Ten Years #2
“You knew how I felt,” I say quietly. “I told you, in the hospital. I asked you to be with me, but I guess by then, I was already disfigured, and how could you love me then if you couldn’t love me when I was whole?”
“I did love you,” she bursts out. “I was going to tell you on New Year’s. I was going to tell you I wanted to be with you, to give it a chance. But fate had other plans.”
“What?” I ask, my heart stopping in my chest.
She wipes away a tear. “The next time we talked, when you woke up, you were drugged out of your mind. And then you told me what you’d done…”
“Must have been a good excuse,” I grit out. “Since Devlin was gone and you couldn’t use that as an excuse anymore.”
“What would that look like?” she demands. “If the whole town saw my ex disappear and not a week later, we hooked up? They’d think we were monsters.”
“I am a fucking monster, Dolly,” I say, ripping off my mask and tossing it on the table. “Look at me. Look at my face.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she whispers. “They’d think we killed him to get him out of the way.”
“Bullshit,” I growl. “You’d been broken up for months.
The truth is, you were never going to be mine, but you didn’t want me to have anyone else, either.
You wanted me to look, never touch. She let me touch.
She made me feel like someone could desire me, even as a monster.
You never did that, not even when I was still desirable. ”
“You’re right,” she says quietly. “You are a monster.”
“I am,” I say, picking up my wine. “But I’m also a man. She’s the one who reminded me of that after the accident, when you refused.”
“I want her gone.”
“No.”
“Then I’m leaving. It’s me or her.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I say. “Now drink your wine.”
“Go to hell, Preston,” she says, throwing her napkin on the table. “I don’t have to stay here.”
“Fine,” I say. “Leave. But just know that I have information about where that ‘donation’ money came from. The stuff that got your dad reelected. I have receipts.”
She swallows, her eyes widening. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying your dad’s as dirty as Tony Dolce,” I say. “He knew exactly what was going on in the abandoned mall before the explosion. He knew all about the Dolce drug lab.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” I ask.
“My dad would never take dirty money if he knew that’s what it was.”
“Is that a chance you’re willing to take?”
She stares at me like I’m a stranger. “You think ruining my family is going to make me love you?”
“I don’t think anything can make you love me,” I say. “I’ve given up on that. I don’t need love.”
Her blue eyes narrow. “Then what do you want?”
“I want to marry you. You’ll be my wife, whether you love me or not.
You didn’t think anyone else could want me because you didn’t.
But you’re wrong. Lots of girls wanted me in high school, and even after the accident, with my face like this, someone wanted me.
And if she could want me, then you can at least endure me. ”
“If she loves you so much, why don’t you marry her?”
“I could have,” I admit. “But it wasn’t what I wanted.
She wasn’t you. So I found a groundskeeper who was willing and could keep her in the country after our Grampa divorced her and tried to get her deported.
She’s not going anywhere. And maybe now you’ll see what it’s like.
You can finally understand a fraction of how I felt seeing Devlin’s face every fucking day and knowing he’d been inside you, felt you cum, took what was mine. ”
“So, that’s it?” she asks, slumping back in her chair and picking up her wine. “You’re going to blackmail me into staying here, and torture me by parading your past conquests under my nose, just like you did in high school?”
“You can stop it with a single word,” I say. “Just say yes.”
“You need help,” she says, staring at me with a mixture of horror and pity. “Your grandfather and Sullivan are sane compared to you.”
I shrug. “You could have stopped it in high school, too. But I think you know that already. You always knew, even when you pretended otherwise. You knew how I felt, and you loved it. You loved that I wanted you and couldn’t have you.”
“Why would I have wanted you in high school? You slept with all my friends. Do you really think that’s attractive to a girl? It’s not hot. It’s gross. If I didn’t want a relationship, it’s because you weren’t boyfriend material.”
I shake my head. “I would have been for you, and you know it. You can’t rewrite history, pretend that’s why you didn’t want me.
You can’t be pissed that when you put me on the back burner, I didn’t stay there pining for you, celibate as a monk, while you were fucking my cousin, and then the thugs who tried to kill me, and now your fucking married manager.
