by Megyn Ward
I press my lips to her neck. Feel her pulse under my mouth, banging against the side of her throat. Finding the soft, warm center of her, I skim my fingers along the hot, wet seam of her pussy. Feeling her, so ready for me, I groan, the hot breath of it skating across her collarbone. “That’s what you asked for. What you said you wanted.”
“No.” She whimpers the word when I apply pressure, pushing past the swollen folds of her pussy. “That’s what you said—” Her hips buck forward, looking for more. When I sink deeper, the tips of my fingers finding their way inside her, she moans.
“You said you wanted things back to the way they were before—” Before what? Before she gutted me. Left me. Broke my heart. I push it away. Focus on now. Here. “What do you want from me, Henley?” I whisper it in her ear, stroking my fingers into her so deep she gasps, the slick walls of her pussy clenching against their calloused length. “Who do you want me to be?” I push the words through clenched teeth, straining for control. “You need to tell me because I can’t keep guessing. I can’t.”
“I want—” She moans it softly. “I want this.” Her hips retreat from the press of my hand between her thighs only to advance again, fucking herself with fingers. “I want both.”
Both.
Hearing her say it nearly cleaves me in two because it’s the one thing I can’t give her. The only thing I can’t be for her.
I press my hip into hers again, pinning them to the sink behind her. Letting her feel the hard length of my cock straining against the front of my jeans. “That’s not how it works with us.” I take over completely, fucking her slowly with my fingers, curling their tips. Finding and stroking the place deep inside her that makes her come, hard and fast. I press the heel of my hand against her clit, giving it hard, slow circles. “We can’t have it both ways.”
She moans again, her hips pressing against mine in frustration. “Why?”
“Because you don’t trust me.” I keep stroking her. Fucking her. Giving her what she wants. As much as I’m able. “Because you’ve never trusted me, and I don’t think you ever will.” I pump my fingers, rubbing and stretching against the grip of her tight pussy. Her swollen clit. “Because no matter what I say or do, no matter how many times I give in to you, you’ll never stop running from me.”
“Ohmygod...” She starts to come, her fingers curling around my wrist, holding on to me while she shutters and bucks, cries out with her release. Moans my name while her pussy clenches around my fingers so hard I can feel the phantom pains of it dance along the length of my cock. “Because in the thousands of choices you’ve made in your life, not one of them have been me.” I lean into her, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth. The place where firm jaw curves into soft cheek. The tender spot behind her ear. “Because you want me, Henley—you might even love me—but you’ll never choose me.”
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t tell me I’m wrong. Doesn’t try to argue. I clear my throat. “Right.” I take my hands off her and step back, letting her go completely. “Get dressed. I’ll take you home.”
Forty-five
Henley
We’re halfway to Boylston before he says anything. “Are you cold?” When I don’t answer, he reaches out and adjusts the heater vents, aiming one of them at me more directly. “Sorry. I don’t have seat warmers.”
It doesn’t sound like a snipe. It sounds like a genuine apology. Like he’s really sorry for something I couldn’t care less about.
“Why do you think I give a shit about seat warmers?” I snap at him, reaching for the vent he pointed at me to slap it closed.
“I’m just trying to make sure you’re comfortable.” Again, he sounds genuine. Confused, like he doesn’t understand why I’m upset. When I don’t say anything, he sighs. “I’m trying here, Henley.”
I don’t have to ask him what he means. I know. I understand. He’s trying to give me what I want. Trying to figure me out. Be the person he thinks I want him to be. The problem is what I want and what I can have are two different things.
“You want to tell me what happened tonight?” he says, his tone casual. Easy. Like the past thirty minutes didn’t happen. Like he didn’t just have me naked. Pinned against the sinks in a bar bathroom, his fingers and mouth caressing my slick, tender flesh. Making me come so hard and loud everyone in the place probably heard me. It’s what he does. How he deals. He pretends none of it matters.
