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Des stands, towering over me even from across the table. He rests his hands against the surface. “There is something, Callie, that you’ve never asked me: how I felt about our seven years apart.”

The audacity! “That’sexactlywhat I’ve been asking you,” I say.

“No, you’ve been trying to figure out why I left. Not how I felt.”

Only a fairy would make this sort of distinction. And for my part, I always assumed that how he felt was tied up in why he left.

“Ask me, Callie,” he says softly, his luminous eyes beseeching me.

Just looking at him … it’s hard not to be sucked in by his ferocious beauty and his velvety voice. It’s all so achingly familiar.

And now he’s trying to deconstruct our past and make it something it wasn’t. And I’m just enough of a sucker to allow it to happen.

I can’t believe I’m about to say this. “How did you feel, leaving me?” I ask.

He holds my gaze. “Like my soul was ripped in two.”

I still.

Is he serious?

I feel like my world’s being overturned.

“And the seven years that followed?” I breathe.

He stares at me, unwavering. “A nightmare.”

He’s taking a hammer to the walls I’ve built around my heart, and he’s systematically smashing them down. And I want him to. If what he’s saying is true, then maybe I do want him to get past all my defenses.

By his own admission, his experience sounds worse than mine.

“If it was so bad, why didn’t you just come back to me?” I ask, my voice pleading.

The Bargainer opens his mouth, and I think he’s going to answer, when instead he says, “Truth, or dare?”

You havegotto be kidding me.

“Seriously, Des?”

Just when two of us begin to disambiguate our relationship, he stops it dead in its tracks.

“Do this for me, and I’ll give you something in return.”

“Fine,” I say, fixing him with a challenging look. “Dare.”

His lips curl up into a satisfied smile, relishing my answer.

“Do something to me that you’ve always wanted to do.”

Well shit.

That’s what I get for daring the King of the Night.

I swallow.

There are so many inappropriate responses to that command. Because there have always been an unending list of things I wanted to do with Des.

Des waits for me, his arms hanging loosely at his sides.