Disobeying Him

by M. K. Hale

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Nate pulled Logan up and pushed him toward the door. Logan spun around and appeared as if he was going to say something.

  “Don’t say bye,” Nate told him.

  Logan stepping out and closing the door allowed oxygen to once again fill my lungs. I knew I gazed at Nate like he was a rock star and I was not worthy of being in his presence, but I did not care. Someone had cared enough about me to help me, to defend me from Logan. Not even a jury had done that, let alone my own family. They had found out and told me his abuse was a phase and to stay with him because we had a “future together.”

  “How long was he here? Are you okay?” Nate rushed over to me and inspected every inch of my body. “Did he hurt you? If he did, I can still catch him and kill him.”

  A sound closest to a laugh jumped out of my mouth. “Nate.”

  “Are you in shock?” The concern on his face made me want to thank him and hug him and kiss him even more.

  How had he become so important to me in such a short amount of time? How did he make me feel things I thought I might never feel again? Not to mention, the new ways he had me feeling too. I wanted him all the time. I thought about him all the time. I had been kidding myself by saying my fascination with him was for a mere paper. God, how blind had I been? The moment I met him was the moment I realized I could give no one else my attention.

  “Nate,” I repeated, tears prickling my eyes and blurring the magnificent view of him.

  The worry lines on his forehead deepened. “Allie, the way you’re looking at me—”

  “How am I looking at you?”

  In one smooth motion, he bent down, cupped my cheeks, and pressed his lips against mine. I nearly blacked out in the process.

  Heat.

  Chills.

  Apples.

  His lips moved against mine, claiming me, aching for me, and causing an ache inside me at the same time. The passion of it, the contrast of his gentle thumb stroking my face as the kiss became ravishing and ravenous. Perfection.

  He was perfection. I felt the kind of sparks and tingles I had only read about. Ryan was a good kisser but after this how could I—I could not even think about Ryan. Nate filled up all of me with his kiss. Even his homemade apple pie scent intoxicated me.

  One of his warm, demanding hands stayed on my cheek while the other traveled to squeeze my hip. He pulled me to him, his hot and hard body pressed up against mine in the most delicious kind of way. My fingers explored his hair, tangling in the dark tresses. When his devious tongue came into play, I almost fainted.

  His tantalizing lips sucked mine, slow, and fast and full of cinematic potential. It felt like a romantic, passionate kiss in the rain, but we were dry and inside, and wow nothing would ever feel so good.

  My breathing came in ragged heaves as he gripped the back of my tender neck, supporting my head to deepen the kiss. I did not know how long we stood there, making out, but when we needed to breathe again, he pulled back and held me close in front of him. The heat from his body radiated into mine. My personal heater. My favorite flame.

  His face still appeared pained but his eyes were dark with arousal. “Allie.”

  “Nate.” I loved his name. I could have said it or sang it from the rooftops all day. Nate, Nate, Nate, Nate.

  “Allie. We shouldn’t have.” His words were like ice down my panties.

  I hid my flinch but my voice cracked, revealing my hurt. My pain. “What?”

  He stared at me with more concern but this time it felt more like pity. I hated pity.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You are sorry?” Humiliation colored my cheeks. This man—who had just done more for me than my own family—had kissed me out of pity. My hurt sparked my anger. “Get out,” I said.

  His addictive lips separated, but they could say nothing I wanted to hear.

  “I just kissed you because you were here and my adrenaline is high,” I told him, trying to save my pride. “I would rather be kissing Ryan.”

  Nate jerked back, toward my door. “Okay.”

  “He’s a better kisser, anyway.”

  Nate remained silent. His hand curled over the knob of my door.

  “Bye.”

  “So you and Nate—” Gavin started, and my head snapped up so fast my neck muscles suffered a twinge. Did the neck have muscles?

  “What?” Gavin’s eyebrows shot up, and his eyes narrowed at my immediate reaction. Great, now he was suspicious.

  It had been a day since I had kissed Nate and snapped at him. I felt as guilty as ever. I had never cheated. Even though Ryan and I were not serious enough to qualify a kiss as “cheating,” finding out would hurt Ryan. I could let no one find out.

  I could also never kiss Nate again. Even if the kiss had my blood boiling and my body waking up for the first time in a long time. Last night, trying to fall asleep had been almost impossible. Every time I closed my eyes, I was kissing Nate and his hands were running over me and we were about to—

  “I was going to say, so you and Nate have been hanging out lately.” Gavin cocked his head to the side like a polite mother interrogating a child who drew on the wall with a marker. “But is there something else you want to talk to me about?”

  “I can’t think of anything,” I answered faster than I should have.

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  “I’m not lying.” I attempted looking insulted, but he saw right through me.

  “When is your next date with Ryan?” He nonchalantly sipped from his milk carton, but his words held gravity. I needed to focus on Ryan. Nate would not have me, and I still had my goal to be with someone. I liked Ryan. I could love him…eventually.

  “Soon,” I said.

  “Do you want to go on another date with him?”

  “I feel like I have to,” I admitted.

  “Incorrect. According to the Declaration of Independence, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “I think actual history would disagree with you.”

