My tears had long since dried up. Now, I was pissed. “Because it would only make things worse. Everyone around here loves Liam. He can do no wrong. And then there’s me! Thechubby girl who always followed him around. Who the hell do you think they’d believe if I said I was only trying to help?”
His jaw clenched hard in anger as he took a single step toward me. His voice came out impossibly low, bordering on a growl. “What the fuck did you just say?”
I stared at him in confusion, shaking my head. “What?—”
“The chubby girl? Is that really what you just fucking called yourself?”
“That’s not the point!”
“That is precisely the point!” he exploded. “That’s how you see yourself? How you would label yourself? If you don’t have any fucking self-respect, no one around here will respect you either!”
He spun away from me, shoving his fingers through his hair. He was fucking pissed, but I didn’t understand why he was so angry with me. I didn’t write the damn words on the Jeep. I had tried to help a friend. And most importantly, I was the only one who had the right to be pissed about anything.
When he turned to face me, the lethal expression on his face had me taking a step back. I didn’t think Ryder would hurt me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t terrified of the way he was eyeing me.
“You are not chubby,” he ground out. “You’re fucking perfect. And it’s assholes like me that have done this to you.”
“How have you?—”
“I didn’t know,” he croaked out, his face filling with remorse. “When we were kids, I didn’t know that you—” His head hung as he cursed under his breath. “It was just a stupid nickname.”
“I hardly think my horrible body image has anything to do with a stupid nickname,” I laughed humorlessly.
“If someone tells you something long enough, you start to believe it,” he whispered.
His hand slowly slid up my arm, almost as if he was afraid to touch me. And when his eyes met mine…
“I’ve always seen you as perfect.”
“You dated Krista, who is literally rail-thin,” I retorted.
“It had nothing to do with her size. I was a teenage boy, and she was wild. I thought I wanted that.”
I huffed in irritation. If this was the part where he told me I didn’t need to lose weight or that I was perfect with all my flaws, I was going to poke him in the eye with a stick.
His body moved swiftly against mine, his hands coming up to cup my cheeks, forcing me to look into his pleading eyes.
“That’s why you wore that contraption the night I came back here. To squeeze it all in. To look a certain way.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting my body to look smooth,” I snapped.
“Not if that’s all there is to it. But if you’re wearing that thing because you think you need to look a certain size, then you really don’t see yourself the way I see you.”
“Of course I don’t. Look at you! You’re practically sex on a stick!”
“And you don’t see yourself that way?” he asked, sliding his hand through my hair to the nape of my neck. “You don’t see how hard I get when I see those fantastic breasts on display? How much I want to shove my cock between them or bury my face in them?”
He growled low in his throat as he pressed his erection against my belly. “You don’t feel what you do to me when I grab that perfect ass, thinking about filling my hands as you ride me?”
He dipped his lips to my neck, sliding his tongue over my skin. “Fuck, there isn’t a second of the day that I don’t think about seeing you naked. About burying my cock in that sweet pussy or bending you over the couch and fucking you hard and deep.”
“Ryder,” I moaned as he slipped his hand between us, and his fingers brushed against my swollen clit through my jeans.
“Tell me, how could you not see yourself as fucking perfect when all I can think about is how badly I need you?”
His lips slammed over mine in a bruising kiss. For just a moment, I forgot that we were outside. I didn’t think about how people might be watching or what they might be thinking. There was only the two of us.
“Inside,” he barked. “Or your neighbors are about to find out just how much of a slut you can be for me.”
