Until the End of Time (3 page)

Sansone
walked forward and
reached out a hand to brush along her temple. “
Sei
non
sentirsi
bene
?”

She dodged him and circled around, stopping at his
side. “No, I’m not feeling well. As a matter of fact, I’ve probably never felt
worse.”

Frowning, he turned to face her. “Nausea? Migraine?”
He mentally calculated. “You’ve still got some time before shark week so what’s
giving you problems?”

His wife gazed at him for a beat and lowered her eyes
to the floor, hugging herself around the middle. “I’m surprised that you came home
so early.”

He quirked a brow.
“It’s
almost nine, why is that a surprise?” His errands had kept him later than
intended. He’d hit the office to get things in order for their soon-to-come
disappearance. He’d hit Nyssa’s favorite stores so that she wouldn’t have to.
And
he’d hit the airport for their
tickets. All that was left to do was pack and prepare for seven languid,
blindingly delightful days in paradise. Seven days where he’d take his time
reminding his wife that they were—and would always be—the inappropriate
couple that snuck off to fuck when no one else was looking.

Nyssa looked up then. “You still have your eyebrows
so I’m assuming you decided against setting them aflame.”

Sansone
went rigid,
scrambling for something to say as his stomach suddenly collided with his ribs.
“
Cara—”

“Funny thing about phones,” she interrupted and
smoothed her hands over her hips. “Sometimes you think you’ve ignored a call
when really you’ve answered it.”

He tried again to touch her, and again she evaded
him. “Listen to me,” he said.

“Oh I did.” Nyssa laughed and the sound of it hurt.
“You
really
didn’t hold back.”

“What I told Luc…I wasn’t really thinking, baby. Just
talking. Blowing off steam.” He exhaled and tried for reason. “There are
certain things I just can’t say to you
,
so
I say them to
him
instead
.
I’m sure you’ve had to do the same
with Sammie.
”

“No,
no,”
she
responded, holding up a finger. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to
justify or rationalize this
in
comparison to me whining that you leave your purse in the hallway.”

“It’s not a—”
Sansone
stopped his argument when she slowly shook her head in warning.

“I’m your wife,” she finally proceeded after a
stretch of quiet. “And you didn’t talk to me.”

“You mean the same way you don’t talk to me?” he
queried, annoyance beginning to prickle at him.

She glared. “I talk to you.”

“Do you? Or do you perform verbal gymnastics and
wiggle free?” He pointed towards the front door. “Not too long ago you had one
foot outside, ready to go screaming into the night because you didn’t get the
answer you wanted from the great and powerful wizard of fertility.”

“Wow,” Nyssa breathed, her eyes rounded. “Just…wow.”
She gave a sharp nod and started around him.

Sansone
took hold of her
wrist to pull her back, only to find his hands empty. “Nyssa, that came out all
wrong—”

“I can be incredibly fucking bad at expressing myself
when necessary,” she cut in, swinging around before she reached the stairs.
“But I’ve always,
always
expressed
myself to you before anyone else the moment that I could. You didn’t do that,
Sunny and I thought…” Stopping for a moment, she closed her eyes as if she
couldn’t even stomach looking at him. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. With
a wave of her hand at the couch, Nyssa told him, “Enjoy yourself in
Moorea
. A week without fear should do you some good,
right?”

Not another word was exchanged as she trotted up the steps.
He flinched, waiting for the inevitable slam of their bedroom door, only to
receive an audible, but soft click. That was much,
much
worse.

The quiet
bothered her the most. The lack of
Sansone’s
low,
rumbling voice combined with hers as they went over the events of their
workday. There was no laughter at ridiculous, but entertaining, reality
television. None of his singing from the bathroom as he went about showering in
between complaining that she’d taken his favorite conditioner off the rack
again. There was nothing. And it was killing her, because at least with the
incessant, nonsensical patterns of everyday noise and chatter, she wasn’t left
alone with her thoughts; thoughts that centered on her husband. Skewered was
too melodramatic of a word. She didn’t like it. She didn’t want to use it. And
yet, it felt right in terms of what Nyssa had experienced while listening to
him lay out all of his woes with Luciano.

“
Sex in my
household has become a chore, Luc.”

Masochism was the only thing that had kept her on the
line after that statement. She sat through every gritty word of
Sansone’s
diatribe on what their life had become. It…hurt.
Not to mention the embarrassment. Had she become
that
ridiculous? Despite what he seemed to think, she cared about
his comfort. But he was a man. And most men lived in a world where “no” was
never an answer to a possible scenario involving them naked. At least
her
man did. Then again, it begged the
question as to whether they’d been having sex for the fun of it or because she
was concerned with how quickly they could get along with the life creating
process. She
thought
he’d been
enjoying the constant flow of action. Apparently she was terribly, terribly
wrong.

Nyssa couldn’t even decipher what bothered her the
most—that he hadn’t come to
her
with
his problems or that he’d been suffering in this silent martyrdom for months on
end. It may have been a combination of both. She couldn’t be sure. What she
did
know was that sleeping without him
had become impossible. How she’d done it for eight entire years, she didn’t
know. A solid mass of warm, inked up muscle was missing from where it normally laid
at her left side; something that she’d become accustomed to snaking herself
around. The familiar scent of saffron and cardamom hovered on his pillow, but
it wasn’t quite enough.

