Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
BELL
I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath until Ethan sagged against me, his body boneless and trembling. His face was pressed against my thigh, hot tears leaking against my skin, and all I could do was hold him there. Stroke his hair.
The hotel’s air conditioning kicked on in the background, the cool air raising goosebumps on my exposed skin. Outside our window, the city lights glowed against the dark sky, oblivious to the earthquake happening inside.
I kept my touch gentle, murmuring soft, wordless things I didn’t even think about, just needing to fill the quiet. My fingertips traced the curve of his ear and the side of his neck, feeling the rapid flutter of his pulse there.
If you’d have told me that Ethan Harrison was going to drop to his knees and beg for my cock, take me to the back of his throat like I was an answer to his every prayer, I would have told you to lay off the drugs.
But it had happened.
And it was glorious.
I slid my hand down to his jaw, tipping his face up, needing to see him.
Needing for him to see me, too.
His eyes were glassy, his lashes wet. His mouth was swollen, his lips pink and slick. A single tear carved a path down his cheek, catching the dim light from the bedside lamp.
He looked wrecked.
He looked so fucking beautiful.
I wanted to kiss him so badly that my chest ached with it, the desire a physical pain beneath my ribs.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t know if that was what he wanted, and until he told me exactly what he was thinking, I wasn’t going to assume anything.
I smoothed my thumb across his cheek, catching the moisture there. “Hey, you're okay. It’s okay.”
He blinked, slow and heavy-lidded, like the words were tugging him back from wherever he’d disappeared to. His face tipped instinctively into my palm, a sigh shuddering out of him before his expression changed. Awareness flooded his features—first confusion, then realization, then horror—all in the span of a single heartbeat.
He shrank away suddenly, careening backward and nearly falling on his ass. His hands and feet scrambled against the carpet as he launched himself as far away from me as possible. Pushing to his feet, his shoulder caught the edge of the desk, making the lamp wobble.
I started to reach for him, fingers outstretched in the empty air between us, but I froze when I saw the panic carved into his face. His eyes were wide, his nostrils flaring, his pulse jumping visibly in his throat.
“Ethan.”
I needed to fix it, fix whatever it was I’d just broken. He shook his head, his eyes as wild as a cornered animal’s, and held up his hand in the universal sign for stop .
“Fuck,” he gritted out. “Fuck,” he repeated, his voice rising to a snarl that echoed off the walls.
He spun away, pacing a jagged line at the foot of his bed. His hands flexed at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them, his chest rising and falling in ragged heaves. Each breath seemed to catch in his throat, too shallow, too fast.
I stayed where I was, every muscle in my body screaming at me to go to him.
But I didn’t.
Because I knew that look. Knew that kind of panic.
After a minute that seemed to last an hour, he tunneled his hands through his hair until it stood on end. Then he sank onto his bed like a marionette whose strings had been cut, his elbows resting on his thighs and his face buried in his hands.
I itched to speak—to say something to make things right—but I didn’t have the words. How did you tell someone who was so far in the closet he got mail in Narnia that he’d just given you the most epic orgasms of your life? How did you tell a man who was panicking over what he’d just done that you wanted to do it again and again and again? That you wanted to drop to your knees in front of him and return the favor?
“I didn’t plan for this,” he said finally, his voice broken. Raw.
I swallowed hard, my Adam’s apple bobbing in my throat. “Yeah. Me either.”
It was true. I hadn’t planned for this, but I’d wanted it.
Fuck, how I’d wanted it.
Ethan’s hands dragged down his face again. He didn’t look at me, just stared at the carpet like it might offer him the answer to all his most pressing questions.
“This was a mistake.”
His words sliced clean through me, but I didn’t let it show.
Couldn’t let it show.
This wasn’t about me right now. This was about a man I’d come to care for, and he was struggling.
Because of me.
Because of what he’d done to me.
Because of what I’d encouraged him to do.
I bent at the waist, anchoring my palms just above my knees to keep myself from reaching for him as I spoke, making sure to keep my voice steady. “This wasn’t a mistake. You didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
He finally dragged his gaze to mine, his expression tortured. “You don’t get it. You don’t fucking get it, Bell. I can’t—” He broke off, his throat working.
“You can’t what?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle.
He needed me to be steady. He needed to feel safe.
And I’d try to be that for him, even if it broke me.