When was I supposed to give up on you and think it was okay to fuck someone else?
Or am I supposed to go to my grave without touching a woman except the one night I dared to take what I wanted, what should always have been mine. ”
“Which night was that?” she asks. “You took what you wanted from the very first time.”
“So I’m supposed to be happy with one night for the rest of my fucking life?”
She swirls her wine in her glass. “It’s not up to me to make you happy.”
“Well, you sure are pissed that I had a few happy nights with other women.”
“You’re right,” she says, drawing herself up. “Sorry I went off on you. It’s none of my business who you have or haven’t slept with.”
“It is your business,” I say. “I haven’t been with anyone but Harper since you left town, and I won’t be with anyone ever again.
If you think I’m torturing you now, that’s because you know you did it to me and that you deserve the payback.
But that’s not my intention, nor is it an even comparison.
You can end it at any time. Just say the word. ”
It’s easy to make those promises. I wasted too much time trying to move on, trying to make my life work away from her. Now that I’ve seen clearly, figured out that I don’t work without her, everything is simple.
“I’m not asking you to end anything,” she says.
“Still, it’s a promise,” I say. “I may not have known how to deal with your rejection in high school, but things are different now. There’s no woman but you, Doll. There never really was. I’ll never be with anyone else, in any way, not even when I’m thinking about you. I’m yours. And you’re mine.”
“That’s not how this works, Preston.”
“Yes,” I say simply. “It is.”
She glares at me and sets her knife down, pushing her plate away. “Or you’ll get my dad fired?”
“Drink your wine.”
“I don’t feel like wine,” she says, staring me down.
“Drink it anyway.”
She folds her arms over her chest and glares. “Why?”
I hold her gaze. “Drink it.”
“Did you drug me, Preston?”
“No.”
I don’t like drugs. They’re dirty, like the Dolces.
I tried everything once in high school, so I’d know what everyone else was feeling at the parties, but I stuck to legal stuff after a taste.
I didn’t want anything to interfere with my football career, and I had enough of them during my recovery to last a lifetime.
Now I have other aspirations that do not include dependence on any substance, and I don’t want anything in her system when the baby is conceived.
Dolly stares back at me for a full minute, like she’s not sure if she believes me. Then she picks up her wine and chugs the whole glass. She slams it down on the table so hard I’m surprised the delicate stem doesn’t crack.
“Good girl,” I grit out.
“Happy?”
“Yes.”
“Now what?”
“Now I’m going to fuck you,” I say. “Hard and deep and raw. I’m going to cum inside you, and you’re going to fucking love it.”
She swallows, staring across the table at me, her lips stained red from the wine. “And then?”
“And then I’m going to keep you coming every fucking night until you say you’ll marry me,” I say, pushing back from the table.
I stalk along its length and step behind her chair.
I grab the wooden back and turn it until she’s facing me.
“Now take your dress down. I’ve been waiting half my life to fuck your gorgeous tits. ”
She gulps, her eyes going round at the tone in my voice.
She’s not used to me being an asshole to her.
I’ve been good to her. But that didn’t work.
So now, she gets to know how all the other girls felt, the ones she’s apparently so jealous of, though she never seemed to give a fuck back then. She doesn’t know I did it all for her.
When Dolly doesn’t move, I reach out and slowly untie the silky ribbons on the front of the little vest she’s wearing over her dress.
She glares up at me, but she doesn’t move to stop me.
I spread it open, running my fingertips gently over the smooth, soft skin of her breasts showing above the dress.
I hook my finger under the shoulder of the dress and quirk a brow at her.
Before I can speak, I see her eyes flicker to the ruined side of my face, and my words die on my tongue. I can’t make her want me. I can’t make it good for her. I can only take, because whatever I give, she’ll throw back in my face.
I slip the shoulders of the dress down, pulling the straps of her bra with it.
She looks up at me, then slowly tugs it down, letting the heavy globes of her breasts free of the binding fabric.
I lower myself to my knees before her, taking her nipple into my mouth.
She draws a shaky breath, her knees clenching.
I begin to suck, fondling her other breast and relishing the tremor I feel going through her.