There were no hard thighs to push her knee in between
or a shoulder to press her nose against. It was the same torment she had to
endure while on out of town trips. The only difference was that this time it
was self-inflicted. Remaining at a distance with
Sansone
—staying
angry
with
Sansone
—was
a nearly impossible task.
Mostly because of his doing.
Her spouse was…persistent. Patience wasn’t a friend of his and he had no desire
to simply allow what he called, “your disregard for my might” to run wild in
his presence. Door slamming? Throwing things? He laughed at that. Found it amusing.
Why? Because he could see through those displays quite easily, had always been
able to really. It was disconcerting to say the least. From the moment she’d
been forced to shake his hand as he was introduced to her, Nyssa had been
rankled by his incredibly coolheaded nature…

Caffeine. She
needed it. She needed it
now.
There
were a few things standing between the bumbling noise of her office and a
Monday morning meltdown of indescribable proportions on Nyssa’s part. A
lightning bolt of rage was pulsing up the base of her spine and spreading with
each indrawn breath. Her hands vibrated as she took down a disposable cup from
the edge of a cabinet off to the left of the break room’s sink. The paper mug
slipped from her fingertips and hit the floor.

Cursing, she
bent to pick it up and found a shiny pair of wingtips in her view.
His
wingtips. The usurper. The interloper. The
instrument used for her destruction. And no, she didn’t think any of those were
dramatic or unnecessary descriptions for the man that had rocked up to the
doorstep of her career choice and snatched it from her. He was the enemy. She’d
more than likely see him that way until the day that some power beyond her
control changed it.

“Wonderful,
aren’t they?” he asked her, his voice expanding the shocks of fury as he tilted
his foot and wiggled his ankle. “Gucci. Fall collection. I wasn’t so fond of
the price tag and then I thought to myself, ‘Sunny, you’re a lovely man and you
deserve lovely things. Be good to
you.’”

She barely
refrained from spitting on them as she stood fully and muted her instinctual
sneer to a barely perceptible resting bitch face. He’d taken the job she’d
toiled away for and he wanted to discuss his goddamn shoes
?!
She narrowed her eyes on his perfectly combed hair and the well-coordinated
arrangement of his double-knotted tie and suit pocket square. One neatly
manicured hand, that she’d been made to touch based off of social etiquette
alone, was tucked into his right pocket while the other hung loosely at his
side. He stood almost as if posing, his full mouth ripe in color and closed
over perfect, gleaming teeth. A literal fucking advertisement for Macy’s, he
was. Nyssa tilted her head a fraction. Perhaps he was gay. She snuck a glance
at his shoes again and her brows lifted slightly. Yes, gay was a definite
option.

Her smile was
bland and short. “Good for you,” she commented before returning her attention
to the coffee maker, silently praying he would simply go away.
Far, far,
far
away.

Instead, he
moved to her left and leaned against the counter top, folding his arms across
his wide, muscled chest. Gay or no, he was built like a carnal god and she
hated him even more for that. Standing at what she guessed to be at least
six-four with broad shoulders and tree
trunkish
thighs,
he had a face that incubi probably envied. Carnal
demon
would have been a more apt description. The son of a bitch even
smelled like sin. Her sneer returned as she watched the coffee percolate,
mentally rushing it along.

“James tells me
you’ve been here for about three years now. Graduated locally.”

She felt her
hand crumbling the cup, so she quickly sat it down and nodded. “Almost four
years and yes, you could call it local if you consider New York to be that.”

James. Fucking
James.
Narcissistic, betraying, petty James.
The next
time Nyssa decided to bang one of her superiors on a regular basis, she’d
reconsider and settle for a V8 instead. She could have done that sooner and
saved herself a trough of trouble. Instead here she stood, dumbfounded as to
how she could share a bed with someone for the length of time she’d been with
him and still not be aware of the depths of his egomania. A rejection to his
marriage proposal and he did
this
to
her?

Nyssa’s fingers
curled over the counter restlessly and she dropped her head back on her
shoulders, attempting to breathe through the utterly hopeless swell of emotion
flinging her heart around. Her eyes shut momentarily and she opened them again
upon remembering that she wasn’t alone. She flicked a glance at the clock on
the microwave and found her gaze focused on the reflection of the almost
transparent door. That was where she found the usurper’s molten, penetrating
stare trained firmly on her ass. Or it could have been her shoes. She hadn’t
completely ruled out the theory that he may have been wearing neon pink briefs
with the words “Yes, Daddy?” under his tailored slacks.

The bottom rim
of that ripe mouth found itself caught between the top
row
of those gleaming teeth in a look that was decidedly hetero. Nyssa abruptly
swung around, totally uncomfortable with how her breath shuddered out at the slow,
incredibly predatory look. His head jerked up and in typical male fashion he
wore an expression of complete innocence.

