He watched her, this tiny woman with her bright eyes and scarlett smile, who mocked him with unapologetic glee, who had badgered and continued to persistently push her way into his life with little to no permission, who had forced him, him to eventually yield to her through nothing but her own psychotic persistence. "I told you to burn those," he growled. "That god-forsaken thing made me itch for days." Still, despite his complaints his hand came up to catch her as she lowered herself into his lap.
It was strange to think that it had only been a few short years ago that had seen him chained and kept in the pits of the estate. He had been a monster by every definition of the word. Yet here he was. Drunk on a steady supply of eggnog with a belly full of fruitcake and a beautiful, obnoxious hellion of a woman in his lap. He allowed her to lean in close and kiss his face, the subtle wash of her perfume only further instigating the rare good mood he was in. How had this happened, he wondered? He was sure that by this time he would have been dead or worse. He arched a brow and wrapped his hands around the petite slope of her waist, pulling her in closer.
"I could think of a few things," he admitted, his tone suggestive. To be clear, Dante did not consider never having done many of these things a loss. However, the woman had strange ways of persuading him, and, though he would never admit it to her even under penalty of death, there was something alluring about the thought that he, for all he was and all he was not, was capable of making her happy in some way.
He was still struggling with what that meant, exactly.