  “What do you know about history?” Gavin laughed at me, but I had learned a lot from being around Nate. He was full of random facts.

  “Well, I am in a women’s history class with Nate.”

  “Ah, bringing up Nate again I see. How close are you two? Does he know the role of your best friend has already been filled?”

  “I’ll tell him next time I see him.”

  “And when will that be?” Gavin’s voice became a bit more serious. Gavin was friends with Ryan and my liking Nate could have bothered him too.

  I hated myself. Nate had rejected me multiple times already. Why could I not just let it go? Why did kissing him have to be more than anything I had ever experienced?

  “Probably in class.”

  Nate had not talked to me since the kiss. It had been just a day, but eating breakfast without him felt lonely.

  Gavin thought about it for a moment. “Nate is taking women’s history?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “That’s just kind of funny to me.”

  “Is it funny to you how the United States wasn’t even one of the first fifteen countries to grant women the right to vote? Or how from the early nineteen hundreds to the eighties, women who went to the hospital were sterilized against their will because of their race and class?”

  “Whoa, whoa, okay. I get it.” Gavin laughed again. “I didn’t mean it’s weird for guys to take women’s history. After all, girls have to sit through men’s history from kindergarten to high school. I was just wondering why Nate would take it.” Gavin contemplated, “I mean, I guess it could be a great way to meet girls. The gender ratio of the class must be pretty bent.”

  “Guys are not stupid enough to take women’s history just to meet girls.”

  “Have you met us?” Gavin joked.

  “Met who?” I heard Ryan’s voice from behind me, before the chair next to me pulled back and he settled down o
nto it. “What’s up?” He nudged me, flashing a playful grin.

  “Nate is taking women’s history,” Gavin told him.

  “Huh. I bet he could meet a lot of girls that way.”

  A ding came from my phone.

  “Who texted you?” Ryan asked.

  “Nate” flashed on my screen. “No one.”

  Gavin and Ryan frowned. Gavin said, “That’s the most suspicious thing you could have said.”

  “I-I just mean, it doesn’t matter. I’m hanging out with you guys right now.”

  I did not get to read or respond to the message until I got back to my room after dinner.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” Nate had sent me.

  Me: “Don’t be. It’s fine.”

  “It was not fine. I shouldn’t have done that,” he texted me back, fast.

  Me: “Logan deserved it.”

  Nate: “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  The kiss. “I know,” I texted.

  Nate: “It can’t happen again.”

  I read his message, and a pang settled in my chest. “I know.” As long as I was dating Ryan, I could not kiss Nate. Yet, it bothered me so much how he seemed fine with that. It was as if kissing me had been a mistake and meant nothing.

  Nate: “But I can’t stay away from you.”

  My phone buzzed with another message following it.

  Nate: “I like hanging out with you.”

  I sent back, “Me too.”

  Nate: “We need to be friends.”

  Me: “Okay.”

  Nate: “Just friends.”

  His need to clarify annoyed me. Did he think he was so irresistible? He was attractive, sure, but it was not like all he had to do was look at me and I would fall on his lips. He was so smug.

  Yet, I somewhat wished he was smugger. There was so much more to him than what he let other people see. His struggle mirrored my own and, dammit, he had fought for me. Fought for me.

  Walking to the dorm bathroom an hour later, I was surprised to see him coming from the men’s showers. He carried a blue shower caddy and wore nothing but a white towel.

  He had to have planned this. Fate could not have hated me that much.

  His wet, dark hair shined, and the clean, fresh smell of him hit me like a paint grenade. The neon blue of his eyes shined brighter than normal, but I could not keep my eyes on his no matter how hard I tried. As my control slipped, so did my gaze. It followed a runaway water droplet from his slick hair, down his neck, sliding across the sculpted muscles on his toned chest, down to the light, happy trail of hair before reaching right where his—

  It went under the towel.

  Shit, was I drooling?

  “Fuck,” came out of my mouth before I could pull it back in.

  I shivered at the heat in Nate’s eyes after watching me all but devour him. He put the shower caddy in front of him, blocking any view of what I could make out through the thin towel.

  “I don’t think friends say ‘fuck’ when they see each other.”

  “I don’t think friends see each other practically naked,” I shot back. “Aren’t you breaking the ‘no indecent exposure’ in the hallway rule?”

  Nate noticed I was not going to pass him so he walked around me to get to his door. Still frozen in my spot, fantasies invaded my mind. My body was on fire. Why the hell did he have to seem so calm and unaffected? I wanted him to lose control. I wanted to melt him.

  He said over his shoulder, “It should not happen again.”

  Chapter 17

  Allie:

  * * *

  “What’s wrong?” Nate asked me after I sat next to him in class. I loved and hated how he knew me and my facial expressions so well.

  “I got a C on my third psychology quiz.” I let out a loud, disappointed and angry sigh. “I studied. So. Much. I thought I could pick up my grade, but no.”

  “A C isn’t that bad.”

  “Oh, don’t pull that shit on me.” It was my grade. I was allowed to be worried. I had been a great student in high school. It had been rare for me to get a B. “I know you get all A’s. You hate it when you get a ninety-one. And here I am, with my lousy seventy.”

