Page 120 of Untouchable

“I’m not talking about choice,” she said, her trembling finally starting to ease. “Every woman chose to be with you. I’m talking about something else. And are you going to suggest that every single one of those women you fucked for the night and then dropped without a word wanted that experience? And did they actually want you foryou? And not for your wealth, your power, or something else you could give them?”

Caleb was shaking now too, shaking internally with some sort of rising intensity. His fingers were motionless and relaxed on the seat beside him. “If they were with me for other reasons, then they were trying to use me as much as I used them. I’m simply the one who succeeded. Besides, they all had a good time.”

“Did they?” Kelly asked blandly, the mildness in her voice almost merciless. “How do you know?”

He didn’t.

He didn’t know at all.

Most of the time he hadn’t even cared enough to wonder whether they’d really come or not.

“Anyway,” Kelly concluded, suddenly sounding sad, almost ancient, “I’m not saying you’re to blame for it. All those women chose to do what they chose to do. Just like all the men I was with before. I used to think…”

There was a pause. And Caleb found himself holding his breath until she finished her sentence.

“What?” he asked at last, when she never completed the thought.

She shook her head. “Nothing. I used to think sex could be simple—just something to do. I never really thought about what might be going on with the other person.”

Caleb had been exactly the same, rarely thinking about the human being on the other end of the encounter. The revelation hit him with more power than it should have.

Kelly went on as if she were speaking to herself now. “I went a really long time without ever knowing what it was like.”

“What?”

“Having sex with someone who saw me as a person and not a body. And who I saw in the same way.”

Caleb let out his breath and took another swig of Coke as his belly clenched sickeningly.

She’d been talking about herself, but the words so clearly applied to him too.

Surely there had been someone—in all his years of fucking—who’d wanted to be with him for no underlying reasons. Who’d simply wanted him… for him.

It was tragically implausible, but if there had been someone like that in his past, Caleb couldn’t recall her.

Until Kelly. Maybe Kelly. But she might not even really want him either. Not completely. There was so much more going on inside her that she wasn’t revealing to him.

Why had she fucked him just now when she hadn’t really wanted to?

“I’m sorry I messed up our hot sex. I’m still trying to work through a lot of issues, I guess, so it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped.”

It hadn’t been good at all except for the empty physical release.

As they rode back home in exhausted silence, Caleb realized something else that hit him just as jarringly.

Their fucking hadn’t been much different from most of what had passed for good sex in Caleb’s life, until Kelly had entered his world.

It just had never bothered him before.

They only said a few words during the remainder of the drive. And when they got to his house, Kelly went right to bed while Caleb went to his office to return a couple of calls.

When he got up to the bedroom a half hour later, he saw that Kelly was under the covers.

She hadn’t brushed her hair, and her dress was tossed on the floor beside her shoes.

He’d half expected her to take a shower before going to bed, and the fact that she hadn’t wanted to immediately wash off all evidence of Caleb’s body on hers relaxed something in his chest.

Maybe it had just been one of those things. Maybe it wasn’t something he needed to feel guilty about.