“So what’s your
story?” she blurted, tapping the right heel of her stiletto against the
linoleum floor in an effort to quiet the drumming in her ears. “Where’d Woodard
dig you up?”

Her now sworn
nemesis rolled his shoulders and ran a hand across that pretty, caramel colored
hair. “I was in a transitional phase. Looking for a bit of permanence. I met
Woodard a few months ago and he told me to keep his card if I ever got curious
about a position here.” Raising his arms, he waved them in a motion as if
presenting something and smiled. “I got curious. Called a few days ago. He said
that he had the perfect position for me. Luckily it hadn’t been occupied as of
yet.”

Yes,
her
position. One that he’d suddenly decided to
fill after she made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that she had no intention
of marrying him anytime soon. What a coincidence that her announcement had
taken place just less than 72 hours ago. The dick.

The rock and
hard place were smothering her. If she left, she could get the position she
wanted just about anywhere else, but that would mean uprooting her roster along
with allowing James to think that he’d won his little game. Self-disgust rolled
her stomach. How had she allowed herself to get here?

“As I’ve come
to learn, you’re one of the best,” her enemy continued on, delivering what she
felt might have been a sincere grin. “I’ve taken a look at some of your
clientele. I’m very impressed.”

Something about
that just crumbled the little bit of control she had over her mouth. “I’m happy
I’ve met your approval,” Nyssa dryly stated, turning back to the coffee maker.
“Make sure to leave a list with my assistant on how I can keep doing so.”

The sound of
steps echoed on the floor and suddenly, she felt him a hair’s breadth away. He
pressed one large palm to the granite counter and Nyssa’s eyes widened tad at
the peek of ink she could see coiling up his arm from just an inch or so below
where his shirt and jacket cuffs stopped. How far did those run, she wondered.

“I’m beginning
to get the gut feeling that you’re not too fond of my presence, Ms. Blackwell.”

Turning her
head, she allowed her eyes to roam his face, looking for imperfections. There
were none and it made her lip curl. “I live by one solid principle in this
business, Mr. Sultana.”

“And what is
that?” he queried, smirking.

“Go with your
gut,” Nyssa softly stated in response.

His lips
twitched. “Advice or a warning?”

She didn’t get
the chance to answer. The man responsible for this entire encounter came
strolling into the lounge. “Sultana, maintenance took care of the lighting in
your office so you’re all…” his voice trailed off and he eyed them. “Am I
interrupting something?”

“Not at all,”
Sansone
answered, smoothing down his jacket and stepping
away from Nyssa. “Ms. Blackwell was simply giving me a word of advice.”

James grunted,
but some of the skepticism disappeared. “All right.”

The other man
nodded towards her and started out of the lounge. “I appreciate your gracious
nature.”

She watched him
momentarily. “Please…don’t.”

His laughter
left with him.

James
approached cautiously then. “I—”

Nyssa held up a
finger and shook her head. “You have absolutely nothing to say to me right now.
I highly doubt you ever will again. And in the same sense that I just gave a
bit of advice to your new team member, I’m going to deliver some to
you—unless it pertains to business and business alone stay. Away. From.
Me.”

“Nyssa—”

“We’re in a
room with knives and several other sharp objects,” she cut in. “Do you want to
venture down this road or turn right at the fork and go in the opposite
direction?”

He was gone in
seconds and she was left with the weight that she’d been fucked over. Along
with this came the horrifying thought that at some point she may just want to
be fucked…period.
By a man whom she despised.
Who had enough
sexual magnetism to turn her nipples into
bullets.
God
hated her.

A power beyond her control had, indeed, changed the
way she saw
Sansone
Sultana. Perhaps that power could
now convince her that it wasn’t a good idea to concuss him. Nyssa was in the
throes of a fantasy about that very thing when a quick tap sounded at the
bedroom door.

Knowing it could be no one other than the potential
victim of her imagined assault she called out, “Yeah?”

The door cracked open and that pretty face was
suddenly in view. “I need something out of here before I can sleep.”

Nyssa tucked in her lips and waved a hand at the
bedroom. Folding her arms across her chest, she waited for him to get whatever
it was he was in search of. When he didn’t move, she arched a brow. “Well?”

Sansone
stepped into the
room and stopped inches away from the bed. He peered at her for a moment and
quietly admitted, “I need my wife.”

She swallowed and looked away. “Sunny…”

“Just…hear me for a moment, yeah?” he requested.
“Because if I don’t get this out, you won’t understand. I
need
you to understand.”

With a nod in his direction, she gave him her
attention.

Folding his hands in a praying motion, he gestured to
her. “I spent the majority of my life, my career, feeling as though I was
sitting on the very edge of my seat; feeling like I was waiting for a reason to
get to my feet, to move. That’s the best way I know how to describe it. This
gut clenching anticipation that
something
was coming and I needed to be prepared.” He freed one of his hands to fist
it and tap his belly. “There was a ball of anxiety that I never thought would
disappear. But then came you.” His smile was so pure, so exceptionally full of
adoration that she had to bite the inside of her cheek to fend off emotions
that she had no desire to examine at the moment.