I have the irrational urge to jump out of the car.
When I don’t answer he elaborates. “With Declan and Tess—why she was half-naked, all up on some college bro’s jock.”
Tess.
He’s asking about Tess.
“I’m not really sure.” I shrug. “We were at my place getting chocolate-wasted and she suddenly decided she wanted to go to Gilroy’s.”
“And?”
“And nothing.” I shift my gaze toward him. He’s looking straight ahead. “We got dressed up and went to Gilroy’s.”
“Okay.” I watch his jaw clench like I’m holding out on him somehow.
“I don’t know what you’re asking me.” Yes, I do, I just don’t want to tell him. I want to believe it’s because Tess is my friend and I don’t want to throw her under the bus but that’s not why. It’s the fact that he’s asking me about her. Because he cares about her. Worries about her.
What did you expect? She’s been there for him. She stuck around. She doesn’t treat him like her own personal sex toy. She loves him and isn’t afraid to let people know it.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and start from the beginning. “Declan saw her talking to some guy and he lost it. I needed help diffusing the situation. I went to go find you but when I got to the bar, Logan told me—” My throat suddenly goes dry and I have to swallow hard to clear it. “He told me the last time he saw you, you were heading for the bathroom with a girl you’re your shoulder.”
His jaw tightens again. “So, you naturally assumed that I was on my way to the ladies to bend someone over the sink.”
Hearing him say it shames me all over again. “Well, I just—”
“Expected to catch me fucking someone else.” I watch his hands tighten around the steering wheel. His jaw goes tight again, flexing against the clench and grind of his teeth. “I realize I’m a walking trash pile with loose morals and questionable intentions, but I made you a promise, Henley and I intend to honor it.”
“Don’t say things like that.” The resignation in his voice kills me because I know I put it there. I did this to him. “You’re not trash. I never thought that you were—”
“You offered to pay me for sex, Henley, and seemed surprised when I didn’t jump all over it like a monkey on a cupcake.” It comes out around a harsh laugh and he shakes his head. “Tell me again how you don’t think I’m trash.”
“That’s not…” I shake my head, mortified. “I never—” I stop talking, seeing the situation through his eyes. “Offering you money was never something I meant to do.” I aim my gaze out the window. Watch the warm of my breath puffs against the cold glass. “You were turning me down all over again and I—” Tried to buy you like a pair of shoes? Pay you like hired help? Bribe you into wanting you. “allowed my impulsivity get the better of me.”
“Impulsivity?” He laughs at me. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“Look at things from my perspective.” I’m trying to remain calm. Still trying to think rationally. “You haven’t touched me in weeks. You’re not drinking. You’re not fighting and you’re not—”
“A gibbering idiot?”
“You haven’t touched me in weeks.” I yell it this time, the loud bark of my voice bouncing around the interior of the car. “You—” Goddamn it. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I assumed that meant you moved on.”
“Moved on?” He laughs at me. “Seriously? Have you heard a single, goddamned word I’ve said to you, ever?”
“You seem fine.” I hate that it makes me feel unwa
nted. Unneeded. That his lack of mental collapse makes me angry. “You haven’t touched me in weeks and you seem fine.
“I am fine… because I don’t need to fuck you, Henley.” He slumps in his seat, rubs a rough hand over his face. “I never did. I just need you. To see you. Talk to you. Be with you. It’s all I’ve ever needed.”
I try to wrap my head around what he’s telling me. As usual, I’ve having a hard time understanding him. “But a few months ago, you—”
“Lost my shit.” Nothing about his face has changed but I can tell he’s embarrassed about what happened. How he behaved. What he made me do. “You and I hadn’t said a word to each other in two weeks.”
He’s right. We barely looked at each other, but he still felt compelled to keep his promise of no drinking and no other women. I feel my stomach drop as the implication of what he’s telling me dawns on me. “So, the physical aspects of our relationship were for my benefit, not yours.”
