The phone rang again and he walked over to the table by the chair and picked it up. He hadn’t programmed the number in but Ben recognized it immediately. He’d dialed it numerous times but it was the first time it came through as an incoming call.

His finger lingered over the screen as he mentally fought with himself over answering it or not. It pissed him off that he wanted to. That he was curious why Dante would call. Ben didn’t want to deal with feelings. With questions and curiosity. Dante already made him do things he didn’t want.

The phone rang again and he dropped his finger on the answer button but didn’t speak. Dante’s breath sounded in his ear and Ben remembered what it felt like against his face. Damn Dante for making Ben crave him like this.

“Did you eat?” Dante asked.

“I didn’t call you, so you don’t have the right to ask me that.” He ran his hand along the back of the chair before going to the window and looking out.

Dante didn’t speak and neither did Ben. He told himself he would hang up, but he knew he wouldn’t. Dante intrigued him. Made him want things he never thought he’d wanted.

Not as though Ben believed he really felt something for the man. They didn’t know one another well enough for that but he was always there, in Ben’s thoughts, since the first night Ben saw him. It was almost as though he demanded Ben’s attention and damned if he could turn away from that.

“Who hurt you?” Dante finally asked.

Ben let out a humorless laugh. “I’m not an abused man.”

“Did I say you were? I asked who hurt you. There’s a difference. You wanted it, Ben. I saw it in your eyes how much you wanted it and then you freaked. Who. Hurt. You? I won’t ask again.”

“I’m surprised you asked at all.” And Ben was. He was surprised he called Dante out on it as well, but the man kept himself tightly guarded. Dante said he saw the want in Ben’s eyes but Ben saw the deadness in Dante’s. In so many ways, he was similar to Ben. He didn’t care. Yet, he asked Ben this.

“I shouldn’t have.”

“But you did.” And damned if that didn’t make Ben want to answer. Or maybe that was just his excuse and he would have told Dante regardless of his asking. It’s what he’d done with Tristan—called and spoke to Tristan even when he didn’t want it. He was the only person Ben ever really spoke to.

This was different though. Ben may have spoken a lot to Tristan...but did he ever really say anything? This would be saying something monumental.

He closed his eyes, pretending he was asleep and that the city below him slept as well and all he had was words. “It’s not a big deal. I was kidnapped a few months back. Beaten, but not raped. He tied me up. When I got free I blew his brains out.” But he hadn’t, had he? That had just been the lie he told to allow Tristan to keep his men.

“There are a million ways for someone to hurt you. You chose to tell me the physical—maybe a little of the mental, but mostly just the physical. I can respect that. It’s what I would have done as well.”

Ben’s eyes popped open. Sometimes it was like Dante lived in his head, like he had full access to all the dark corners there to understand how Ben worked. To know what he wanted and what he said, even when he didn’t say it. “Who are you?”

“Just a man as fucked in the head from my past as you. I pay attention, is all. You don’t.”

“Fuck you.” Ben groaned at his use of the words. It was his standard comeback when it came to Dante. Ben had always been good with words, using them the way he wanted. Speaking, always speaking even when it wasn’t the words in his head, and yet with Dante, he was reduced to “fuck you’s” and begging—begging for Dante to help him come, and eating just for the chance to talk to him.

The need to prove Dante wrong rose inside him, boiled higher and hotter until Ben couldn’t hold back. Dante didn’t know him. He didn’t understand him. He couldn’t know what Ben would tell him or not. Ben wasn’t like him, and his need to prove that caused words to burst from inside him. “When I was seven, the sister who I loved more than anyone in my life killed herself. I found her dead body surrounded by blood. My mother is always checked out. She lets my father run the show. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone other than himself. I’ve been in love with the same man since college. I let him use me. Let him fuck me the way I let you. He never felt the same and he’s now in a relationship with not one, but two other men who he loves like he could never love me.  It’s because of them I was kidnapped, and he rode off into the sunset with them and I’m still here. That emotional enough for you?”