Chapter 7
I lock the door like he said.
And then stand there.
I stand there and I watch the door — my door — that he’s essentially shut in my face.
I count the seconds.
I wonder how much time is long enough to open it and run after him. But then I think that’s the point, isn’t it? That’s the whole point that I don’t have to wait anymore.
I don’t have to fucking wait.
I can run after him now. I can chase him, be with him. I can be free. I can fly. I can take away his pain now. He doesn’t have to walk on broken glass. I’m his.
Nothing is holding me back anymore.
So I throw open my door and…
Well, I come to a stop.
Because the man I was going to run to is right there.
He hasn’t left.
He’s standing in the middle of the hallway, his legs braced apart and his fists tight.
His eyes on my door.
“Y-you didn’t…” I whisper, my eyes wide. “You didn’t leave.”
“I was trying to figure out something,” he says, roughly, his chest heaving.
His repeated words from the elevator yesterday make my heart pound. “Figure out what?”
“How long,” he growls, “should I wait before busting through your door?”
“You couldn’t bust through my door,” I say uselessly, arguing my point from the first night.
“No?”
“No, it was locked.”
He studies me and licks his lips. “One day I’m going to sit you down, really gently, and explain to you in a way that will get through your pretty head that when a man’s desperate enough to get to you, as desperate as I am right now, no amount of locked doors will stop him from getting inside.”
“You would,” I remind him.
His chest jerks with a particularly harsh breath. “I would, yeah.”
“So problem solved.”
“But then who would stop me?”
I look at his agitated features, his towering body, that dark hair and those bruises that have almost completely faded. I look at the man I fell in love with at first sight. And I say the only thing I can say.
The truth.
“See, the thing is, Stellan”—I swallow—“that if you’re on the other side of the door, I’ll unlock it myself and run to you.”
Which is exactly what I do.
I run to him and jump into his arms.
And because he’s so strong and protective and everything that I’ve ever wanted and needed, he catches me. He heaves me up, wraps his arms around me and before my next breath, kisses me.
Or more like attacks my mouth.
Which is fine really because I’m doing the same thing.
I’m attacking his mouth and he’s attacking mine and I don’t even care that maybe we’re bruising each other. I don’t care if I pull his hair too hard or if he bites me a little brutally. I don’t care if his fingers are squeezing my ass in a way that I know he’ll leave his fingerprints behind as if my body is a crime scene. Or if I scratch the side of his neck in a way that I think I draw blood.
It all sounds okay to me.
It all sounds like it was supposed to happen. We were supposed to crash like this. Our kiss was supposed to be more like a war than peace.
I mean, we had to wait so long to do it again.
If I’m being honest, it was easier the first time around. That year that I waited—that he waited too; now I know—was easier to survive somehow. But these two weeks were hard. They were probably the longest and hardest two weeks of both our lives.
Maybe because now we know what it feels like.
The taste, the feel, the heat of our mouths.
So I’m glad that when he begins to walk, he doesn’t break it. He keeps our lips fused. I hear the thud of the door closing and yet we’re still kissing each other, thank God. Although I will say that I’m a little miffed when my back connects with something—a wall, maybe—and he pulls away.
But I guess it’s okay. I’ll allow it.
Because there are things that need to be said. Things that need to be cleared up so when he gives me a chance to breathe, I pant, adjusting my thighs around him. “Thanks f-for saving me from those guys.”
He comes to settle between the cradle of my thighs, pushing our lower bodies together. Then his hands that have come up to my face tighten as he growls, “Because somehow you always need saving, don’t you?”
I wrap my arms around his neck and thrust my fingers in his hair. “I’m glad I have y-you.”
His features ripple with anger as he fists my hair too. “Yeah, well it makes one of us.”
“But I’m safe now. You don’t have to be angry.”
“I’m always angry,” he corrects me, pushing into me some more, making me arch my back. “And the fact that I left you where you shouldn’t need to be saved in the first place is what’s making me want to put my fist through the wall.”
“What?”
“He was supposed to look out for you,” he keeps growling, his words hot, his breaths hotter. “He was supposed to not fucking let you go off on your own. What he wasn’t supposed to do”—he tugs at my hair—“was chat up a bunch of girls who aren’t his fucking fiancée.”
“I don’t care,” I say truthfully, tightening my thighs around his waist. “Stellan, I don’t care. I?—”
“I’m going to fuck him up,” he promises, cutting me off.
“What?”
