“I’m not saying that you are,” he starts carefully. “But–”
“But what? Name one thing that I have done in the last two hundred years that can be classified as selfless and good?” she shrieks.
“Uhm,” Vito pauses. “Well, I haven’t been around for the last two hundred years.”
“Oh gods!” she yells. “No, you haven’t! Because of me!”
“Because of him!” Vito shouts back vehemently. “But, if you are looking for a recent example, Aefre, your children. Your daughters. They are beautiful and happy and healthy.”
“Yeah, which is nothing to do with me,” she mutters bitterly. “I wasn’t there for Delinda and CK won’t let me mother Thia the way that I should.”
“Then make him,” he snaps.
She gives him a shocked look and he smiles at her to show he isn’t angry with her, but at her controlling husband.
“She is your daughter as well,” he points out, the pain of knowing that they should have had their own coming to the surface.
“Oh, Vito. See, I can’t do anything right. Now, I have hurt you.” She crumples to the floor and brings her knees up to her chin.
“I am fine,” he says resolutely. “And you are a good person, Aefre. Do not think for a second that you have deserved any of the treatment that has been given to you by any of the ruthless sadists you have encountered. That is on them.”
“You are sweet to say that, but you know it isn’t true,” she says sadly, picking at the knee of her jeans. “I have done things to deserve it.”
“And you have paid your redemption, in spades, for the rest of your unnatural life, Aefre. Stop with the pity party. It’s unbecoming,” he says gruffly.
It does the trick and shocks her out of her morose reflections.
“It’s easy for you to say,” she says with a quirk of her lips. “You have paid, and you have done nothing but good since. What Lance did to me cannot be used as an excuse to do whatever I want for the rest of my life.”
“It can. But you are being too hard on yourself. Yes, you can be selfish, but who isn’t? Stop all of this now, Aefre.”
“Are you selfish, Vito?” she asks after a beat.
“Yes,” he says, giving her a level gaze.
“Liar,” she retorts. “You could take me now and I wouldn’t stop you, but you don’t. Why?”
Her words make his heart pound. What is she doing? Why is she saying this to him after she has expressly forbidden any sexual interaction between them?
“It’s not what you w–want,” he chokes out, looking away from her. “You just want to feel better. It’s your way of dealing with things, nothing to do with me.”
“Wow, say it like you mean it,” she comments dryly. “But you are right. I do need a man to make me feel better.” She crawls towards him and his heart stops. She is stalking him like the predator that she is. She will regret this as soon as it is over, but he cannot, will not, stop himself if she reaches him.
“Don’t,” he says in one last attempt to dissuade her.
“Why not?” she asks coyly.
“I am not a toy you can use to heal your heart and then discard,” he says more bitterly than he wanted to.
It makes her pause and heave a sigh. She stops inches from him, and he curses the living daylights out of himself. He needs to take it back.
“I’ll pull out,” he murmurs as he leans forward and grabs the back of her head to kiss her so deeply, he pushes her back to the floor.
“Vito, no,” she mumbles as she struggles against his massive body covering hers. “I won’t use you.”
“Then let me use you. You say you deserve all the bad things that happen to you…think of something bad you have done and take it while I fuck you until you scream.”
“Ah,” she cries out in surprise at his harsh words. But he knows her. He knows it won’t have repulsed her. Instead, it will have turned her on to the point where she won’t refuse him.