Chapter 8

I pushed away the thought from my mind in a flash and glared at him more intently, keeping the short distance between our bodies. My eyes almost shooting sharp ice balls. “Forget the kicking ass thing. I would gladly cover you up in meat juice and push you down into a bed of starving ants,” I said slowly, each word infused with dark fury.

He leaned down his head, placing his face only an inch away from mine, and whispered, “I'm not afraid of you, Dafne.” His voice blew into my lips. And that’s not what shot a shiver up my spine in that moment. Behind those words that seemed so daring and bold, echoed a sort of promise. A promise of what? I didn’t know. But it suffused his sharp words with warmth—a startling contradiction.

He was still staring at me with great intensity, the emerald in his eyes deep in exasperation. This was entirely new, this almost intimate approach, which was the thing that jolted me out of my confusion and opened my eyes to the hidden machinations inside his infuriating mind. I’d forgotten who I was facing.

“And I’m not affected by you, Ian,” I muttered pushing my face closer, the tip of our noses nearly touching. “You can work your ways through people to lure them to do your every wish and need, but like I’ve told you a zillion times before, I'm not one of them.” It wasn’t that he was trying to seduce me or anything like it—he was my sister’s boyfriend, and not even he, an innate Casanova, could’ve fallen that low—he just wanted to break my ice-solid defenses down so he could prove to himself that even an ice queen like me weakened to his presence. He needed his massive ego to be pampered whenever he was around me, and that, I think, wasn’t a pleasant feeling for a guy like him.

“That’s not wh—”

“Well,” Buffy’s sudden flat voice cut him sideways, but we didn’t pull away, just kept glaring at each other like tigers on the verge of clawing at their victims. “If it wasn’t because of the hostility glowing in your eyes, I would’ve thought you were about to cheat on me—both of you.”

At that, Ian stepped back and turned to look at Buffy. Taking advantage of his distraction, I swung my hand forward and finally snatched the envelope from his hands. He gave a little gasp of surprise and then let it go with a soft shake of his head. He reached Buffy’s hand and pulled her into his arms. “Where were you, babe?”

I mimicked his words with a grimace, the tip of my tongue escaping past my lips like a four-year old. Since Ian was giving me his back, he didn’t notice—he might’ve felt it because it’d been as sharp as the tongue of a poisonous snake—but Buffy did, with a roll of her eyes over his broad shoulders. “Were you stealing Dafne’s PETA mail again?” She looked up to see him. “Why can’t you two just get along like civilized people?”

“Let’s not talk about her, okay? It’s a waste of time.” He leaned down and kissed her.

If it’s such a waste of time, then why do you stick your nose in my mail asshole, I thought with a frown.

After a few seconds, the merging of mouths started to get so intense and so…nauseating that I had to sit down before I would see the contents of my stomach splattered on the rug. “Oh, get a room, would you?” I snapped, annoyed while squeezing a piece of sushi between the chopsticks. “If you’re more interested in each other’s throats than watching a fascinating movie, then please… go far, far away and release me from this torture so I can eat happily.”

Ian stopped immediately, as if he’d been paying more attention to my words than kissing, as if he’d been expecting me to utter them, and spun to look at me, pulling my sister in front of him to embrace her from behind. “I'm enjoying myself,” he said with a self-contented smile. The bastard. “We can take it to the couch.” He lowered his head and pressed a kiss on Buffy’s neck without taking his eyes from mine.

Cocky, are we? I pulled up the handle on the side of the recliner, popping out the leg rest, and stretched out as if I was a pharaoh waiting for the juicy grape to be placed in my mouth. Though instead of the grape, it was the squared piece of sushi. I ground up the soft concoction slowly, deliberately, taking my time to show him my lack of concern. And he got it. He smiled with a low snort and shook his head in amazement.

“None of that,” Buffy said, wriggling out from his arms and reaching for the DVD cases she’d left on top of the small shelf. “We still have to choose which movie we’re going to watch—and it’s going to be tough. All of these are so good…” Her voice faded as if with admiration while checking each case.

