Chapter 11 Barbara
BARBARA
Ireject Seb’s call for the tenth time this morning, dropping my phone on the coffee table before jumping off the couch and pacing my tiny apartment.
How could I have done this? How could I have sex with Ethan, annoying, frustrating Ethan, when I had a chance with a guy like Seb?
Sure, he hadn’t shown me his face yet. But we were going to have dinner tonight, and I doubt he’d show up at the restaurant that got featured in newspapers wearing his hacker mask.
“You’re such a slut,” I hiss at myself, slotting my fingers through my uncombed hair and pulling until the burn centers me, or punishes me, I’m not sure anymore. I deserve to be punished, that’s for fucking sure.
Suddenly out of steam, I slump down on my ratty couch, letting my head droop. “You ruin everything, Barbara,” I whisper.
There’s no way I can still meet up with Seb. Not when Ethan’s cum is still inside me. I quiver at the reminder of him taking me raw, filling me. If it weren’t for my IUD… God, I hope he’s clean! I bet he chases skirts like a puppy chases bicycles.
The thought of him with another woman, maybe several other women, shouldn’t make my chest feel tight. I should be mad that he did something so risky, but instead… Instead, I keep replaying it in my head, growing wetter each time.
I groan and hit the heel of my hand against my forehead. “Stop, stop, stop,” I admonish myself.
Stop thinking of freaking Ethan Kane, and start thinking of how you’re going to tell Seb you can’t see him tonight.
I’m tempted to just ghost him. I don’t owe him anything, right?
You’re more mature than that, Barbara.
“Shut up, conscience,” I snarl. “Where were you last night when our panties were being torn to shreds?”
Before I can answer myself, cementing my descent into psychosis, the doorbell rings.
Who the hell is here? Emily’s off on her honeymoon. Morgan and Damien are probably still in bed, fulfilling all the promises their mutual glances made last night. And Basia doesn’t know me well enough to just drop by.
I glance down at my holey sweatpants and ragged T-shirt. Fuck it. It’s probably just Mrs. Hines down the hallway, wondering if I can babysit her vicious poodle while she runs to the bodega.
Resigned, I grab my phone so I’m not bored at her place, then pull the door open. My words of greeting die on my lips.
Ethan Kane. Still wearing the suit pants and button-down from last night, though his jacket is MIA. His hair looks like he ran a hand through it four or five dozen times. My throat grows tight at how… innocent he looks.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my voice sounding desperate and broken. Can he let me wallow in my mistakes in peace?
“I needed to know you’re alright,” he says quietly, looking up at me with bloodshot eyes. He better not have driven here from wherever he holes up when he’s not being a menace to my peace of mind. And ovaries.
I shake my head. “I can’t talk to you right now.” I need to deal with Seb first, then sort out the mess in my head. Looking at him now only makes me feel the phantom imprint of his cock stretching me, filling me so completely I couldn’t breathe.
“Just listen—”
“No, you listen to me and hear what I’m telling you. Not now, Ethan.”
I hate that my eyes well up with tears. I hate that my lower lip trembles. I hate that he’s seeing me like this.
“Why not?”
Most of all, I hate how his voice sounds right now. Like his well-being hinges on me being okay.
I run a hand through my hair, stopping with frustration when I hit snags and get stuck.
“Look,” I begin. “There’s… someone. And yesterday was just a one-off thing. I’m not interested in you that way.” Liar. “And really, Ethan, you hardly even know me, we never really talked, and I don’t know why you’d be worried about me or why you’d…” Why you’d tell me you love me.
In typical Ethan fashion, he ignores everything I said, including the other guy.
“I was worried because you didn’t pick up the phone. You always pick up the phone,” he says with a serious expression.
Great. He’s having a breakdown.
“We never talked on the phone, Ethan. You don’t even have my number,” I start closing the door. “You need to leave now.”
His hand shoots out, grabbing hold of the edge of the door and preventing me from closing it.
“It’s me, Barb,” he says like that’s supposed to mean anything.
I open my mouth to tell him he’s lost the plot, when my phone goes off in my hand.
Seb calling.
“Answer it,” Ethan says.
“W—what?” I stutter, letting the door go in my surprise.
Ethan holds up his phone, showing me the black screen with white words.
Calling Firecracker.
“Answer,” he whispers.
With numb fingers, I slide the bar across until the phone connects. Once it does, I look at Ethan’s screen again, seeing that the call he was making connected too.
“No,” I say on an inhale. My phone slips out from between my shaky fingers, but Ethan nimbly catches it.
“It’s been me this whole time, little bee. I know you. I know you better than anyone. The things you let other people see, and the things you don’t, your little quirks and habits. What turns you on.”
I step back automatically, like I could run from the truth, shaking my head all the while. Ethan is Seb? Seb is… Ethan Kane?
Suddenly, the disbelief gives way to rage.
“You bastard!” I shout. Springing forward, I raise my hand and deliver a slap he doesn’t bother to defend himself against. He knows he deserves it, he must know it, he can’t be that deluded. Then again, he was deluded enough to infiltrate my life under false pretenses for weeks.
