Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PIZZA
I wake up with the kind of heavy, shameful ache that makes the whole morning feel personal.
For one merciful second, I don’t remember why.
Then my phone lights up on the nightstand, already drowning in notifications, and the entire ugly, overheated truth comes rushing back at once.
Pineapple left my house just after midnight.
The paparazzi were waiting. They got the photos.
They got his face, my address, the shape of a scandal they could plate up and serve before sunrise, and now the whole food world is eating it with both hands.
I stare at the screen while the headlines stack one on top of the other in glossy little bursts of judgment.
Pizza ruined.
Flavor betrayal.
Classic beauty goes bad.
Industry darling caught in topping scandal.
The language would almost be funny if it weren’t doing such obscene things to my blood pressure.
Somewhere in the comments, strangers are arguing about my body, my taste, my self-respect, my future, as if one grainy photograph of a man leaving my front door has given them the right to pry open every private thing I have ever tried to keep held together.
Half of them are calling me reckless. The other half are acting like I’ve personally climbed onto a table, spread my legs for controversy, and invited the whole culinary world to watch.
The worst part is that my center is still warm from him.
It has been all night.
I slept badly and woke worse, my body tangled up in memory, still carrying the drag of his mouth on my throat, the firm weight of his hand at my waist, the low command in his voice when he told me to stay put and the unbearable, humiliating praise that followed when I did.
The whole bundle of nerves low in my center feels overworked and underfed at the same time, and every time I think about the way he left me—calm, smug, and entirely too sure of what he was doing—my moist triangle answers before my pride can catch up.
I hate him a little for that.
I hate myself more for checking whether he texted.
He did.
Of course he did.
Three messages are sitting there waiting for me, sent hours apart, as if he knew I would stare at them before I opened them and savor the suspense whether I wanted to or not.
Pineapple: Morning, sweetheart.
Pineapple: Tell me you dreamt of me.
Pineapple: And that you didn’t touch yourself.
I close my eyes.
Then I open them again and read the last message twice, because apparently humiliation is part of my morning routine now.
My thumbs hover over the screen while common sense begs me to throw the whole phone into the nearest body of water.
Instead, I type.
Me: You have got a lot of nerve.
The reply comes back so fast it is almost insulting.
Pineapple: That isn’t a no, Sweetheart.
My breath catches in a way I deeply resent. I sit up against the headboard, glaring at the phone as if the force of my annoyance can somehow cool off the arousal already moving low and slow through me.
Me: There are paparazzi photos of you leaving my house.
Me: I’m trending next to the words “ruined,” “reckless,” and “taboo.”
Me: I would like to be very clear that this is your fault.
The typing bubble appears, disappears, then returns, and that tiny pause does something rude to my pulse because I know him well enough already to hear the smirk in it.
Pineapple: Baby, if that’s what they call ruined…You need to know that I haven’t even started.
I should not have to set my phone down and breathe after reading a single sentence.
I do anyway.
The morning light coming through the curtains feels too bright for this level of nonsense.
My room smells like clean sheets and coffee from somewhere downstairs and the faint lingering trace of the cologne he left all over my memory, and none of it helps.
My nipples pebble under my shirt. My thighs press together on instinct.
My center throbs with that same deep, unsatisfied ache it had when he walked out, and it is one of the great indignities of my life that he is somehow making it worse with nine words and a punctuation mark.
I pick the phone back up because apparently I have no dignity left worth preserving.
Me: You are unbelievable.
Me: I’m being eaten alive out here.
His answer takes a little longer this time.
Pineapple: No. Sweetheart.
Pineapple: You’re choosing this for yourself. Fuck them.
Pineapple: And from where I’m sitting, they’re all choking on the fact that you finally let yourself want something different, something better.
My mouth goes dry.
That line should not work on me. It should strike me as arrogant, theatrical, unbearably pleased with itself.
It should remind me why I ought to block his number, light a candle for my ruined reputation, and go back to my life before a sweet, shameless fruit decided my body was a playground for his self-control issues.
Instead, heat slides through me low and thick, settling in my center with the sort of intimate weight that makes it hard to breathe normally.
Me: I did not “choose” anything.
Me: You pushed me into this.
His reply arrives one line at a time, each one worse than the last.
Pineapple: Sweetheart, you had the power. You could stop at any point.
Pineapple: You listened. You obeyed. You were my good little slice.
Pineapple: And unless I’ve badly misunderstood that beautiful mouth of yours, you liked it.
I stare at the screen until the words blur.
Then I make the mistake of remembering exactly how his hand felt at the back of my neck, exactly how my pulse jumped when he told me good girl in that low, filthy voice, exactly how fast my body gave him away once he stopped touching me like a tease and started touching me like a man who had every intention of being obeyed.
My whole body warms.
This is absurd.
This is also very much happening.