He shook his head hard. “I can’t be this,” he rasped as he flung his hand between us. “Not with you.”
“Ethan, I hate to break it to you, but you already are.”
The second the words slipped out, I wanted to snatch them back. Wanted to soften them, make them easier to digest. There was no easy version of this truth. Not for someone who was fighting with every fiber of his being to deny the truth about who he was.
Maybe it was selfish, but fuck, I wanted him to look at me and know this thing between us wasn’t something to be ashamed of.
For once in my wretched life, I wanted to be the thing someone reached for, not the thing they pushed away. It was so fucking exhausting. He growled in frustration. “You don’t know the terror I live with every moment of every day that someone is going to find out what a fucking fraud I am.”
He thought I didn’t know fear? I’d been so goddamn terrified when my dad dropped me off at that camp that I’d literally pissed myself as I watched his car drive away. But I wasn’t that scared little kid anymore, and I wasn’t a fraud. I wasn’t lying to the world about who I was.
I cleared my throat, forcing the words out. “I’m not saying I get exactly what you’re going through, but don’t you dare say that I don’t know what it’s like to be afraid, Ethan. Not when you know what my parents did to me.”
I pulled a deep breath into my lungs to try and calm my racing heart. Held it for three seconds and pushed it out slowly before speaking again, my voice less harsh now that I’d regained some of my composure. “Maybe it’s worse for you because you’ve been hiding for so fucking long. But if you think I don’t understand what it’s like to hate yourself for something you can’t change …” I shook my head, the words scraping me raw. “Well, you’re wrong.”
Ethan’s breath hitched like he’d just been slammed into the boards. His hands fisted in the comforter beneath him, the tension rolling off him in thick waves.
I watched him struggle, saw the way he blinked hard like he could shove everything he was feeling back down if he just tried hard enough.
Ever since I’d met this man, I’d seen the way he exerted that tight, almost brutal control over himself. It was there in the way he carried himself, the way he played the game, and the way he spoke. He always appeared calculating … measured.
“You don’t understand what this could cost me,” he replied, his tone flat. “You don’t get what it’s like to have to pretend to be something you’re not.”
I flexed my feet into the carpet like I was physically anchoring myself to the spot. “Then tell me.”
I held my breath, waiting, hoping. Begging him with my whole damn body to trust me.
And for a second, I thought maybe he would. That perhaps I’d somehow broken through his panic.
But then he shoved to his feet and started pacing again, a rough, agitated line back and forth at the foot of his bed.
“I was fine until you showed up,” he snarled, his hands raking through his hair again until it stuck up in wild tufts. A hollow, bitter laugh tore from his throat. “I had my life under control. I knew what the fuck I was doing. And then you—” He flung a hand out toward me, his voice cracking. “You came and messed it all up!”
He grabbed the nearest thing he could find—a throw pillow—and hurled it across the room. It smacked the wall with a dull thud and flopped to the floor.
Another choked sound broke free as he spun, kicking his duffel bag hard enough to send it skidding across the carpet.
“You made me want things I can’t fucking have!” His voice was raw and vicious, like he hated me for his desires. Like he hated himself even more. “You made me need things I’m not supposed to need!”
He was shaking, fists clenched, chest heaving, like he was a second away from shattering.
Any minute now, I expected him to storm from the room, but he never even came close to moving toward the door.
And that was the thing that wrecked me most of all.
He could have bolted. Could have been halfway across the city by now.
But he stayed.
I shifted my feet slowly, deliberately, giving him time to see me move toward him. Giving him every chance to back away.
He didn’t.
He just stood there, breathing like he’d just skated a full sixty minutes, his whole body vibrating with anger and fear and pain.
So I did what any halfway decent person in the same position would do: I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around him.
Ethan went rigid the second I touched him, a muffled sound of protest catching in his throat. I half-expected him to shove me off, maybe even take a swing at me. Maybe I deserved it.
Maybe I deserved him hating me for this.
But I didn’t let go.
I tightened my grip. “It’s okay, Ethan. You’re not alone. Everything is going to be all right.”
For one long, agonizing moment, he fought me, his muscles tense and shaking under my hands until a broken, shuddering sob tore out of him. Then he sagged against me, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, his whole body collapsing in on itself. I held him tighter.
Like he was something precious to me.
Like I could keep him from falling apart if I just held on long enough.