“I have to fuck him up. I have to teach him a lesson. I have to teach him how to fucking do his job right. How to fucking watch you and look after you and?—”
“No,” I tell him, digging my heels in the backs of his thighs. “You’re not doing anything. You’re not saying anything. You’re not fucking him up, okay?”
“He needs to?—”
“No, Stellan, promise me. Promise you’ll stay out of this.”
I need to handle it.
Me.
No one else.
I need to tell Shepard that this isn’t working. That I know he was trying to help me and I know that he loves me, but I… I don’t. I can’t. All my love is already taken. I also know it’s going to hurt him. And God, I’d do anything to avoid it. But I already did that before and look where we all ended up. So no, this time I’m going to be truthful and I’m going to come clean.
I’m going to break off the engagement.
But it will be me who does that, not him.
So when he still doesn’t say anything, his eyes promising punishment and retribution for his twin brother, I insist, “Stellan, I need you to promise me that you won’t say anything. And neither will you mess with him. Like you did before. No messing with his game, Stellan.”
He growls low in his chest, his eyes flashing.
His jerks my head back a little. Then, leaning even closer to me, his heavily breathing chest dragging across my breasts, he goes, “You know this doesn’t bode well for him, don’t you?”
“W-what?”
“You,” he seethes, “begging me to leave him alone. Pleading with me to spare the man you’re going to marry. That’s exactly the kind of thing that’ll earn him extra laps around the field tomorrow and every day for the rest of his fucking life. Or until his legs give up, whichever comes first.”
“Stellan, you?—”
“And this is what he does. He slacks off on the job. He never puts his mind to anything other than his precious fucking soccer. So then I have to come in and pick up his slack,” he says. “And I do it because that’s the only way I can make up for not being there, for not being his shitty brother. That’s the only I can make up for all of it and?—”
“Why can’t you be there for him?”
Because I want to know.
I need to know. I need to know why he thinks the way he thinks. There has to be a reason.
He looks at me like he’s only now remembering that I’m here and he’s been saying these things. Then, swallowing, “Because I can’t.”
“I don’t –”
“And it doesn’t fucking matter right now. Because he’s about to be schooled in how to treat you right. How to fucking watch you –”
“I’m not a wayward little girl, okay?”
He pushes his body into mine. “You’re my girl.”
A breath escapes me. “But –”
“And he needs to learn how to fucking treasure you.”
I know we’re speaking over each other, attacking each other’s words like we did our mouths. But I don’t want to fight with him. I don’t want to argue. I just want him, however I can get him.
I hike my thighs up his waist. “Please, stop. Just… You don’t need to do any of those things. You don’t —”
“I do though,” he insists, his eyes glinting, his breaths still hard. “Because that’s not the only thing he’s fucking up. That’s not the only thing he’s not delivering on.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What I’m talking about is his fucking promise. The promise he made about fixing things.”
“About… About fixing my broken h-heart?”
He moves his jaw back and forth for a few moments. “Yeah. About you moving on.”
“But I don’t think that –”
“You haven’t, have you?”
My breath hitches. “N-no.”
His nostrils flare and I think I see a hint of relief on his face. As if he’s glad that I’m still stuck on him. He’s glad I haven’t moved on.
“You still love me,” he rasps, licking his lips.
I caress his harsh jaw. “Yes.”
This time, his entire body moves and flares with a breath—a relieved breath; I know for sure—and rubs across mine, making me whimper. And that’s how I know that this is the right decision. That being with him, giving him my love, is the right decision.
I mean, look at the way he’s all wrapped around me right now. Look at the way the tension has left him. The way he’s almost giving me all his weight like whatever burden he’s been carrying on his shoulders has been lifted.
I know I’ve been saying it to my biji a lot. Telling her how everything that I’ve done so far is the right decision. But I never once felt it to be. It never gave me any happiness.
This, I feel in my bones though. This, I feel in my soul.
This is what I’m supposed to do: Love him.
This is where I’m supposed to be: with him.
With this complicated, hot and cold, fire and ice, heartless and protective man. Who sets both my heart and body on fire.
“It’s not a good thing, baby,” he says, coming to rest his forehead over mine. “Loving me is not a good thing.”
I crane my neck up and whisper against his lips, “I can’t stop.”
Another shudder goes through his body and his eyes flutter almost closed. Then, “I’m going to hurt you.”
My heart clenches and in response to it, I clench my entire body around him. My thighs squeeze his slim hips and my arms wind even tighter around his neck. “I believe you.”