  Every day in psychology scared me more and more. What if I could not do what I had always wanted to do? What if my plans for the future were ruined before I had the chance to get started? And then there was the final paper, which I had trashed about Nate but still had not found a new subject to write about. The closer I came to the deadline, the more tempted I was to open the Word document on my laptop and finish the one about him.

  “If you want, I could help you,” Nate offered.

  “What?” I picked my head back up. “What do you know about psychology?”

  “I took the class a year ago because it filled one of my general requirements, and I’ve tutored people before.”

  “How much do you charge?”

  “You don’t have to pay me, Allie.” The tone of his voice was sad.

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” I poked him. “You’re a millionaire.”

  “But most importantly, I’m a tutor.”

  An image of him wearing a casual suit, carrying a ruler, and pointing at a chalkboard consumed my thoughts. He would make such a sexy teacher. Detention would never be so hot. Him leaning across my desk, telling me I needed to focus. Me dropping a pen and him bending down to pick it up, leaving him on his knees in front of me, my legs open in my dress, him seeing and moving forward to—

  A small moan escaped the back of my throat when I got caught up in the sexual daydream. Nate’s gleaming eyes widened before narrowing on me. His lips thinned, and he looked angry.

  “What were you just thinking about?” he growled his question.

  You giving me an A-plus plus in every possible way?

  “Nothing.”

  I did not realize I zoned out until Ryan’s hand squeezed mine.

  “It’s your turn again.” He pulled me out of my thoughts. “Do you not like pool?”

  “It’s okay.” I stepped closer to the table and re-aligned my pool stick with the cue ball. I hoped this time I would hit a ball with a number other than eight on it.

  “You just seem somewhere else today,” Ryan said.

  The loud ringing from my phone interrupted us, and he scowled at my device as I took it out of my purse to answer it.

  “Fantastic,” I murmured once I saw who called me.

  “Who is it?” Ryan sounded as annoyed as I felt. I supposed he had a problem with our date being interrupted, while I was more upset over the person who called.

  “My mother. Can you give me a minute? I should answer.” I had already ignored three previous calls. Ryan nodded.

  “Hello?” I answered the phone.

  “Where are you?”

  “Like in my life? I think I’m in a good place.”

  “You’re not in your room.”

  What? “Excuse me?”

  “Your father and I are outside your room, and it is locked, and we have been knocking.”

  “My room at school?”

  “Yes, your room at school. Get here now.” She hung up on me.

  I took a deep breath to make sure I did not start panicking. “I have to go,” I told Ryan, frowning. I both did not want to end our date early, and also I had no interest in seeing my parents. Why were they here?

  “Really?” Ryan pouted his lips.

  “Really.”

  “Am I—” he started before I walked away. “Am I doing something wrong? You’ve been in your head lately and now you’re cutting our date short.”

  It’s not you, it’s me. “My parents are here, so I have to go find them before they break my door down. You’re doing nothing wrong.” I was the one doing wrong.

  By the time I got to my dorm room, I had mentally prepared myself to see my parents. My father was in his typical expensive suit, and my mother wore her designer-of-the-week dress. She stood tall with an expression
as sharp as the stem of her high heels. Once they saw me, they frowned, and my father checked his golden watch.

  “We’ve been standing here for over an hour,” my mother grumbled.

  “I doubt that’s true,” I said.

  I moved in front of them to unlock my door and waited until everyone stepped inside before I closed it. Thankfully, my roommate, Marissa, was not in the room again. Otherwise, it could have become awkward. More awkward. My mother scanned my room with the same distaste Logan had. My father sat down in my chair.

  “Why are you here?” I asked them.

  I had not seen them since my high school graduation day a year ago, and I preferred it that way. My parents were not my parents. They had stuck me with Logan and had done nothing to help me afterward. My dad had taken Logan’s side because of his business dealings with his father. My mother had used her tingling money-senses to choose Logan and his inheritance over my claims of assault and battery. She wanted me to marry him, even after everything. I still could not believe she had told Logan where I was when I had the restraining order.

  “Logan’s parents said you had him beaten when he showed up to talk to you.” My mother’s harsh voice could make an innocent victim feel like a guilty villain.

  Did I regret Nate hitting Logan? I tried to find some sympathy for him, but nothing came to me. After all he had done to me, him being hurt and humiliated felt like justice. He had not gone to jail. He had lost none of his great prospects for colleges or jobs over it. Was I a bad person for not thinking what Nate had done was wrong?

  “I did not have him beaten.” I sighed. “You make me sound like a mafia lord.”

  “He had two black eyes when he got home. Not to mention, the other bruises on his body.” They were concerned about his bruises? After he had hurt me for two years? After he had broken almost all of my bones and put me in a coma?

  “Poor him.”

  “You ungrateful girl. How will he take you back after this?” my mother asked.

  “Um, he won’t?”

  “You sound as if you don’t even care.”

  “Um, I don’t?”

  My mother huffed. She had talked to me on the phone, but she had not seen me in a long time. I was stronger now, and I would not let her push me around.