Even if he hated me tomorrow for everything that had happened between us tonight, I’d hold him until he wouldn’t let me anymore.
I didn’t know how long we stood there like that. Long enough for his breathing to slow and for the tension in his muscles to ease a little.
Long enough for me to feel the faintest tremor of trust in the way he sagged against me, my hand smoothing slow circles between his shoulder blades.
But then, just when I thought all the fight had gone out of him, he stiffened suddenly, and a shudder ran through him. “I can’t do this,” he said, pulling against my hold.
I loosened my arms, and he peeled himself away, his eyes darting around the room, his shoulders curling inward like he was trying to make himself smaller. Like he was trying to disappear into himself.
I stepped back, giving him the space he needed.
He scrubbed a hand down his face and laughed, a rough, broken sound that I felt deep in the pit of my stomach.
“You shouldn’t have let me do that,” he muttered, his voice thick with shame.
I clenched my hands into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. “Don’t you dare put that on me,” I bit out, frustration coursing through me. I was trying my fucking best to be understanding right now, but I wasn’t his punching bag.
But I also wasn’t completely innocent, either, and I needed to own that.
“Okay, yeah. Maybe I stepped over the line last week. I’m not saying I didn’t fuck up, Ethan, but you’re the one who kissed me tonight. You dropped to your knees. You begged to suck my cock.”
He shrank back like I’d physically hit him.
It shouldn’t have felt like a victory to watch him flinch. But Jesus, I needed him to take some ownership, too. I hadn’t forced anything on him that he didn’t want. I hadn’t taken advantage of him.
“You wanted it, Ethan,” I said, my voice quieter now. “But so did I.”
He made a strangled noise low in his throat, and then he was moving again. “Of course I wanted it!” he snapped as he stalked to the window. “Want is all I know. I wake up every goddamn day wanting things I’m not supposed to want.”
He laughed then, the sound sharp and broken. “I’m nothing but want, Bell.” He jabbed a finger at his chest, the motion sharp and vicious. “That’s the whole fucking problem. But for years, I kept it locked down. Buried it under so many lies, I didn’t know what was real anymore. Smothered it until I couldn’t breathe.”
He glared at me like this was all my fault.
“And then you waltzed into my life with your stupid cocky smile and your dumb jokes and your silly fucking … silliness, and you were ridiculous. You are ridiculous. But you’re also so fucking kind. And good. You bring sunshine wherever you go, and sometimes I hate you for it because I’ve gotten so used to living in the dark.”
His voice cracked, and he looked away, his breath stuttering out of him.
“You make me crave things I’ve never let myself have before,” he murmured, shaking his head and wiping his hand across his mouth like the words tasted sour on his tongue. “But I can’t have you, Bell. I can’t ask that of you.”
My chest squeezed so tight I could barely breathe. I wanted to cross the room, to shake him, to kiss him, to promise him that he could have me any way that he needed, but I didn’t because I could see, in real time, him physically rebuilding that mental wall between us.
I scrubbed a hand over my mouth, the taste of his kiss lingering on my tongue, a reminder of all that had happened between us.
Ethan might think he couldn’t ask me for anything. That it was somehow wrong for him to want me the way he did.
But he wouldn’t have to ask.
Not when I could offer myself to him instead.
He might never be ready to explore his feelings, but he desperately wanted to explore my body.
I could do that. I could give him that, even if it broke me just a little bit.
I could tell myself it would be enough. That having him this way would suffice.
But some part of me already knew it wouldn’t be.
I met his broken, furious gaze across the room, the feet between us stretching like miles. “I know you can’t ask me for what you want, Ethan,” I said, shoving the feeling of rejection down deep. “But I’m standing here now, offering it to you nonetheless.”
His breath visibly caught, his whole body going rigid like he didn’t trust what he’d heard. The muscles in his jaw worked as he swallowed hard, his throat bobbing.
“I swear to God, E. No strings. No pressure. Just … this. My body.” I ran my right hand down my frame in a single fluid motion, letting the gesture speak for itself.
“You want my cock down your throat? It’s yours. You want my hole? You can have it. I don’t need your heart.” My voice faltered on the last word, my words shaking on the lie.
I blinked against the sudden burning in my eyes, my throat tight with everything I wouldn’t say.
Because god, I wanted it. I wanted all of him so fucking bad it hurt—a physical ache that had settled somewhere beneath my breastbone and refused to leave.