Page 24 of Pretty Pink Poison
I wouldn’t put my indiscretions on him, no matter how much I wanted to place blame somewhere else. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. It had nothing to do with you.”
“Fascinating that you’d say that.” His tone hardened. “It feels like it has everything to do with me. I wasn’t good enough for your loyalty not to wander.”
“That’s not what—”
He laughed once, low and bitter, the sound carrying all the exhaustion of someone who’d held on too long. “Doesn’t matter anymore.” He leaned closer, his breath warm against my cheek. I could smell the smoke and cologne on him, a familiar, aching comfort that I knew I’d miss. “There’s nothing more to say now. It’s over and done with. We’re over and done.”
He said it like a man trying to convince himself. His jaw flexed, a tremor in the control he always kept so tightly wound.For a moment, his eyes softened, like he regretted every word before it even finished leaving his mouth. Then his walls came back down, cold and impenetrable.
I lifted my chin the way women in the syndicate did when there was nothing left but pride. My throat ached from holding back the emotion clawing its way up.
“Damn,” he murmured, voice rough, strained. “Do you know how I loved you?” His lips brushed the air near mine, close enough to feel the warmth but not the touch.
Loved. Notlove.
Past tense.
“And you don’t now?” I breathed, the word a painful weight on my tongue.
“I can’t love a woman who chose my brother.” His eyes closed, lashes dark against his skin, and when they opened again, they were empty—like he’d scrubbed all the emotion clean. “But I still want you. God help me, I still want you.” He leaned in until his lips brushed the corner of my mouth, teasing. “You think these pretty pink lips still taste as sweet as you seem, or like the poison you’ve become?”
His tone was sharp and mean now. He wanted to hurt me, and it made sense. It was all my fault.
I shouldn’t have drank that night. I shouldn’t have let my guard down enough to let this happen. But I couldn’t take it back. Not now.
“Taste and see if you want, Bane. Supposedly I’m yours for the next five years anyway, right?” I said, my voice defiant, even as the storm inside me raged.
Bane’s eyes flicked down to my lips, lingering with torture and hunger. “I should kill you, not protect you, for the way you fucked with my head.”
And then, without warning, he crushed his lips to mine in fury, in hate, in vengeance.
I let him. Because, somehow, I wanted to feel anything, even if it was this. He tasted the exact same as he had over the years but also completely different. Fiercer. Meaner. And more vicious.
When he pulled away, his words were a whisper, a promise laced with something dark. “That pretty pink poison is all mine.”
“I don’t want you like this.”
“Want my brother instead,Pink?”
“Fuck you, Bane. You know that’s not what I’m saying.”
“Isn’t it? He got to kiss these pink lips. I’m sure he got to taste your pretty pink—”
I slapped him hard across the face, the sound echoing so loudly that it cut him off before I said, “Don’t you dare.”
I expected an attack. Something mean, ferocious. But Bane didn’t strike back. Instead, he rubbed his jaw, a small smile tugging at his lips.
“You’re poison, alright. But you’remypoison, Pink. Get used to it.”
CHAPTER 8
BIANCA
The first yeartaught me a few things about Bane Black. First, I learned that his family was every bit as conniving and ruthless as my own. Their strategy was plotting ahead and making political and diabolical moves. But Bane was different. He didn’t hide behind the polished smile that they did.
As I packed the three suitcases my mother and father told me I could bring with me the next week, my mother came to my bedroom with her own form of apology. It was a warning, rather than a sorry for spilling the secret of my miscarriage. “You have to realize that heisvicious,” my mom whispered to me as I packed. “I’ve told you once before and I will tell you again.”
She talked a mile a minute, like she could make up for handing me off by filling me in on the turmoil I was about to endure. “I had to give in a time or two with those mob men.” My eyes widened at her admission, but she hurried on, “Your father sent me to them.”
