Love's Inferno

Chapter 7- A Shitshow called Slack

Lou

Of three things I was unquestionably certain.

1. Dante Sanseverino was unbelievably, unimaginably, indescribably dangerous.

2. I was a threat to him.

3. I was going to do something that I didn't like and would have to do so exceedingly well - I was going to lie.

I was going to lie to the most dangerous man I had ever had the misfortune of encountering. This was the only available, if marginally unintelligent, plan of action. By asking me if I had read the email Dante confirmed my working hypothesis about him (and his true identity) but I couldn't be found to make the same mistake. I couldn't verify his theory because it would mean I posed a threat and if the missing person reports of the ABM's crew were anything to go by, I had a pretty solid theory of how he neutralised threats.

"An email?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes, Shiloh...Did you read it?" His voice was unfaltering but his tone was contradictorily needy and poorly concealed the urgency of his request.

"Did you read the email this morning?" he lifted his hand and reached for the side of my face. My skin was enveloped in warmth. His palm was soft, more so than I could've ever imagined and his large hand spanned most of my face, with his fingers gently curling onto the back of my neck and into my hairline. The gesture was surprisingly tender. His thumb skated across my jawline back and forth and I resisted the unwelcomed, untimely, urge to lean into him. It had been an excruciatingly long time since I had been touched and the neediness that surged upwards, in the depths of my body yelled at me to take advantage of the moment and abandon the deprivation I had become so accustomed to.

But I couldn't.

Not now and most certainly not with him.

Against the demands of my now achy body I swatted his hand away and shelved the cry I felt my cells let out at the absence of his touch.

"Is jy dan versin? You want to talk to me about emails. Emails? You want to discuss emails after you just imploded my career, more specifically my life, in front of the entire office?" I needed the lie to be realistic. Exceptionally so. So I decided to work out my nerves in a healthy and mature way; by picking a fight. And what do I have to lose? It's not like the rest of my foreseeable life hinges on whether he believes me.

He blinked and stared at me, returning his hand to the desk and I glared in return. I didn't move and I wouldn't be caught fidgeting.

"I ruined your life, Shiloh?" He sounded wounded which made me feel surprisingly terrible, but the soft of his jugular was beginning to show and I needed to go for the kill. Kill or be killed-literally.

"Uh? Yeah. I would say so. You just made my boss disintegrate into a puddle of tears for which I will be exceedingly punished and tortured about, for what I anticipate to be a now very short career. Thank you for absolutely nothing! Of course, you would do something like that. I wouldn't expect anything less." It wasn't nothing. What he had done. It was arguably everything. It was the most kind and generously protective behaviour anyone had displayed over me in my life, but I couldn't fold to the expanse of the sentiment my life demanded that I be smarter than that.

His eyes steeled and the fraction of emotion that he had left on display moments earlier disappeared into the ether along with any residual, imagined or otherwise, tenderness.