By the way she was knitting her pale eyebrows together and sighing mutely, I knew we were doomed to watch an excruciating chick flick. On my way here, I’d hoped some mysterious energy, pooled somewhere in the blackness of the universe, had broken barriers of speed and infringed our atmosphere to pour down some logic into Buffy’s brain, but apparently, it was too much to ask. Now I was going to be trapped for about two hours in girly fiddledeedee stuff, cheesy lines and oh-so-cliché plots.

“Great,” Ian said as enthusiastically as I felt, throwing himself on the couch. “So, what are the options?”

“Hey, mind the shoes!” I told him after swallowing a sushi bite. “Gran doesn’t…”

“…like people dirtying her couch. I know.” He kicked out his lace up ankle boots, which I’d been told, by my fashionista sister, had cost more than four Benjamins. And let’s get real. That is just plain ridiculous. The Buttero boots—I think that was the name of the crazy brand—were pretty cool. But paying that unreasonable amount of money for some straps of leather and laces was plainly over the top, and it said a lot about the person who wore them. He clearly didn’t know the value of money—and of an animal’s life.

“Murderer,” I told Ian after glaring at his boots.

“What?” he asked, puzzled.

“You’re contributing to animal’s slaughtering just because of your narcissistic needs. Don’t you see how repulsive and selfish that is? What if you were the one being skinned alive just because someone was looking for human leather in your exact shade? Would it be fair if they ripped you out from living only to fulfill someone’s greediness?”

“Oookay, don’t turn all the veggie psycho on me.” He held up his hands as a barrier. “Those boots were a gift. I can’t control what people’s mind or wallet tells them to buy.”

“But you can control what you’re wea—”

“Stop,” Buffy called exasperated. “Could we please focus?” she said, wiggling one of the movie cases in the air as to bring our attention to them.

“Sure,” Ian shrugged. “I just don’t understand how an animal planet disciple can talk about going to hell if you wear leather when she’s eating crab,” he said without looking at me, sprawling on the couch with one of his legs dangling from the side.

“Are you pea-brained?” I said with a deep frown, spoiling the smoothness between my eyebrows. “What part of being vegetarian didn’t you understand? And even if I wasn’t, this”—I maneuvered the chopsticks into the roll and plucked the small piece of whitish meat—”isn’t real crab, you idiot.”

“Jesus, it’s like going back to preschool.” Buffy sighed, slumping down her shoulders.

“Oh, yeah—a sexy veggie. Is that why PETA writes you every month?” he asked, looking at me this time. “Are they trying to convince you to pose for their naked campaign or something?” He ended with a small wicked smile.

“I don’t know if I should be flattered or disgusted by you thinking I'm sexy.” I pulled up my eyebrows in surprise, though a pip of self-satisfaction was blossoming in my stomach. It was good to know that a guy like Ian appreciated my looks.

“Don’t give yourself too much credit. I just can’t imagine any other reason why they would write to someone so heartless and cold. You love animals, yeah, but you’re not the type of person who would actually do something for them. It’s more of a vocal thing—explanations, advices, arguments, whatever—and not a physical thing. You wouldn’t leave the comfort zone of your ice palace to help others. That’s just who you are,” he added, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, like saying what the sum of one plus one was. “And doing something like that would suit more your personality. It’s more…self-centered.”

His words stung. Badly. I shouldn’t have cared what his vision of me was, or how stone-hearted he thought I was, but I did. Deep down inside, I did. Not because it was him, but because that’s how everyone perceived me—except for Gran and Linda. It was a reminder of how perfectly well-done the four ice walls enclosing me were, mirroring the image of an unfeeling person through the hard surface of pretense. Inside those walls, it was just me. There was no ice queen waiting to strike, or itching to cast frostbites. Only the real Dafne sheltering herself from the tearing brutality of the outside world.