“You fucking asshole!” I shriek again, not caring if my neighbors call the police. “You lied to me! Made me think…” My fists hammer against his chest repeatedly, slamming into his hard pectoral muscles. He doesn’t flinch back from the impacts. “Do you have any idea how guilty I’ve been feeling?”
“Shh.” He grabs my wrists and leans closer so his green eyes are all I can see. “I know. I know, baby, I’m sorry.”
I don’t know who moves first, but suddenly his lips are on mine, and he’s kissing me. Not like he kissed me last night at the wedding. No, those were wooing kisses, especially in the ballroom. These are full of a desperate fire.
My anger melts into need, and that makes me angry all over again. I bite his lip. Hard. The metallic taste of his blood registers on my tongue.
Ethan groans like he deserves the punishment. Or enjoys it. I can’t tell anymore—he has me turned inside out.
Angry all over again, I push him until his back hits the door, then hit his chest again.
“Get it all out, firecracker,” he encourages. “I can take it.”
“I trusted you,” I say, my voice guttural. I shake my head, scoffing with disbelief. “I trusted Seb.”
He grabs my shoulders and flips us around until it’s my back against the wall next to the door. “I didn’t lie to hurt you,” he says. “I lied because I wanted you since Thanksgiving, and you didn’t give me a chance.”
I sneer at him. “So you made someone up?”
“Ethan Sebastian Kane, little bee. I can show you my driver’s license if you want.”
My shoulders slump as everything starts to sink in. Ethan just looks at me, letting me run the gamut of emotions with a patience I wouldn’t normally attribute to him. The Ethan Kane I knew was an annoying loudmouth who never let an opportunity to speak go by.
“Why me?” I ask as my vision blurs. If he says it’s because of my great rack, I’m going to knee him in the balls.
What he says is somehow more infuriating, but also makes my core clench. “Because you’re it for me, Barbara. You’re mine, my everything.”
“You don’t own me,” I whisper. How can I be flabbergasted and aroused at the same time?
His smile is awful with how gorgeous yet broken it is.
“I know,” he says. “And that’s why I’m terrified.”
Oh hell.
I surge forward, pressing my mouth against his. The kiss is violent. Desperate. He gasps into my mouth and I drink it down. How many times did I want to kiss Seb? How many times did I think of kissing Ethan, but made myself stop?
My fingers clench the fabric of his wrinkled shirt, but I don’t push him away this time—I’m pulling him closer.
With a groan, Ethan presses his lower body against mine, his hardening cock teasing me through the layers of clothes I wish weren’t there.
His hands grab at my hips like he’s afraid I’m going to disappear, pulling me flush against him. Then he spins us around.
I close my eyes and let him guide me, trusting him, despite us bumping into furniture, with him taking the hits.
Something falls to the ground, but I don’t care enough to look, not right now.
My back hits the couch, and Ethan climbs over me.
His breathing is ragged—he looks shaken.
I bet he didn’t expect this today, expected instead that I’d kick him out on his ass.
“I love the way you’re looking at me right now, little bee,” he says with a gravelly voice.
Drunk on the power I hold over this man, this musclebound veteran who’s seen more of the dark side of this world than I’d even want to think about, I fist his shirt and yank it open, buttons flying everywhere.
Ethan hisses and grabs the collar of my T-shirt.
“You think I haven’t been dying for you every night?
Think I didn’t want to tell you sooner, come here and claim your sweet pussy, fill you up, mark you with my cum until you even smell like me?
” He rips my shirt down the middle, his muscles barely straining as the fabric gives way to brute force.
He’s an animal, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so wet in my life.
“Every time you sent Seb a picture, every time you moaned his name while you touched yourself over the phone, I wanted to come here and show you who this pussy really belongs to.”
“I said I don’t—”
“You can lie to me, firecracker,” he interrupts. His grin is wicked, the type that makes your heart skip a beat, and you’re not sure if it’s from fear or desire. “But you know what always tells me the truth? Your perfect little cunt.”
Ethan pulls back enough to pull my sweatpants down with my plain cotton undies. I shiver when I feel air hit the dampness between my legs.
“There it is,” he says, then runs a finger through my folds. I squirm under him, unable to tear my eyes away from what he’s doing. He brings the finger up, showing me how shiny it is from my juices. “There’s the only truth I need to know.”
“You—you’re… outrageous,” I manage through panting breaths.
He winks at me, reminding me of the man I loved to hate. “Outrageously infatuated by you, yes.”
The clinking of his belt buckle is loud in the silence that follows—because what do you say to that?
Ethan’s cock springs out into his hand, hard, leaking, intimidating in size. But I know it’ll fit. Our rendezvous in the coatroom proved that.
He strokes it, once, twice, my eyes following the motion like a charmed snake.
“Ready or not, firecracker,” he says darkly. “I’m going to fuck you until you admit you’re mine.”