Chapter 6
He stands in the corner.
All tall and broad and God, so handsome. His eyes lock with mine and I have to remind myself to get on before the doors close.
I find a spot just by the buttons, all the way in the front while he’s all the way in the back. Still, though, it feels like he’s close. It feels like there’s no one between us. It feels like the air’s running out of my body and my legs are about to give in.
Because he’s looking at me.
I know he is.
I can feel his gaze.
It’s like the flame of a candle, the match, his cigarette that he’s holding too close to my body, making me heat up. My skin. My belly. The place between my thighs that only he knows what it tastes like.
The elevator stops on every floor almost and slowly people disappear.
Until there’s only the two of us.
And then I have to, have to, grab hold of the steel bar so I don’t fall. Because this is the first time we’ve been alone like this since the night he came to my room, all angry about my accommodations, a week ago. So all the life’s gone out of my legs and I have no energy left to support myself.
Actually no, I’m lying.
I do have the energy. I do. And I realize that when he closes the distance between us. Up until now, we were standing on the opposite sides of the elevator, but now that we’re alone, he steps up to me, crowding my back, and that’s when all my energy flows out of me and I sag.
I sag against him.
My back hitting his massive chest.
Massive and hard and solid and heaving chest.
Or maybe he makes it so. I don’t know. Maybe he pulls me toward him until our bodies touch with only a graze of his finger. By only tracing the column of my neck with his rough digit from behind.
“What…” I swallow, my hands fisted, the spot where he’s touching me tingling. “What are you doing?”
His words waft over my skin like a warm breath. “Trying to figure out something.”
“F-figure out what?”
“If it’s just me or if you’re,” he rasps, his finger now just below my ear, swirling, “really as soft and smooth as I remember.”
I have to clench my eyes shut then, my belly tightening. “Stellan, you?—”
I think he comes closer then.
I feel his body shifting against mine and then his plump mouth at my ear, whispering, “It’s not just me.”
Biting my lip hard, I say, “I-I don’t think this is appropriate.”
“Hmm.”
“Can you?—”
This time, he stops my words by stopping the elevator.
Yeah, he does that.
Much to my shock, he reaches from behind me and very calmly presses the emergency stop button, bringing us to a screeching halt. I try to turn around to face him, but he’s still crowding me from behind and won’t give me the space to do so.
Still, I whisper, “Why did you… Why did you do that?”
“Because I want to do…” He pauses a second, bringing his hand back, and now, from what I can feel, rubbing the strands of my hair. “It with you.”
My whole body freezes and explodes at the same time. Both no and yes are at the tip of my tongue at the same time. Which is why I stumble and stutter out words, “You… It… I don’t think w-we?—”
“Relax.” He tugs a strand of my hair. “I’m just here to ask a question.”
I wish I could say that I do relax.
Or rather that’s all I do.
But I don’t.
I do let out a relieved breath, but there’s also a pit of disappointment in my belly. Ignoring all that, though, I ask, “What question?”
“If it really does it for you,” he goes on, sifting through my hair, his breath on the side of my neck. “Dancing on the top of a moving train.”
I fist my dress. “You were l-listening?”
“Hard not to,” he replies, moving on to the right strap of my dress, tracing it with his thumb. “When you were making such a ruckus.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“You know it’s a stupid thing to do, don’t you?”
“I knew you’d say that.”
“Not to mention, dangerous.”
“I knew you’d say that too.”
“In conclusion, only an idiot with no common sense would do something like that.”
Despite everything, I laugh. “God, you’re so grumpy.”
He tucks his thumb under my little strap and pulls at it. “That and I hate dancing.”
The strap slides off my shoulder and drops down my arm, making my breath catch in my throat. “I could… I could help you.”
Now that my strap is gone, he trails his fingers in circles on my strapless shoulder. “Help me with what?”
I fist and fist my dress, my skin shivering, my thoughts scattering in the wind at his touch. “I could… I could teach you.”
“To dance.”
“Yes.”
