Page 54 of Between Never and Forever

She whirled to face me and continued pacing right up to me to glare into my eyes. “Why? So you can work through your emotions and muddle mine? So you can wrap up the ends of our past into a neat bow and throw it away while my career and life unravel in the process?”

Her breath came fast, and her eyes looked wild, like she was barreling toward a disaster and didn’t know how to stop. Kee was scared, probably about as scared as I was.

“Your career and life aren’t my problem,” I blurted out as I processed everything else. It was the wrong thing to say. It was a knee-jerk reaction to how I’d compartmentalized her over the years, how I’d compartmentalized everything.

She nodded and combed a tiny hand through her hair before she stormed off to her bedroom. Well, my bedroom.

Fuck.

I went after her and found her in there untying the back of her dress with jerky movements and a blotchy face. I knew she’d wiped the tears away, and I didn’t know if I should apologize right then or act as if I didn’t see them. I stepped up behind her and murmured, “You and these damn strings for tops. Let me help you.”

“I don’t need help,” she grumbled as she looked in the long mirror to the left of my closet. I’d stood there so many times on my own, straightening a tie, looking at myself, or looking at me and another woman.

Most days, I didn’t feel a damn thing when I stood there. With her, that feeling of missing someone and them coming back walloped me hard enough that the tears probably should have been in my eyes too. “I’m not used to having someone else in my life, Kee.”

I let my fingers thread around the string and brushed them over her back. She gasped, and I saw the goose bumps form immediately on her skin. Still, she responded, “You had a girlfriend for two years.”

I loosely played with the strings rather than untying them and watched how her lips parted at my touch, watched how her nipples tightened. “I told you, my ex wasn’t so much of a girlfriend as she was a plaything. Our commitment to each other never spanned a certain amount of time, and she didn’t expect anything from me. I don’t help people for no reason. It’s not who I am.”

Kee gulped and murmured, “I’m as good as your plaything now. You getting over me is essentially fucking me out of your system, correct?”

Her words grated me in the wrong way, made me out to be the monster and not the victim when she’d actually left me to rot first. “You sound so against it now when you were on board the other night, Kee. You enjoyed it.”

Chewing at her cheek, I saw the ideas running through her head. “I guess we can both benefit from it. Like I said, I need more experience for—”

“I’m not helping you sell our sexual experience—”

“It’s not just sex. It’s just…living. I haven’t lived, Dex. I do whatever they want me to. It’s my experience that I’ll be writing about. My heart, my soul. You’re essentially teaching me how to tap into it. Plus, we’ll be all over each other for the cameras anyway.”

Fuck the cameras.

That’s what I wanted to say but she leaned back into me then. My cock rubbed against her and I strained to find some damn control. I’d been hard for her for days now, trying to avoid the inevitable of wanting her again so soon after taking her virginity.

She turned suddenly and looked at me with those vivid violet eyes. Then, she pushed her dress down to her hips, letting her breasts spill out. “So teach me.”

“Fuck me,” I whispered out as I stared at her standing next to my bed. “Kee…”

“Don’t make me beg.”

“You’ve had way too much to drink tonight.”

“I’m practically sober. I’ll beg if you want.”

She stepped closer to me, but I took a step back. “Jesus, I want to say you should beg, Kee. But it’s not the time.”

“I do deserve it,” she murmured. Then she grabbed my wrist and brought it to her cheek. “You had me once.” She took a step closer and dragged my hand down to her collarbone, to her chest, down, down, down to the peak of her breast. I indulged because I couldn’t stop myself. I was lost to the feeling of her soft skin. She whimpered as I circled her nipple with my thumb and her hands went to grip my shirt. “Have me again.”

I shook my head. “I’m doing too many favors and not getting any in return.”

“What do you want in return?” she whispered, and my cock jumped in my trousers.

“You know, a couple nights ago, I should have been yelling at you for taking over my room and letting my brother practically undress you. Tonight, I still can’t believe you went and hung out with him.” I was almost hypnotized by her, admitting all I was frustrated with.

She pulled me closer, and her eyes were hooded. “Does it bother you that I was out with my friends instead of being in bed with you?”

I didn’t answer her right away.

“Punish me for it. Show me what you’d do to me. I want it, Dex.”