He tenses for a second. “Yeah?”
“Yes. I believe everything you’ve said.” I lick my lips as I take him in. “I believe you’re dangerous. I believe you’ll hurt me. But I also believe you’ll try to protect me from that hurt. You’ll try to keep me safe. I also believe you care about me. I believe all the good things and all the bad things about you, Stellan. I know you don’t see that. I know you don’t see any good in you at all, but there is. There are good things in you, trust me. So many, many good things. So I believe it all. And I still want you.”
“We can’t have that, though,” he says, his eyes swimming with a thousand emotions.
“So what are we going to do?” I whisper.
He keeps our gazes locked. “I’m going to be the one to have to fix you. I’m going to be the one who has to help you move on from me. Who has to make you fall out of love with me.”
“Yes,” I agree even though I feel tightness in my chest.
“No one else can do the job right.”
“No.”
“Besides, it’s fitting, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah,” he rumbles, pulling my head back even more, nosing the side of my throat. “Until you’re married, you’re under my protection. So I’m going to protect you from me.”
My heart squeezes again and again, in response, I tighten my body around him. “I am.”
But I’m not getting married.
I add silently.
Because if I tell him, I know, I know he’ll lose his shit. And while I’m aware of the consequences of what happens when I lie to him or hide things from him, I’m going to keep this little fact under wraps at least tonight. Or at least until I actually break things off with Shepard.
“In fact, I should’ve done that right from the start. I never should’ve trusted someone else when it comes to you. When it comes to someone as precious as you. So it’s all really my fault, isn’t it?” he goes on, his mouth skimming the slope of my shoulder.
“Yes”—I look to the ceiling, my eyes starting to get lazy—“all of this is your fault.”
The fact that I love him.
The fact that he won’t love me back.
“I fucked up,” he rasps against my skin.
“So then how are you going to make it up to me?” I ask.
And he stills.
He looks up, his eyes dark and drugged.
And I continue, repeating what he said to me the night I found out that I had, indeed, done what I’d set out to do. Melt him and eat his words.
“How are you going to make it up for a year worth of torture? How are you going to make up for making me watch you and watch you from afar? For making me wait and hope and cry and for what? For one kiss. One kiss, Stellan. It was just a kiss. And you wouldn’t even give it to me. You refused to give it to me. How are you going to make up for that? For making me chase you, run after you, lie for you, cheat for you. All because you wouldn’t kiss me. I danced with another man for you. I flirted with another man for you. I used him because I loved you so much.” My breaths are shallow and rapid, my eyes are stinging. “I love you so much, Stellan. How are you going to make up for making me fall in love with you?”
He rubs the apple of my cheek with his rough thumb as he cradles my face so tenderly, with such reverence that I want to weep.
I want to kiss him.
Then I want to dance for him and flirt with him and love him. All the things that I wanted to do but he wouldn’t let me.
“It’s a long list, isn’t it,” he says, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine. “The crimes I’ve committed against you.”
I fist his collar. “Yes.”
“So I’m going to start with the latest one.”
“What’s your latest crime?”
In response, he moves me, he hikes my thighs up, and adjusts himself in a way that his hard abdomen is pressing right there.
Where I’m all achy and swollen.
Where I’ve been all achy and swollen since… I don’t even know when. All I know is that I don’t remember the last time I wasn’t aching. I don’t remember the last time I wasn’t hurting.
He presses against that tender, pulsating part of me and says, “Standing outside your door.”
I arch my back and rub my swollen core against him. “What?”
“Every fucking night.”
My hands are fisted in his collar and tug at it as I ask, “W-what?”
“You told me to guard your door, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So that’s what I’ve been doing.”
“You…” I tug harder at his collar. “You’ve been… standing outside my d-door every night?”
He moves his jaw back and forth, his fingers flexing in my hair. “Yeah. Sometimes I pace. Sometimes I stand at the end of whatever hallway we’re in, far away from it. Sometimes I stand against the opposite wall. But sometimes”—he licks his lips—“I stand right there. Against your door and listen.”
“You l-listen?”
“Yeah. To you.”
“Me?
Again, his jaw moves as if he’s mulling the words, measuring how much to say. So I bring my fingers down from his hair to his face and cradle his cheek. I cup his hard jaw, hoping that my soft touch will let him know that it’s okay.
It’s okay to tell me whatever it is he want to tell me.
He can tell me all his secrets, all his aches and pains and fears and desires. And I will keep them in my pocket and cherish them like little stars.