He laughs again, making a left-hand turn into the parking lot of my building. Baseball season is over, and the streets are quiet. The parking lot only half full. “Don’t get it twisted, sweetheart.” He eases the car up to the front of my building and brakes. “I never needed to fuck you—but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”
“I’m sorry, Conner.” I keep saying it. Keep doing and saying things to him that warrant the sentiment, but I don’t know what else to say.
“Do you want to know how many women I’ve been with?” I can feel him looking at me, watching my reaction. “I can tell you if you want me to because I remember every single one of them and not one of them mattered. I didn’t feel anything while I was fucking them except relief when it was finally over.”
I asked him that once. Demanded to know how many girls he’d been with, angry and hateful, because none of them were me. “No.” I shake my head, not because I’m afraid of what he’ll tell me be but because it doesn’t matter. “I never thought you weren’t good enough for me…” He looks at me, and even though every instinct I have is screaming at me to look away, I meet his gaze and hold it. “It’s always been the other way around. “I never wanted you to look at me and feel ashamed or embarrassed. I never wanted to look at you and know you felt that way.”
His face changes. Softens. “Ask me how many women I’ve kissed since the first time I kissed you.”
My door is pulled open by the valet on duty and his hand appears to help me out of the car. “How many?” I can feel the valet behind me. Listening to every word. Seeing everything. For the first time, in as long as I can remember, I don’t care. I don’t care who sees. Who knows I’m in love with him. “How many women have you kissed.”
“Only one,” he says quietly. “Only you.”
I can see it on his face, as clear as day.
He’s telling me the truth.
“I think it’s one of the reasons I resisted it for so long.” He gives me a sad smile. “I kissed a lot of girls before you, Henley, and not one of them mattered. I think I knew that kissing you would be different. That it would ruin me, and I was right. The thought of putting my mouth on someone else, letting them put their mouth on me… I can’t think about it, much less do it.” He winces, like he hates himself for saying it out loud. “I know how that sounds. Like I’m—”
“Come up with me.”
As soon as I say it, his jaw goes tight. His eyes go dark. Blank. He thinks it’s like last time. That I want him, but I don’t want people to see us together.
I shake my head when he opens his mouth to refuse me. “I want you to get out of the car and give your keys to the valet. I want you to walk through the lobby with me.” I don’t think about what I’m asking. What it means. What will happen tomorrow. All I care about is now. The way his face relaxes when he realizes what I’m saying. What I’m asking for. That right now, in this moment, I’m choosing him. “That’s what I want, Conner. Yes or no.”
A slow smile spreads over his face, so real the shift of it catches my breath. “Are you sure?”
I shake my head. “No.” I’m suddenly terrified of what happens next. What will happen when people see us together. What they’ll think. The only thing that scares me more is knowing that if I let him drive away, it’ll be over. It’ll be the end of us. “No, I’m not. But I want you to say yes anyway.”
Forty-six
Conner
I’m not sleeping.
I’m laying here in her enormous bed, on soft, perfumed sheets, committing it all to memory. The feel of her curled against me. Her warm breath on my chest. Her hand, soft and relaxed, splayed across my stomach. Her leg hooked around mine, cold toes burrowed under my knee. The curve of her hip under my hand.
The time Henley let me stay.
I’m not delusional enough to think this changes anything. I know she’s still leaving. I know she won’t choose me. She’d have to be crazier than me to do that. What do I have to offer her? Eight-hundred square feet above a garage? A bookshelf full of books? Shopping at Walmart? Worrying about me. Am I eating enough? Sleeping enough? Am I fucking around on her? Even a fake marriage to her gay best friend sounds like a better option to me and I hate that son of a bitch.
After she asked me to come up, I turned off my car and climbed out. By the time I circled the front of the car, she was standing on the sidewalk, waiting for me. I give my keys to the valet and she reaches for my hand. Threading her fingers through mine, she leads me through the door, held open by another attendant. Across the lobby, the desk jockey gives her a strange look when he catches sight of her short skirt topped with my beat-up jacket.