“No, I think I’m okay.”
I don’t know why, but I keep at it. “I mean, you could l-learn to like it.”
“No.”
“It’s really fun, though, I promise.”
“I’m allergic to fun.”
Right.
I know that. I mean, if I don’t know that by this point, then I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life anymore. But then again, I think I do know. I do know what I’m doing, what I’m talking about.
I’m not talking about dancing at all, am I?
I’m talking about… love. I’m talking about how I could teach him to love and maybe he could learn to love… me. And if that happens, then maybe we could live happily ever after.
There are a lot of ifs here, though. Plus the little fact that I’m engaged to his twin brother and I’m supposed to be moving on from him. Oh and he lied to me and broke my heart, and I’m angry at him.
But Jesus Christ, it’s so hard.
“So are you going to stop?” he asks then, his fingers still working on my skin.
“S-stop what?”
“Trying to get my attention.”
“I’m not trying?—”
“If you’ve got something to say,” he goes on, “now’s your chance.”
I breathe out and bite my lip. “Why don’t you ever talk to the guys?”
“I talk to the guys.”
“No, as in like why don’t you ever have fun with them?”
“Because I just said I’m allergic to fun and that’s not my job.”
“But you’re always doing your job,” I protest.
“That’s what they pay me for.”
I turn my face to the side, trying to catch the sight of his face in my periphery. But maybe he’s too tall for me to do that or he has angled himself in a way that all I manage to get is the cut of his bruised jaw. Either way, I don’t get to look at him more than that.
Oh, and his maddening finger, playing with my strap, my skin, my hair.
“But you don’t even like your job,” I remind him.
“I don’t have to like it to do it well,” he reminds me back.
“But, Stellan,” I say exasperated. “You don’t take nights off. You don’t like parties. You don’t drink and I understand why, but… I think you’re lonely and you need friends. I think you take everything super seriously. You need to relax a little. You need…”
“I need what?”
I sigh. “A life. You need a life.”
He exhales a long breath as well. “You worried about my life?”
“Yes.”
I’m worried about my life too, but that’s not the point right now.
“Well, there’s a way to fix it,” he shares.
I perk up. “What?”
“It involves a thing called it,” he growls lowly, “that unfortunately we’re not going to do. Because you’re engaged to my brother, and you think it’s inappropriate.”
I don’t know how I manage to put together words, but I somehow do. “You don’t think that it’s inappropriate?”
“No,” he growls, sending shivers down my spine. “Because all I can think about is you. And what you taste like and what you feel like on my tongue. All I can think about is getting to taste you, taste her, again. Because all I can think about, Dora, is how much better it’ll feel and how much better she’ll taste if I manage to get inside. If somehow, some-fucking-way, I manage to get into that cherry-flavored pussy.”
Oh God.
I think I’m… I think I just came. Or if not then, I’m so close to coming.
“But I can’t do any of that, can I? Because you insist on staying a virgin. And you should. You should save it. You should give it to someone who’ll make love to you,” he seethes, his voice thick and angry and a little tortured.
“And y-you won’t?”
“No,” he rasps. “I’ll fuck you.”
“What’s”—I have to catch my breath here—“the difference?”
“The difference is that I want to stretch your pink little pussy out and mold it to the shape of my dick. So that only I get to fuck it. I want to rip that cherry from you and wear it on my dick like a badge of honor. The difference is that I don’t just want to pop that fresh cherry and fuck it out of you. I want to fuck you every day. Every night. I want to fuck you until I don’t want to fuck you anymore. I want to use you to get off and get you off and then leave. Like I wanted to do when I was blackmailing you. So yeah, you should stay a virgin,” he growls. “For that asshole. As if he already doesn’t have everything because he gets to spend his godforsaken life with you. But I don’t have to like it. I don’t have to like the fact that he gets you while I don’t. So again, no. I don’t think it’s inappropriate because I don’t have any space left in my brain to think about that when all of it is taken up by my personal fucking Lolita.”
