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Page 24 of The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient 1)

How could anyone hurt this much and keep it inside for so long without self-destructing?

As quickly as the sadness appeared, it disappeared, replaced by familiar simmering anger. I recognized it now as Diem’s defensive mechanism. Its root cause was not in question.

“You can go now.” He clenched his hands and teeth again. “That’s it. That’s all I have to say. I’m done. I hope that was enough fucking words for you.”

It was plenty. More than I’d ever expected. But they had the opposite effect Diem was going for. Instead of being repulsed by his stories of violence, I hurt for the child he used to be. The man he still was. Did no one wonder why he had so much anger inside? Did no one see that violence was all he’d ever known?

Had no one taught this man about love? Safety? Peace?

I had a million questions but now wasn’t the time.

Approaching him cautiously, I let him see my intent, telegraphing my moves. Diem wouldn’t look at me, and the guttural pain radiating from the dark pools of stormy gray cut me like a knife. He was a live wire, body so taut I thought his limbs might snap if forced to move.

I took his face between my palms. It shouldn’t have been possible, but he stiffened more. His breathing grew thready like he was fighting with all his might to stay in control and not jerk away or break down.

He let me touch him. He let me cradle his face. His sandpaper stubble rasped my palms when I tried to make him look at me. At first, he refused, but then he caved. But his gaze darted every which way, unable to settle.

“Tallus,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Tallus, you—”

“I’m going to kiss you.”

“But—”

I went to my toes and kissed him.

17

Diem

Nothing made sense. Tallus’s lush mouth pressed against mine. After all the toxic words I’d spewed, after all the virulent stories I’d shared, he was kissing me again. What happened to my warning? Was he not listening? Did he not hear me? I thought for sure that if I could find the words to explain myself, he would understand why this couldn’t be.

His tongue tickled my lower lip, drawing me from the storm inside my head and into the room where the man I couldn’t shake out of my system, no matter how hard I tried, was determined to break me down.

I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I had enough sense to realize I should figure out how the hell to kiss him back before his mouth was gone. With my face pinched between his hands and his confidence holding me up, I moved my lips against his, met his tongue with mine, and we stumbled forward with yet another ridiculously awkward kiss. The fault was allwith me. I was the failure. I was the one not good enough. Incompetent. Incapable.

It ended quickly—thank god—and Tallus drew back enough to peer up at me. After all I’d said and the ugliness I’d unveiled, I expected him to leave. Thank me for nothing and waltz out the door without looking back. I expected a look of disgust, horror, or even dawning fear as he realized he was alone with a dangerous man.

But that wasn’t the case.

Tallus was not like other people. He wasn’t easily shaken. He wasn’t easily disturbed.

He brushed the pad of his thumb over my lower lip. “Still needs some work, but we’ll get there. Practice makes perfect. I think I need to find a way to help you relax.”

A protest was on the tip of my tongue, but my tongue was three sizes too big, and I couldn’t form his name anymore, let alone a rejection.But how? How? How? How?

And why?

We’d known each other roughly ten months, but standing in my apartment after having worked through a speech I’d been stewing over all evening, I realized something about the man in front of me. The man who had quite literally fallen into my life one afternoon in late autumn.

When Tallus Domingo, Toronto Police Department’s sexy-as-sin records clerk, looked at me, he sawme. Not the scars, not the bad attitude, the surliness, or random bouts of anger. Tallus saw beyond my faults to the man I had always desperately wanted to be.

Without another word, likely recognizing I was a tongue-tied mess, Tallus clasped my hand and guided me toward the partitioned-off area I called a bedroom. Not the loveseat. He took me to the place where I lay my head each night. The place I dreamed of him. The place where no man had ever beeninvited because it was too personal. Too intimate. Too full of expectations I could never meet.

I wanted to dig in my heels and protest. Scream and shout and ask him if he heard a fucking word I said.


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