“Why would I meet them?” he scoffs. “They sound awful.”
My face must be bright red by now. “Because that’s what you do when you have an, um…” I start to stammer, squirming onthe mattress. “Not that I’m your girlfriend or anything, but if I was, you might m-meet my parents.”
“Girlfriend,” he says sourly.
The backs of my eyes tingle with pressure. Heat. “Never mind,” I mutter, attempting to dive out of the bed.
He pins me back down and looms above me. “Darla, the word girlfriend sounds too flimsy when you are so…important. My obsession. Mymate.”He positions his hips between mine. “Open your thighs and start your day on my cock.”
It’s hard to issue a denial when I’m swooning—and wet—but I have no choice. “I’ll be back in less than an hour. We have time.”
“I don’t have time.”
Denial wraps around my windpipe. “What do you mean?”
He presses his sensual lips together, shaking his head. “Nothing.”
I want to push for more of an explanation, but my phone begins dinging with texts. “I just have to go down there and appease my mother.”
“Why?”
“Because I…I’ve disappointed them in a lot of ways. I left school after my accident, my friends…they eventually stopped calling. I’m not the socialite they were hoping for. Not the Ivy League overachiever. But I can do breakfast. I can do this one thing.”
“You have been made to feel less than perfect? Unacceptable.” He runs his knuckle down the center of my body, rubbing it in the dip of my navel. “I strongly suspect you might be the only perfect human in existence. You are intelligent and intuitive and honest. Brave, beautiful. Empathetic with your Beautiful Scars business. Anyone who doesn’t think you are perfect is fucking crazy.”
A breathless gratitude steals over me. “You seem to really believe that.”
“I will make you believe it, too,” he vows, fervently.
“That would be nice,” I whisper, hypnotized by his gray stare. Finally, he allows me to slip out of the bed, his frown following me all the way to the bathroom. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Moby
After Darla leaves the room, I remain in bed for approximately three seconds before I am stomping around the room, knocking into stupid pieces of human furniture and potted greenery, wanting to claw my chest wide open. Her absence floods me with razor-sharp distress, shredding me from the inside.
“I do not like it,” I wheeze, doubling over.
I need to find clothes.
I need to cover my body somehow and go find her before…
“Before she sits beside Leonardo,” I heave, trying valiantly not to get sick. The thought of her in a chair, close enough for someone else to touch her, especially that spindly creep, might actually kill me. I literally think I might bedying. Is this the end? I can’t concentrate enough to remember which direction the bathroom is in. I keep pulling doors open until I find it, but there is nothing of use to me. No clothes.
Only towels.
Towels will cover me, will they not?
Turns out, no. I am too large.
However, remembering all the times I’ve watched sailors tie knots, I find a way to rig two of the larger towels together andwrap them around my hips. Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, I see nothing unusual. Sure, I am still bare-chested, but I saw plenty of men with no shirts on the beach last night. They were not as tall and mighty as I am, obviously. There is nothing I can do about human inferiority right now, though.
Darla is not inferior.
She is my perfect little goddess. I want her back in my arms.NOW.
With that singular goal in mind, I stride from the bathroom, through the hotel room and out into the hallway, ignoring the screams and scurrying of people in my path.
“Which way is the pool?” I bark at a short man in a red coat.