“Sometimes you’re just moving around,” he says, his voice rough and low. “I hear your little feet rustling on the carpet. Sometimes you’re humming. Actually, you’re always humming. Softly, sweetly. Like there’s always a song stuck in your head. Sometimes you talk to yourself. But you do it so low that I can’t always catch it. But sometimes I can. Especially when you’re doing lines, rehearsing, and then you stop and I hear a scratching sound as if you’re writing something on the paper, making little notes. Sometimes the TV’s on and you’re watching something. You’re shouting at the TV. Sometimes you burst out laughing and it becomes really hard.”
I rub my thumb on his cheek. “What becomes hard?”
He looks up. So far, he’s been studying my face. Staring at my throat when he talked about humming. Staring at my lips when he mentioned laughing.
But now he looks into my eyes. “To stay on the other side.”
I want to tell him that he shouldn’t have.
That he should’ve just knocked, and I would’ve let him in.
I know I was concerned about all of this being appropriate or not, but if he’d asked for me to let him into my world, I would have. That is all I’ve ever wanted anyway.
“But that’s nothing compared to how hard it becomes,” he goes on, his fingers flexing on my face. “When I hear you.”
“Hear me what?”
“Moan.”
I go still. “What?”
“You do that, don’t you?” he rumbles, his hips shifting between my thighs, rubbing up against that part. “You moan. When you touch yourself.”
“I… You…”
“You also whimper and sob.”
“I don’t… I’m?—”
“But the one that gets me every single time”—he moves again, rubbing against my core and holy God, I moan; I have to I can’t stop—“is your whine. Did you know you do that?”
“N-no,” I say because I’ve got no clue what else to say.
“You do,” he tells me, moving against me once again, rubbing up, pressing down. “You do it when you’re close. When you’re right there, your needy moans become impatient whines. You sound like a whiny little princess who wants to come but can’t wait for it. And then when you do come, you call out for God. Did you know that too? You call out for Him and that gets me too.”
“Why?”
“That gets me mad, see, because it’s not God that made you come. It’s not God who’s standing at your door, listening to your cries, memorizing the way you breathe, the way they hitch when you like something. When you’ve hit the spot. It’s not God who strains His ears, trying to catch the slurping sounds of your pussy. It’s not God’s dick that gets hard the moment He hears the rustling of sheets. Because He knows, He fucking knows, that He’s about to get lucky. He’s about to hear you come because you’re probably getting down to business. And since you’ve forbidden Him to touch you or get to you or make you come Himself, He has to content Himself with hearing you come. Imagining what you look like right that moment.
“It’s not God’s dick that throbs in His pants. It isn’t His dick, baby, that fucking leaks when you make a ruckus like a needy little slut. So yeah, it gets me mad. It makes me angry that God gets all the credit, that God gets all your prayers when we both know it isn’t His name you cry out when you come.”
“I—”
“Whose name do you call out then?”
“Y-yours.”
“And who’s standing at your door with his hard dick in his pants that he needs to keep squeezing every two seconds because once again, he’s ready to blow in his pants, while you’re being a whiny little whore for him on other side?”
“You.”
“Me. Not God. It’s me.”
I knew it was coming.
The last part about me calling out his name.
Because I do do that.
I do touch myself almost every single day and whenever I do, I call out his name. Because he’s the one I’m thinking of. He’s the one I’m imagining when I’m horny. And I’m horny all the time. Because he’s around all the time.
On the bus, at games, at parties, in the hotel.
Just the thought that his room is only a few doors down no matter where we go is enough to get me wet. And it’s not a new phenomenon. I’ve been imagining him and touching myself ever since I saw him.
But the fact that he knows, that he heard, is…
“I’m not that loud,” I say at last.
A breath puffs out of him, all hot and misty, all tasting like smoke and marshmallows. “You are. And even if you weren’t I’d still hear you. I’d hear you from my room, from the reception downstairs. I’d hear you from another town. And you know why?”
I swallow. “Why?”
“Because as always, everything you do, you do it for me,” he says possessively, his chest pushing into mine with a large wave of breath. “You get horny for me. You moan for me. You call out my name. So I’d hear you from across this goddamn world because you lie down on your back, your thighs spread and open, your finger playing with your sweetheart snatch for me.”
I nod, slipping our mouths together. “Yes.”