Me: You’re very smug for someone standing in the middle of a media firestorm.
Me: Do you enjoy ruining women professionally before breakfast, or am I getting special treatment?
I expect a joke.
I expect something bright and cocky and infuriating.
What I get instead lands much lower.
Pineapple: Professionally, no.
Pineapple: Privately, I’m thinking about it a lot.
I press the heel of my hand to my forehead and let out one slow breath that does absolutely nothing to help.
Because of course he would say it like that.
Of course he would put those two words next to each other and leave me to hear every indecent thing vibrating between them.
Privately. Thinking. About it. About me.
About the way I came apart under his mouth and hands without ever fully coming apart at all.
About how close I got. About how much closer he could get me if I let him.
I should not text him again.
I text him again.
Me: You left.
Me: That was your choice.
This time the bubble sits there a long while, and when the answer comes, it is so calm it feels almost cruel.
Pineapple: Yes.
Pineapple: I left you wanting.
Pineapple: I wanted you aching for me today. I want that tight little hole of yours pulsing with need so badly that I can smell your arousal from across the room.
My spine goes rigid while everything lower in me turns hot and soft in one humiliating rush. He says it so plainly. No apology. No little bit of polite fiction to let me pretend I misread him. Just the truth laid out in front of me like he already knows I’ll pick it up and carry it around all day.
The worst part is that he is right.
I am aching for him.
Aching feels too clean a word, actually.
I am a mess of restless arousal and irritation and need, all of it gathered low in my center until my whole body feels aware of itself in a way that borders on obscene.
My thoughts keep circling back to his mouth, his hands, his voice.
The memory sits in me like heat trapped under a lid, building, waiting, turning richer by the second.
The whole thing has become one long lesson in what happens when a woman spends years mistaking polish for control and then lets the wrong man put his hands on the truth underneath it.
My thumbs move before I can stop them.
Me: That was manipulative.
He answers immediately.
Pineapple: Yes.
Pineapple: I want you to need me so badly you beg for it.
I almost throw the phone.
Instead, I set it down on the comforter and stare at the ceiling, because there are only so many times a woman can be read correctly before it starts to feel like a public service announcement.
My center throbs again, slow and maddening.
My nipples ache beneath the thin cotton of my shirt.
My whole body feels like one long stretch of unsatisfied tension, and I know, with the sort of certainty that makes me want to scream into a pillow, that he is somewhere else right now enjoying this.
When I reach for the phone again, my hands are not as steady as I would like.
Me: I hate that you know me this quickly.
His reply comes back softer than I expect, though that almost makes it worse.
Pineapple: No, sweetheart.
Pineapple: You hate that I know what you want.
Pineapple: There’s a difference.
I cannot even argue with him because some traitorous, mortifying part of me has gone still beneath the truth of that.
I do want it. I want the hand at my throat and the mouth at my pulse and the slow, mean patience of him taking his time while my whole body gives him everything I meant to withhold.
I want the dommed-up confidence of him, the praise, the rules, the feeling of being held exactly where he wants me until resistance turns into something far less respectable.
I want him to text me filth at nine in the morning and I want him to back it up in person later. I want the whole ruinous experience.
And because apparently the universe enjoys humiliating me, he knows it.
Pineapple: Tell me where you are right now.
I should not answer that either.
Me: In bed.
Me: Full of regret.
The answer takes just long enough for me to imagine him grinning before it appears.
Pineapple: Liar.
Pineapple: You’re full of me.
I make an actual offended sound at the phone.
Then my thighs press together again, hard enough this time to make me curse under my breath.
That does not help. It only sharpens the ache, turns the bundle of nerves low in my center brighter and meaner, and suddenly I am painfully aware of my own body in a way that would be funny if it were not so inconvenient.
My breathing changes. My skin feels too tight.
The space between my legs has gone warm in that deeply feminine, deeply irritating way that tells me I am nowhere near done reacting to him.
I type before I can talk myself out of it.
Me: You are not allowed to be pleased with yourself right now.
His response is immediate, warm with amusement and something darker.
Pineapple: Too late.
Pineapple: Now be a good girl and keep your hands off that bean.
Pineapple: Drink your coffee.
Pineapple: Keep that pretty mouth shut and stay off socials today.
Pineapple: I’ll handle the rest. Trust me.
The room goes very quiet around me.
That last line lands low and deep, settling into the same place his praise did last night, and I hate the shiver that follows because it feels far too much like surrender.
I should block him.
I should throw my phone across the room.
I should do literally anything except stare at those messages while my pulse races and my center aches and the whole spoiled, inconvenient, craving part of me lights up like he has just reached through the screen and put his hand right back where he left it.
Instead, I type the only thing my dignity can salvage.
Me: I am not being good for you.
His answer comes back after a beat, wicked and certain.
Pineapple: Brat.
Pineapple: You’ll pay for that.