Page 82 of Spider Demon's Kiss

I fell into Dante’s arms and yes, I cried. It wasn’t Shiro, it was Kuroi. Or, maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t know who the fuck I was anymore.

“I don’t want to kill you, Dante.”

“Listen to me. You’re not gonna kill me.”

“I am. I’m going to kill you and then I’m going to kill myself right after. Because I don’t want to live without you.”

“Kuroi, you’re not gonna kill me. I know you. You hear me. I know who you are and you would never hurt me.”

“I’m sorry, Dante,” I said through my tears.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. You can never hurt me.”

“You mean, again?”

Dante laughed.

“That’s right. You could never hurt me, again. You got me pretty good when you stabbed me. And it took a couple of shifts to heal what you did to my skull. But we know each other now. And the man I know as Kuroi, will never hurt me… again.”

I laughed and sniffed. Pulling away from him, I wiped the tears from my eyes. Looking down at Dante’s shirt, it was covered in makeup.

“If I’m not going to kill you, I’m going to have to invest in waterproof makeup.”

Dante looked down at his foundation smeared white shirt.

“How the fuck were you wearing makeup? I swear to god that you weren’t wearing any when we left this morning.”

I looked up at Dante and shook my head.

“It’s a good thing you’re cute.”

Collecting myself, we continued to the elevator and headed up to our apartment. When the elevator doors to our place opened, my body reacted. Placing my hand on him, I stopped Dante.

“What?” he whispered seeing me readying for a fight.

I gestured for him to stay where he was. Replying with a look that said that there was no way he was just going to stand there, I gestured emphatically, and he obeyed.

Leaning out of the elevator and finding no one behind the door, I got low and eased out. I knew that scent. It was faint and I wasn’t sure who it was. But I was sure that it shouldn’t have been here.

Scanning the open space I found no one. That didn’t tell me anything. There were at least three rooms I couldn’t see into and…

“Yuki,” I said suddenly realizing who it was.

Moments after saying it, my sister walked out of Dante’s bedroom. She wasn’t dressed as she usually was in her stylish Japanese inspired garb. She was in all black as if trying to blend into the night.

“Yuki?” Dante asked leaving the elevator and seeing her. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting my brother,” she said as calmly as ever.

Dante looked at my sister and then at me. He wasn’t buying it. Neither was I.

“Can you lock the door?” I asked Dante.

I didn’t actually know if he could. I knew it required a key to get to our floor. But that didn’t mean he could stop someone from getting out.

“I can lock it,” he said sticking a key into the elevator panel.

“That’s not necessary,” Yuki said casually.

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