Grasping my throat with both of his hands and pressing both of his thumbs on the triangle, he says, “So that’s what I’ll do then. That’s where I’ll start. Atoning my sins. Paying for my crimes. I’ll start with my mouth on your pussy and then I’ll feed her my dick. I’ll fuck her with my dick. I’ll fuck myself out of your system, baby. I won’t let you suffer any longer.”
I know he’s trying to atone for his sins, but the truth is that we’re both sinners. We’re both criminals. We’ve both done awful things, desperate things for each other.
We’ve both hurt each other, tortured each other.
Which makes me think that for all our differences, maybe we’re not that different at all.
We’re the same.
The fabric of our souls is the same. We share the same veins in our hearts. We share the same chambers. So I’m done fighting with him. I’m done making him pay or paying my dues. I just want to be with him.
I squeeze my thighs around his waist. “You don’t?—”
“But we have to get our story straight, okay?” he begins, looking at me meaningfully. “We can’t have the world blaming you when it’s my fault.”
I know what he’s referring to, and I almost tell him that we don’t need a story. We don’t need to pretend that he’s making me do anything. We don’t need flimsy excuses. I’m not marrying his brother anymore. I’m his and his alone.
But I can’t.
Not yet.
Not until I tell Shepard.
So I do as he says. I follow his lead and let him take the burden for now.
“Okay,” I agree on a whisper.
“Tell me what happened tonight,” he whispers.
I give him a peck on his mouth. Then, “I went to a party where my daddy saved me.”
He gives me a peck back. “Because your fucking fiancé was fucking around on the job, wasn’t he? He was fucking slacking and?—”
I give him a peck again. “It’s okay though. I don’t care because I’m safe.”
The double necklace of his fingers around my neck tightens. “You are, aren’t you?
I roam my eyes around his features as I reply, “Thanks to my daddy.”
I shiver at the dark look in his eyes. At how vulnerable of a position I’m in. With his big body lodged between my thighs and his strong and rough hands wrapped around my throat. He could so easily do anything to me, keep me pinned forever, choke me with his fingers and oh my God, use that… hard thing on me.
I can feel it, see.
This is the first time I’m feeling it.
He’s kept it away from me so far.
He wouldn’t even let me look at it back at the theater.
But now I can feel it on my tummy, all hard and throbbing.
His chest shakes. “So now I want what’s mine. What’s my due.”
And I can’t help but move against it and whisper, “But I… You know that I’m getting married soon and I…”
He shudders, a low growl escaping him. “You’re saving it.”
I shudder too and rub up against him. “I am.”
“But the thing is that he doesn’t deserve what you’re saving,” he says, his fingers squeezing my throat, his hips moving, making me arch my back and push back. “He left you alone at the bar. He leaves you alone on the bus. He leaves you alone where I can get to you. Where if I get hungry,” he rumbles all the while making me go crazy with his rocking, making me go insane, “I can so very easily get to my sweetheart’s pussy. I can so very easily kneel before you and flip your flimsy dress up. I can spread your legs and stick my head between your thighs and eat you. I can so very easily suck on you and drink you down. And if he finally gets a clue and comes to stop me, I can end him. So very, very easily. So you tell me, who deserves this pussy first: me or him. Your fiancé who doesn’t have a clue how to guard the treasure between your legs or me, your daddy, who’s hungry and thirsty and has been that way for ages, just waiting for his turn.”
I look at his feverish face. His drugged eyes. I flex my throat under his grip. I clench my thighs around his hips. I fist his hair. I breathe his air.
Digging my heels, I whisper against his mouth, “You. You get it. But you have to wait.”
He stills. “What?”
“Because I have to do something first.”
He presses into my body. “There’s nothing you have to do.”
“There is, though.”
“Dora, I?—”
“I have to do something for you.”
“What?”
I place a soft kiss on his parted lips again. “It’s your turn, isn’t it? And you’ve only ever seen me dance with other men. And you’ve only ever seen me dance from far away and from the shadows. And I’ve only ever danced for you in my dreams or in the middle of the night, under the pink magnolia tree where we met for the first time, imagining you standing there, watching me. So now that you’re finally here, in my room, and you won’t let me go no matter how much I ask you to, I need to dance for you.”
I place a tender kiss on his mouth again. “So can I? Can I dance for you, Daddy?”
For several moments after that, there’s silence. I don’t even think he’s breathing as he stares down at me. When I think I can’t take it anymore, he speaks and he does it commandingly. He does it with a thick growl and a possessive tone.
“You’ll dance, but you’ll do it without his ring on your finger.”
And then he proceeds to take my engagement ring away leaving me bare.