Her chin juts into the air. “You can’t keep me here.”
But I continue to block her exit. “It’s not fair to leave when you know I can’t follow you. If you want to fight, we have to fight here.”
“I don’t want to fight.”
“Right. Just leave this enormous no-mans-land sitting here then, shall we? Where I’m not allowed to tell you how I feel unless it lines up one hundred percent with your miserably low expectations.”
“The only expectation I have right now is that you’ll move aside and let me go.”
“Why can’t I tell you that you’re beautiful? How is it okay for me to have sex with you but that’s a step too far?”
“Stop saying that! You’re lying to me. Why are you…?” She can’t complete the sentence, tears streaming down her face, emotion choking her to a standstill.
And for the first time, I don’t want her tears, not after the ones she spilled in ecstasy, yesterday. These are an appalling substitute, filling me with fury at the people who conditioned her to feel inadequate, ugly,less.
My voice cracks in outrage. “It’s not a lie.”
“You’re the one who said this space wasn’t the real world. That you shouldn’t want me. All I’m doing is agreeing with you.”
“That wasn’t…” She tries to escape around the side of me and I can’t bear it. My arms go around her waist, spinning her away from the door. Walking her across the room until the back of her knees hit against the daybed. “I meant because of what I did to you. Nothing more.”
Her body is stiff with tension. When I push her onto the mattress, she folds in lines like origami, her legs like rigid boards as I position her, straddling her so she can’t escape.
“We’re not the same,” she finally whispers. “You’re good-looking. Girls chase you every day. I hadn’t even kissed a boy before because no one has ever been interested.”
“Then the other men in the world are fucking idiots.” I lean over, capturing her lips with mine. A soft kiss but there’s nothing soft about the response it stirs in me. When I draw back, her nostrils pinch together, her mouth trembling from a withheld sob.
Her eyes shimmer and my breath catches… but there’s something more important here than indulging my fetish. And knowing that liquid gold will spill when her body shakes in orgasm under me relieves my tension. It gives me the space to fulfil her needs, too.
I take her hand, easier to show her than talk, pressing it against my growing erection. “Can’t you feel how hard you make me?”
She sniffs. “You’re a teenage boy.”
“Correct.” I move her hand, rubbing it until my cock’s so stiff it sets off a pleasurable throb in my lower back. “And I believe somewhere under all this clothing is a teenage girl.”
“Why didn’t you recognise me?”
The phrase is heading in the wrong direction, and I have to stifle a groan. “Because I was expecting someone else. Because I didn’t memorise your features, I was looking at your emotions and your mannerisms and none of those were the same and I…” My words tangle, the admission a step too far.
“You… what?”
The truth is painful to admit. My throat clamps in a defensive mechanism, trying to hold back my confession. “Perhaps I did recognise you, just a flash, but I dismissed it because…”
“Because it was inconvenient?”
I lift her, grabbing the hem of her shirt, tugging it over her head and tossing it too far away for her to pull it on again as easily. Frustration and regret seed my voice as I answer, “Because I didn’t think the girl who sits in my English class would also rent herself out to strangers for five grand a pop.”
Her eyes widen in astonishment. I think at the concept of me ‘renting’ a girl, but then she blurts, “You paid five grand?”
“Yeah.” There’s still tension between us but I try to lighten it. “It was worth it for the night terrors alone.”
“Sure,” she says with a sodden laugh. “You’rehaving bad dreams.”
“Maybe not now,” I whisper. “But those first nights afterwards…”
Then I shake my head, concentrating my attention on her jeans. My breath catches as I peel them away from her legs,tossing them even further than her shirt, sitting back on my heels to admire her while she hunches in embarrassment.
“You want to see another painting?”