I am that.
I am his Lolita.
And he wants me. He wants me so badly.
Sometimes I think he wants me more than I want him. And that’s saying something because all I’ve done is want him since the moment I saw him. All I’ve done is live lifetimes in the year that I’ve wanted him.
So why can’t I have him? Why can’t he have me?
What’s stopping us again?
“So you’re going to stop flirting with the guys,” he continues. “Or making them watch shitty fucking movies, is that clear? I’m already walking on broken glass every fucking minute of every fucking day that I have to see you with him. I will not sit there and watch you be the ray of sunshine that you are that other guys fight to bask in, is that clear? I will not be subjected to it and I will not allow it. Or trust me when I say each one of those guys will be running drills until the end of time.”
“Okay,” I agree hastily. “I-I won’t.”
He breathes for a few seconds.
Then, in response, he tucks his thumb under my strap again and pulls it up, sliding it back into place on my shoulder. Reaching forward, he presses that button again and gets the elevator going. When it reaches our floor, I’m the first to alight and walk down the hallway. I feel him behind me, but I don’t look back, and when I get into my room, I shut the door and press my back against it before sliding down to the floor and hiding my face in my knees.
Wondering once again, what the fuck is stopping us.
The answer to that—among other things—is my mother.
Who, as she promised, calls me every day.
Mostly to remind me of her threat. Sometimes she berates me for my dress choices. Sometimes she tells me that I was standing a little too close to another player on the team during the press conference or sometimes she simply tells me off for no reason other than the fact that she loves to tear me down.
But no matter what she says, I am acutely aware of the fact that I need to toe the line.
Which is fine because I have no intention of doing anything inappropriate.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been to enough victory parties on the road that I know what to expect. Large crowds, loud music, lots of booze—I don’t think players drink a lot, though, because they’re all on a strict regimen, but still—and adrenaline. I also know that, like the players, I won’t be touching a drop of that booze. Thanks to my self-appointed bodyguard who frowns upon everything fun.
Including dancing.
I haven’t tried doing that, though. Mostly because in my heart of hearts, the only person I want to dance with is the one who hates dancing. And even though I know he’ll let me dance with my fiancé if I wanted to, I just don’t want to put him through that.
Which, again if we’re being honest, has to the most twisted thing ever.
That I won’t dance with my fiancé because I don’t want to make his twin brother jealous. I won’t even flirt with my fiancé or laugh with him like I used to. I won’t hold hands with him or indulge in any public displays of affection with him. All because I know his twin brother won’t like it.
And my fiancé has tried to get me to do all that too.
Despite staying on two different floors and always being too busy to spend any one-on-one time with me, Shepard has tried to be openly affectionate with me. He has tried to hold hands or include me in jokes. He’s tried to be goofy with me, but I’ve more or less pulled back each time.
Mostly because he does it when he’s around.
Like on the bus or at parties like these.
Which sometimes makes me think whether he’s trying to do what I used to do: make him jealous. I had my reasons and I guess he has his. He’s probably still angry at Stellan for pulling what he did.
And there’s their rocky relationship.
Anyway, as soon as we arrive at this victory party, I feel like it’s going to end in disaster. Maybe because it’s in a bar that’s too crowded for my liking. Or the fact that everyone’s a little too drunk by the time we get there. Or it could be that this is the home base for the team that lost so the crowd is angry at us, the intruders.
Whatever it is, I know it’s not going to be a good time.
Sure enough, ten minutes into our arrival, a fight breaks out between a few of the bar patrons and some guys on the team. When that’s settled, there’s some catcalling and booing. We get a reprieve for about twenty minutes, when a group of cheerleaders approach the guys on the team.
Before I take a little bathroom break, I watch them disappear in the crowd one by one. As I’m coming back, I’m waylaid by a couple of drunk guys. They try to chat me up and flirt with me. One of them offers me a drink, which I politely decline. When I tell them that I need to go, they try to get into my space and touch me.
