And also frustrated the crap out of him. He needed to wait on her—
Under her breath, she started humming something, and he closed his eyes so he could put all his senses into listening to her.
“What’s that song?” he asked roughly.
“You’ll laugh.”
“Tell me.”
“Grover Washington Jr.”
She turned to him with the plate. “Just the twoooo of us… we can make it if we try… just the twoooo of ussss… you and I…”
“I love it,” he murmured as she settled on the edge of the bed next to him, tucking her legs under herself. “I’m claiming it as my new theme song.”
As she blushed, she seemed to try and cover up her reaction. “What do you fancy first?”
“Whatever you choose to give me.”
“Pig in a blanket it is. I highly recommend them.”
As she picked up one of the bundles with her delicate fingers, he took her wrist. “No, first you.” When she went to argue that she’d already had one, he shook his head. “It’s a thing for me. You have to come first from the plate. I am second, after you.”
He gently redirected the hors d’oeuvre to her lips, and when he nodded, she opened her mouth and took a bite. Watching her chew, he felt his blood stirring, and tried to keep a lid on all that stuff.
For now.
“You finish it,” she said as she took what remained and presented it to his lips.
The morsel was the best thing he had ever tasted, outside of her tomato soup and her toast. And that was the way they played the plate: One bite for her first, then one for him second. In the silence, in the quiet stillness of the bedchamber the King slept in only from time to time, Darius and his woman formed an accord, proof that words were not needed when energy flowed between two people.
When everything had been consumed, she turned back to Fritz’s display on the bedside table. “I’m going to save some room for dinner. So this next plate is all for you, and that is that. I don’t want any arguments.”
Her dominance made him tingle in places that were usually dormant—and even though he was inclined to push back, submitting to her had its own rewards, didn’t it.
When she was satisfied with her choices, Anne pivoted around again. “So how long have you been working for your boss?”
As he debated how to answer that, she fortunately put a cracker with brie on it into his mouth, and he took his time chewing.
“I’ve been under him for… well, it feels like ever since I’ve been alive.”
She laughed a little. “So he’s that hard to work for.”
“Yes.” Darius frowned. “But he’s had a hard life. So hard, and right from the beginning, too. His parents were… they were killed in front of him when he was a young—a child.”
As Anne gasped, he wondered what the hell was coming out of his mouth.
“Oh… God,” she said. “That’s terrible.”
“It was brutal. And he’s never been right since, you know?”
“How could someone be? Was he raised by other family? Or did he go into foster care? Did they find who did it? Did they go to jail?” She stopped herself. “I’m asking too many questions, aren’t I—”
“No.” He captured her free hand, the one that had been feeding him, the one that wasn’t holding the plate. “Never. You can ask me anything.”
It was his answers that he worried about.
“What happened to your boss afterward?” Her eyes held his own. “I just… I mean, I know he ended up in Caldwell, unless he started out here?”
For a moment, the past crowded in on him, muscling past his focus on her. “Sometimes I’m not even sure he’s on the planet. He’s mad at the world, consumed by revenge, frustrated with everything—I mean, he’s needed by people he doesn’t want to rely on him, he’s choked by a legacy he’s rejected, and on top of all that, he’s…”
A killing machine.
That part Darius kept to himself.
“The big problem,” he murmured as she fed him another “pig in a blanket,” as she called them, “is that he’s taking other people down with him. More than anything, that’s what keeps me up at night. Sometimes you’re in a role you inherited whether you want it or not. It’s not fair. It’s not right. But life isn’t fair and it’s not right, and yes, there are times when you lose a lottery you didn’t want to enter. The trouble comes when…” A whole species. “… when whole families rely on you, so your future and your choices become theirs by default. I don’t mean to minimize any of his suffering, but goddamn it, you do what you have to. You fucking take care of your business because that’s just where you were put in this life.”
Darius shut his mouth on a hard-and-fast. He hadn’t expressed any of this to anybody, and now that he was letting the pent-up emotion out, he could feel a momentum getting started—and he didn’t want to say too much.
“I can tell that you love him.” As his eyes returned to hers, she nodded. “It’s in the tone of your voice.”
“Well, actually, that’s the other problem…” Darius took a deep breath and swept his palm down his face. “Lately, I feel like I hate him.”
Dropping his hand, he braced himself as he looked back at her. Except Anne wasn’t showing judgment at the revelation. She was just patiently accepting him.
Then again, she did not know the full story—
“I think it’s okay to hate someone you love.” As his eyebrows went up, she shrugged. “Or rather, you can hold both emotions at once. One doesn’t invalidate the other because they don’t mix. It’s like… oil and water for the heart. Incompatible and yet in the same container.”
He searched her face. “I have so much guilt for how I feel… and I can’t talk to anyone about this.”
“I understand. It’s a hard thing to admit to yourself, and people don’t always understand, especially if they’re looking at it from the outside.” She pushed some crackers around the plate. “My father was an alcoholic. Not a mean one, mind you. He loved my mother and me, he just drank too much sometimes because… well, he was the life of every party and there is no turning that off sometimes.” She smiled a little. “I remember watching him when they’d have people over. I would stay up late just so I could peek around the corner and listen to him tell stories. He had this one that everybody always asked to hear again, even if they’d heard it a hundred times. About our old dog Mike and the Thanksgiving turkey.”
Darius rubbed his thumb over the palm of her hand. “Something tells me that doesn’t end well for the bird.”
“Or the pooch.” Anne chuckled. “Poor Mike had the worst diarrhea. My father added a doggie door to the kitchen after that night—and honestly, as I state the facts of the story right now, I’m realizing it wasn’t just what happened… it was the way he told it, you know?”
As she clearly dwelled in her own past, there was a special light in her eyes and her face, but he watched both fade, the sunshine eclipsed by darkness.