Part of me wanted to.
Okay.
Slut. Whore.
Did those words make me feel a bit of shame? Yes. Did I think it was more from how I was supposed to feel about sex than how I actually did feel about sex? Yes to that too.
“Fine, Stewart. Fine. I’m a slut and a whore. Is that what you want to hear me say?” I took a step toward him, refusing to let him use his bigger body to intimidate. “How many times have you come for a massage and told me about all the random twinks you’d been fucking? About your latest six-hour stint at Steamworks? You think you can spend that long in a bathhouse and skip the slut label yourself?”
He glared at me.
“Seriously, Stewart. None of this makes any sense. You’ve never acted like you wanted a relationship before. Why now?”
He flicked his gaze away. Just long enough to confirm my suspicions.
Maybe he was having a mental breakdown. He obviously wasn’t as stable as I’d thought, but there was more. It wasn’t about me. I knew he couldn’t care less about how many men I slept with.
“You didn’t realize how much money my family has before last night. Did you?”
He flinched, his cheeks reddening. “I don’t appreciate what you’re insinuating.”
“It’s not my money, Stewart. It isn’t. It’s my parents’, and one day it will be my brother’s. All of it.”
“There’s no need to lie about it. It’s obvious you don’t think I’m good enough to—”
To have the money angle confirmed was almost a relief. “I’m not lying, Stewart. I’m not. I chose to be cut out of the inheritance years and years ago.”
His shoulders slumped, and he just stared at me. He glanced toward the door, then toward the spare bedroom where the massage table was set up. “So that explains why you do massage and photography.”
“Yeah. I do the massage for money. And I do the photography because I love it, and for the money.”
He narrowed his eyes. “If you need the money, why do you turn down the extra I try to give you? My money not good enough?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Stewart, get over yourself.” I was ready for this day to be over, and I’d not even been out of bed ten minutes. “I don’t take extra money for you fucking me because I’m not that big of a whore, despite what you think. And I like getting fucked, so why not?”
He reached a hand down and adjusted his cock beneath his jeans, glancing again at the massage room. “Want to now?”
I gaped at him. The final nail pounding into the coffin of his supposed stability. “Do I want to what? Give you a massage, or get fucked?”
He gave a halfhearted shrug and what was surely supposed to be a charming smile. And before today, it would have been. “Either. Both.”
“No, Stewart. I don’t want to give you a massage. And as shocking as I’m sure it is, I don’t want you to fuck me after two rounds of you yelling and calling me names over the past twelve hours. Being treated like shit doesn’t really do it for me.”
Anger flashed across his features again. “So now you’re a cocktease besides being a whore?”
I had no idea how to respond to that.
He motioned toward my chest. “You answer the door with your shirt off and your cock flopping around in those shorts and then act like you’re not trying to get fucked.”
“Oh my God, Stewart. I just got out of bed because some crazy person was pounding on my door. I wasn’t trying—” What the fuck was I doing? Why was I standing in my home having this conversation? I crossed the few feet back to the door and swung it open. “I need you to leave.”
“No. You can’t lead me on after all this time and then just end it.”
“The money isn’t mine. Get it through your thick head. And no one led anyone on.” I motioned through the open doorway. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.
“Get out or I’m calling the police.”
