Page 12 of Use Me Up

“I didn’t say that,” I say, annoyed. “I’m not fragile. I’m fine.” Anyway, it’s true, I did give it up to him, and I knew when I did it that it was because he wanted to use that as ammunition against Callie and my brother. I already made my bed. Time to lie in it.

I push past him to get out of the kitchen and go towards my bedroom. “I need to do something about my hair first, though, maybe put on makeup.”

“Okay,” he says, coming after me, “but not too much, because it needs to look authentic. Maybe just understated eyeliner. Concealer, maybe, on that zit on your chin.”

I turn around and gape at him. First, because he saw the zit and he wants me to cover it up, and it’s so unlike the way I want a man to talk to me, so unlike any of the fantasies I’ve ever had about a man who I’ve been naked with, and it stings. But also, “How do you know about makeup?”

“I did some modeling,” he said. “When I was gone.”

“Of course you did,” I say.

“Plus, I’m a fucking omega,” he says, giving me a grin that sort of looks, well, coquette-ish. He can do that, turn on an omega presence, be alluring. It’s not feminine—he could never be feminine—but there’s something just pretty about him.

“Yeah,” I say. “You are a fucking omega.”

Which is how I end up in the bathroom with Ellis sorting through all of the makeup I have and tossing things into one pile and selecting very few items and saying things like, “How old is this? Hannah, you should throw this out,” and “Are you kidding? This color palette is all wrong for you. No, just no.”

At first, I try to do something with my hair, but he tells me I look better that way. “No, it’s kind of disheveled-sexy.”

“I’m not sexy,” I say, like a knee-jerk response.

He surveys me, furrowing his brow. “Sure you are,” he decides.

This goes through me like a cold winter wind, making my breath stop and my heart stutter. It’s so casual, and also, he never looked at me before and ever assessed me. That was the first time he ever thought about it. And I let him take my virginity. I can’t get that back. And he was right, it was not the way it should have been for my first time, not at all.

It ends up with him between me and the mirror, as he applies makeup to my face with his fingers.

“Close your eyes,” he tells me and smears eye shadow over my eyelids.

“Look up,” he says as he lines my eyes using an eye shadow brush and one of my light brow shadows.

“You need better concealer,” he says, sorting through all of the stuff I have.

I draw the line at him touching my zit, or I try, but he won’t listen to me and ends up blending two of them together to better match my skin tone.

“Get one of the green tinted ones. Cuts out the red,” he tells me.

And then he moves away from me and I can see myself in the mirror. I just look like me, not any better not any worse. Still average and nothing.

“You look great,” he says. He tugs on my pajama shirt. “Take this off?”

I’m stunned at that. “You want us naked?”

“No.” He reaches out and snaps at the strap of my sports bra, which is visible at the collar of my shirt.

“Right,” I say. He’s just staring at me. I toy with the hem of my shirt. “You didn’t want to watch me undress last night.”

“Yeah, well, that was different,” he says. “Now, we’ve, you know… it’s…” He lifts a shoulder. “You trying to be modest? You think I can’t control myself? Because, let me assure you—”

“No, I definitely don’t think that.” I yank the shirt over my head, and there’s my very not-flat stomach. My shoulders slump and I don’t look at him. “There. I know no one would be driven to lose control by looking at me.”

“Oh,” he says. “You’re self-conscious.” He strips off his own shirt like it’s nothing, but then I guess it is to him.

I flip him off and leave the bathroom.

He comes after me and his hand slides over my hip, grazing the bare skin of my waist. It makes me think of the way he lifted me last night to put himself inside me, and I feel a current go through me at the memory. He pulls me in against him, and when I look up at him, he is grinning one of his self-satisfied grins. “I get it,” he says to me. “I’m an omega.”

What the hell? He does not get it. Look at him.