instead of using an alternative way of thinking.
There was nothing quite like being sassed by your own brain, that was for sure.
“Okay,” the attendant said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “That just about covers it. Stay right there while I get all this jotted down, and we can confirm the order.”
“Sure,” I said as the man flashed me a smile, and then gave Dom a sidelong glance that was as quick as it was knowing.
I continued to glare at Dom as the attendant left the room, feeling a slight twitch in my eye as he grinned back. WhenI heard the door shut, I grunted. “You are the world’s most frustrating and degenerate creature.”
“What?” Dom asked, trying to keep up the innocent act even though it was clearly overplayed, and it wasn’t like he’d think I’d believe it. “And hey, don’t get off that thing. He said not to move.”
“It’s a good thing too because I would be off this stage, ready to strangle you if I didn’t have to stay put,” I threatened, only to realize that was precisely what I shouldn’t have said.
He grinned. “I mean, it’s only been what...a few weeks? I guess that’s right for two former best friends turned...what are we?”
“Soon to be strangers,” I told him dryly, though I didn’t for a minute think he’d believe me or my threats. We had come to learn in the past few weeks that I had a tough time resisting him whenever he turned on his...charm. For fifteen years, I’d convinced myself I was immune to the sort of inexorable pull some people held over others through the gifts of good sex and good looks. That belief had come crashing down in record time, and it was all his fault.
He, for instance, knew damn well I had been paying attention to what he was doing during the fitting. He knew it was getting on my nerves, but not for a moment did he consider easing off. Just like he also knew that, as frustrated as I was, it was only because he had me so turned on that it was impossible to think clearly. And no matter how frustrated I got, there would be no real negative consequences for him. He’d trapped me, and we both knew it; the difference was that it irritated me to no end, and he absolutely loved to abuse it.
“Oh,” he said, putting on a frown. “Have you been having...dirty thoughts?”
“You have been making a spectacle of yourself, and you know it,” I hissed in a low voice. “Hell, the poor man who’s just tryingto do his job noticed too. Could you please try to behave when people are around?”
“That guy gave me the once over from the lust circle of hell,” Dom said with a laugh. “You didn’t notice it because you were too busy rattling off the list of things you wanted. But he was stripping me in his head, and he’d probably let me strip him in one of these rooms.”
I frowned. “I never took you to be so egotistical to get a thrill from something like this.”
“It’s not egotistical to like it when people find you attractive,” he said with a shrug. “And it is nice.”
“I tell you you’re attractive all the time.”
“Good God, are you?—”
“Don’t even say it.”
“Youare,” he said, eyes going wide and his smile growing even wider. I was never going to live this one down; I could feel it. “You’re jealous because the little twink looked at me and wondered what a slice of this cake would taste like.”
“That is the most juvenile way you could have phrased it.”
“Yeah, I know. I was just trying to get on your nerves, which, uh...worked.”
“Yes,” I said sarcastically. “Imagine that. You’re capable of getting on my nerves. Never mind that you have always been capable of that, and you’ve not only honed your skills, but thoroughly enjoyed the process.”
“There is that,” he said with a smile. “But deep down, you love it.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t try to get on my nerves while we’re in public.”
“Mmm, you love that too.”
“You are impossible.”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