“Good evening, Gerald,” she says to him, offering him a polite smile as she passes by, pulling me along behind her.
“… Good evening, Ms. O’Connell.” His gaze shoots toward the registry he made me sign the last time I was here like he wants to insist that I sign it again. Instead he sinks back into his seat.
We ride the elevator quietly to the fourteenth floor and I wait while she digs through her purse for her keys, suddenly nervous about what happens after she gets the door open and we’re alone again.
“Henley—”
“Pancakes?” She says, slipping her key into the lock and opening the door.
“Excuse me?”
She ushers me inside and shuts the door behind us both. “Pancakes.” She left a lamp burning in the living room and it casts soft light around the room, revealing evidence of what she told me earlier. A bottle of wine, open on the coffee table. One glass. A beer bottle. Two piles of discarded candy wrappers, one roughly twice the size of the other. “Can I make you pancakes?” she says while peeling herself out of my jacket.
I know what I’m supposed to say. This is where I make a sexually inappropriate comment to make light of what happened the last time she made me pancakes. That’s what she expected, but I can’t. Not tonight.
“It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“So?” she reaches down and pulls off her heels, tossing them into the living room.
“So, it’s late and you have work in the morning.”
She shrugs. “So do you.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “Look, you don’t have to—”
She stacks her hands on her hips and glares at me. “Do you want pancakes or not, Gilroy?”
Right now, what I want is to bend her over the kitchen counter, jerk that ridiculous excuse for a skirt up, over your hips and fuck her until she can’t walk. But that’s not going to happen because I can’t let it. Things are messed up enough as it is. “That sounds great.”
“Okay.” Like she can read my mind, she blushes. “Pancakes it is.”
She made me pancakes. I ate a dozen of them, drowned in about a gallon of melted butter and maple syrup, while she picked at one on her plate. As soon as I was finished, she reached for my plate. “My job, remember?” I told her, giving her hand a gentle nudge. “I’ve got this.” I stand, gathering our dishes. “You look like you’re about to fall ove
r. Go get ready for bed.” When all she does is stare up at me with her huge brown eyes, I reach for her and pull her out of her seat and turn her in the direction of what I’m pretty sure is the master suite. “I won’t leave without saying goodbye.”
As soon as she disappears, I get to work, putting things away. Washing dishes. Wiping down counters. Finally, with nothing else to do, I find my jacket and pull it on. The apartment is quiet. She’s probably already asleep. If I just left, she’ll never know.
Instead of leaving, I cross the living room, grimacing at the thought of my dirty boots marking up her polished, hardwood floors and hand-woven rugs.
The door to her room is cracked and I push it open, expecting to find her sleeping. Instead, I find her sitting on the edge of her bed, waiting for me. Face scrubbed clean of make-up. Long, auburn hair caught back in a loose braid. Silk nightie—pale pink edged in delicate cream-colored lace. Every inch of skin I can see covered in freckles.
Jesus.
“I’m gonna take off.” I clear my throat because it’s suddenly cracked and dry, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. “I’ll just—”
“I didn’t ask you up here for pancakes, Conner.” She looks up at me. “I want you to stay.”
I look down at my boots because I can’t look at her and say what I have to say next. Not if I want to mean it. “I’m not going to fuck you, Henley.” When she doesn’t answer me, I look up to find her staring at me, eyes wide and dark like I just slapped her in the face.
Shit.
“That came out wrong.” Jesus. Just shut up and leave. “I didn’t mean—”
“No. Don’t apologize. I deserved that.” Her voice cuts across mine. “I…” she shakes her head. “I don’t want—I mean I do want… but that’s not why I’m asking you to stay.” She catches her bottom lip between her teeth and shrugs. “I’d ask you to read to me, but I really don’t have any books here.”