While I have plenty of experience with dealing with pushy men, I still get a little scared about how loud and brash they’re being. I try to catch Shep’s eyes over their shoulders, maybe call out to him even though I don’t think he’ll hear me over the din, when I find him flirting with a couple of those cheerleaders.
For a second, I can’t figure out why I’m frozen by this. I mean, I don’t mind—I really do not—that he’s flirting with other girls. That’s not the reason for my immobility. And then it occurs to me.
I’m frozen because I don’t mind. I’m not at all uncomfortable by this. Or jealous by him choosing to flirt with other girls. In fact, I’m relieved. That his attention is occupied elsewhere, and he probably won’t be flirting with me, thereby torturing his twin brother.
It’s the same thing I felt—the relief—when Shepard decided to have two different rooms. And while back then I thought it would pass and I’d grow more comfortable with us being engaged, now I don’t think so.
I haven’t grown comfortable at all.
In fact, I’ve grown even more restless over the last couple of weeks. I’ve grown even more antsy and unhappy and downright miserable that the man I’m in love with is tormented and I can’t be with him. I can’t do anything to ease his misery, to soothe him.
So I can’t do this, can I?
I can’t.
I can’t be engaged to Shepard. I know he’s trying to help me. He’s trying to fix things. But I have to fix things myself. I can’t use him as a crutch anymore. I can’t use him period; he’s my friend and this is my life.
Coming back to the moment, I try to break away from the guys. I try to go to Shepard and ask him if he could talk to me. Now that I know I can’t wait a second longer. But these guys won’t give me an opening and my fear ratchets up. I’m about to really make a run for it when I see a hand appear on one of the guys’ chests.
It’s large and dusky, and it’s splayed wide with long fingers.
And it’s accompanied by a growled, “Back away.”
It comes from behind me, that growl, and the guy it’s addressed to goes wide-eyed at his arrival. I know who it is, of course.
As if I wouldn’t know.
They could take away my vision and I’d still know who it was just by the sound of his voice. They could take away my hearing too and I’d still know who it was just by the scent of his skin.
I’d know him anywhere.
He’s the man I’m in love with and no matter what I do, I can’t stop. No matter how much it hurts, I can’t stop.
He’s like a drug, see.
He’s like that cigarette he smokes. And while he can pace himself and indulge in only one per day, I can’t. While he can control his bad habit, I’m a full-blown addict. While he knows how to handle the poison in his veins, my blood is downright toxic by now.
I can’t pace myself. I don’t know how.
I don’t know how to measure my love or who to give it to or how not to give it to the one who doesn’t know what to do with it. All I know is to love.
I’m fire, aren’t I?
All I know is to burn.
I don’t even notice when those guys skitter away. I’m too busy basking in his heat, his wildfire. I’m too busy leaning against his chest like I had done in the elevator.
Or at least I try to.
He stops me at the last minute, wrapping his fingers around my bicep. Flexing his grip, he growls in my ear, much like in the elevator. “You’re coming with me.”
I nod.
Without hesitation. Without preservation.
And then, he’s dragging me out of the bar, his fingers threaded with mine, tight and braided as if for life. I look down at our entwined fingers as he keeps dragging me and how right it feels. How destined. And meant to be.
Destiny, my brain supplies on a whisper.
If he’s meant to hurt me, I can’t stop him. If he’s meant to break my heart, I can’t do anything but hope that it’s easy for him to break.
In fact, I want to live with a broken heart and a tragic fate.
I want to die at the end of this story.
All through the ride back home in the cab, he’s quiet and seething, and I’m quiet and introspective. We reach the hotel, and he ushers me inside. We ride the elevator in pin drop silence and when he walks me to my door, again we don’t say a word to each other. He takes the keycard from my hand, slides it in the door, and opens it for me. I step inside, but before he can leave me there, I spin around and decide to finally break the silence.
I’m not sure what I’m going to say, but I have to say something.
“Stellan, I?—”
“Lock the fucking door,” he growls.
And slams the door shut.