I knew I’d already contaminated her.
Neil
“What if I…”
Was she seriously about to confess herself to me?
Fortunately, Selene hadn’t finished that sentence. The darkness of my pupils had immediately sucked in the crystalline ocean of her gaze. The same ocean where I’d seen myself reflected, lost and drowned, only to surface once again to return to my twisted world.
The only right place for me.
I was the one who was wrong.
I was the one who didn’t even know what I actually wanted.
On one hand, I wanted to be alone; I didn’t want to be tied to anyone. I couldn’t give them anything, and I couldn’t honestly expect anything in return. On the other hand, I couldn’t get Selene out of my head. The feel of her skin drove me wild, as did her lips, her coconut smell, her legs, and all the lines of her body that God had combined to perfection when he’d made her. Her body was like a road I’d been down before, knowing every bend and curve by heart. But for fuck’s sake, I couldn’t become dependent on her. I didn’t want to have a relationship with her because I would break all the rules just like I always did, and I’d break her heart in the process.
I had hurt her so many times, but it only would have been worse—more painful—if we were in a relationship where she was expecting respect, fidelity, care, and all the other bullshit that comes along with that. I wasn’t the right guy for that. I wasn’t the kind of car that could stay parked in one garage.
I was a race car, made for competition, for danger, for leaps into the unknown. I was a vehicle that was heading for a crash—to destroy or be destroyed. I was a free car heading straight toward a single goal: nothingness.
Did I want to drag her along with me? No, I would never have done that.
She deserved her happily ever after, the perfect story, and the bright future. She was a princess who needed to meet her Prince Charming. She deserved to build a family for herself with a loving husband at her side and some kids with her pure soul and ocean eyes.
Despite this, I knew I’d already contaminated her to some degree. I’d let her into my twisted world the night I took her virginity and again when I continued to fuck her and fuck her up completely until she ended up in the crosshairs of a maniac. Which was something she herself had confirmed earlier when she’d screamed at me that Player caused her accident.
If I had realized that Selene was falling in love with me, I would have stopped sooner. I would never have believed that stubborn, awkward, lovely little girl could give her heart to me, but destiny had seen fit to give me yet another problem.
I could still hardly fucking believe it. How had this happened?
Selene was looking for someone to lose her head over while I was looking for someone to help me find mine.
We were opposites, too different, two worlds too far apart.
Lost in my thoughts—which were mostly just chaos—I marched quickly back to her house while Tinkerbell followed behind me, limping on her broken heel. The urge to hop on the first plane out of the city and flee like a bank robber with a bag of loot was overpowering. Yet, I still wanted to at least try not to make the same mistake I always did—running away.
I didn’t know what to do. Neither of us had said a word after our delirious kiss. A kiss that had reawakened my need to touch her, to make herscream, sweat, shake, and lie beneath me satiated, consumed by most potent pleasure.
I still had overworked muscles and an erection to hide due to the anorgasmia that I couldn’t tell anyone about, least of all her.
As I walked, I tasted her sweetness on my lips, recalled the shy little moans that I’d heard from her, even when she tried to stifle them. Her desires bent to my will, like I was a king—a god—who had managed to worm my way inside her. I still could smell coconut; it got me higher than weed, drunker than whiskey, and more blissed out than any experienced whore ever could.
It was just coconut, yet I wanted to absorb the scent through my skin and let it enter my bloodstream where it would flow through me like a panacea, cleansing me of the poison, the memories, and that monster Kimberly’s hands on me.
When we got to her front door, I sighed and turned to her but stared into the middle distance and kept completely silent. She was probably embarrassed or upset at my reaction, and I wanted to reach for her but resisted the urge.
“What if I…”
No. That wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Selene was not supposed to love me.
“Are you staying or…” she said in a barely-there whisper, letting the words trail off. Her voice shook as she wrung her slim hands in an anxiety she couldn’t help but show. She was avoiding looking me in the eye, probably because she knew I was pissed and that everything was going wrong.
Any other man in my position would have cheered and celebrated to learn that the one girl he thought was true perfection was essentially offering her heart to him. But not me. I did not cheer because I hated beautiful things. Fate was mocking me, giving me a taste of something beautiful then yanking it away again. I knew because it had happened to me too many times before. I wouldn’t fall for it again.
I had lived a life of misery, so I could not appreciate this fairy with the crystalline eyes who’d been dropped into my path.
I belong somewhere else, in a world much different from hers.
