So instead, I kissed him. I kissed him with all the longing and sorrow and rage that was pent up inside me, savoring the feel of his lips on mine in case this was the last time.
He groaned and kissed me back, meeting me with his own ferocity, pulling me onto his lap and wrapping me in his arms like we could shut out the rest of the world.
This was stupid. I needed to tell him about Max and get the hell out of there while I could still think clearly. It wasn’t fair to him to do this when he didn’t even know what was coming. He’d be thrown into the mess because everyone thought we were dating.
But I was weak and selfish and deep down, knew I was hopelessly in love with him. So I stayed, pulling his clothes off as we kissed our way into the bedroom. We were naked by the time we reached the bed.
Frantic in our need, desperate to feel each other and make each other feel, we touched and kissed in a tangle of limbs.
“God, Elena, you drive me crazy. I want to fuck you so bad I can hardly stand it.”
Would our inevitable breakup hurt any more if I fucked him this first and final time? Would I regret compromising on my rule forever or always regret I didn’t have that with him?
“Do you want it as much as I do, sweetheart?” he asked, sounding vulnerable.
I breathlessly moaned. I was ready to fall apart from needing him.
I looked into his eyes and saw hope. For the first time since I’d made my rule, I was ready to cross that boundary. But I was terrified of what that meant.
“I’m going to get a condom,” he said against my neck.
“The fuck you are…” Now I was pissed that he thought it was his decision to make. I hadn’t agreed yet.
“Are you serious?” he asked, laughing.
The smile died on his face when he looked at mine and saw I wasn’t joking. “Why not? What’s stopping us?”
“You know I don’t do that.” Why was he suddenly making this an issue?
“Yeah, but this is different. You just said you want it too. What we have is…special.” He nuzzled his way from my neck to my shoulder.
I pulled away from his caress. “And you need to fuck me to prove that?”
“No. I don’t need that. I just have to know…”
“Have to know what?!”
“I don’t know what the hell we are. I keep thinking there’s something real here, but you won’t let me in. Sometimes I wonder what’s real with you and what’s you acting the part you know I want because I’m your client and you’re the best at this for a reason.”
I pushed him away and got up, looking for my clothes. I hated being naked when I was this angry. I’d been more vulnerable with him than I’d ever been with anyone and he’d just accused me of being fake. It felt like he was picking a fight and I didn’t trust myself to speak.
“See?” he said, taking my silence as confirmation. “You don’t trust me and you lie to me and I don’t even know what to believe anymore.”
“What?! I haveneverlied to you.”
What the hell was he talking about? Did he believe the stuff they were saying in the tabloids?
He smiled, but it was a foreign expression to me. It looked like a smile, but it was sharp and dangerous. “So Max wasn’t your client?”
My stomach dropped.
“You know?Why didn’t you tell me you knew? Yes, Max was my client, but that’s not lying to you. I’m bound by client privacy not to talk about one client to another!”
“So I am just a fucking client to you then? You said you’d never dated another client, but he showed me a picture of the two of you out together.”
That sonofabitch.
“I ran into him at a charity dinner. He asked to take a selfie and I didn’t want to make a scene.”
