42. Chapter 42
Chapter 42
Paige awoke to the feel of David’s fingers ghosting along her arm, his morning erection—or, rather, his late-morning erection, given that it was almost eleven—pressing against the cleft of her ass. For a split second she froze, but it was only a few seconds and then she relaxed; she was getting better, her response time getting shorter. One day, she hoped it would be gone altogether.
With the exception of the hours spent binge watching old episodes of Sons of Anarchy, she and David had literally spent most of the weekend in his bed, indulging in serious amounts of sex, followed by equally serious amounts of sleep.
She’d been a little curious to see how different sex would be between them since trading in their temporary arrangement for a real one, and the difference had been quite startling. It felt more intimate and more emotional, and as they repeatedly got lost in each other’s bodies, Paige could feel the connection they’d been developing during the past few months getting even stronger.
That led her to contemplate the future they were embarking on, one she hoped would have no limits, which got her thinking about the final frontier.
“David?”
“Hmm?”
“Have you ever had anal sex?”
His hand stilled on her, and she figured it was because the question had come out of nowhere. However, when he didn’t answer right away, she decided it was because he didn’t want to answer, which made her wish like hell she could take back the stupid motherfucking question.
“You have.” Sharp disappointment flooded her as she was faced with the unwelcome knowledge he’d done it with someone else. To her, anal sex was a big deal; it was letting someone into your ass, for Christ’s sake … and he’d been in someone else’s ass.
“Paige,” he began, only to stop and release a deep sigh.
“I know, I know,” she muttered. “Ignore. The. Elephant. But you know what? This ignoring the freaking elephant rule is seriously not working for me anymore. Well, not that it ever really did, to be honest. Mostly because it’s a big elephant, with a lot of baby elephants—a whole herd of them. But also because this rule is completely one-sided. You don’t have a damn elephant to ignore because I don’t have an elephant. Not even a baby elephant. Nothing I did with any of the men I went out with counts as an elephant, to include having my boob grabbed by that guy on the douchebag spectrum.
“Plus, it doesn’t align very well with the complete honesty pact we made, which is now even more important as we go forward for real. So I’m officially done ignoring the elephant, which means we need to talk about the elephant like adults.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Well?” she prodded.
“Okay.”
It could’ve been the double whammy of having just woken up and not chugged any coffee yet, but Paige decided to jump right in. “Did you have anal sex with Ashley?” she asked, ignoring the voice telling her she probably wasn’t going to like the answer, and she should’ve started with a question less likely to punch her in the face.
David closed his eyes for a moment, not wanting to do this. At all. “Yes.”
While not unexpected, the answer was upsetting enough to catapult Paige out of bed, where she started pacing, oblivious to the fact that she was naked. Was there nothing he and that bitch hadn’t done? “Did you like it?”
“Yes,” he answered, and when she exhaled like a fire breathing dragon, he added roughly, “God dammit. This is why I didn’t want to do this. Now you’re upset—”
“Upset? Did you say ‘upset’? Of course I’m ‘upset’, David,” she said, using air quotes, which illustrated how dire the situation really was. “It’s a given I’m going to be ‘upset’, because I hate her and I just found out you fucked her ass. I’m sorry, but yes, that makes me ‘upset’. If the situation was reversed, wouldn’t it make you ‘upset’?” She kept using air quotes for each ‘upset’ like a lunatic, unable to stop. “How would you feel if I’d been in a relationship for almost five years with some guy whose guts I knew you fucking hated, lived with him, had a child with him, and you just found out he’d had my ass a million times? And then I made the ridiculous observation that you were ‘upset’?”
David sat up, the sheets bunching around his waist. “Can you not exaggerate, please? It obviously wasn’t that many times—”
She threw her hands in the air. “Gah. Don’t even think about telling me exactly how many times it was, in some misguided attempt to make me feel better, because I will come for your balls. Understand?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you how many times it was. Jesus, like I even know how many—” he stopped abruptly, falling back against the pillows and cracking his head on the headboard by accident. “Fuck. This is why I didn’t want to do this! I told you all that shit is just white noise.”
“To you, it’s white noise. To me, it’s the complete opposite of white noise.”
She wondered if her hormones were on the warpath, because as she looked at him, she could almost picture herself throwing gasoline on him, lighting a match, and watching him burn. Trying to shake off her murderous thoughts, she began pacing again. “To me, anal is the most personal thing you can do with someone, and you’ve done it with Ashley. Now, I’m sure you think I’m over-reacting, but I’ve been thinking about doing that with you, and—”
“You have?”
“Yes, but Ash got there first and now I’m afraid that if you and I do it, you’ll compare my ass to hers and think her ass was better.” Paige gave a shake of her head, not liking the way that had come out. “That anal sex was better with her,” she clarified. “Especially if I’m not good at it, or I don’t even like doing it.”
“Paige—”
“Was she your first?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
Fucking fuck. Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, it totally did. She’d actually been hoping his first time had been with some nameless, faceless girl in college, prior to meeting Paige. Ashley getting that first with him burned like acid in Paige’s gut.
“I wasn’t her first, though, which is why I did it,” he said quietly, hoping to somehow lower the DEFCON level in the room.
That information barely made a dent in how pissed off Paige was; in fact, it actually managed to increase it, since that meant Ashley had been his butt sex ‘teacher’. “And you obviously did it a lot, considering you don’t know how many times you did do it—” she broke off, bristling with jealousy, the likes of which she’d never known before, her blood like lava in her veins, burning through her body. “Which means you really liked doing it with her.”
“Yes, I liked doing it with her,” he admitted evenly. “Liked. Not loved. That goes for everything I did with her. But I love everything I do with you and if that were to include anal, I know I’d love that, too, because being your first would mean something to me. It would mean everything, actually.”
Paige blinked at him for several moments before finally saying, “Okay, good answer.”
Relieved, he patted the bed next to him. “Come back to bed, please.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not done yet.”
“Dammit, Paige.”
“Did she ever use handcuffs on you?” she asked, ignoring his plea.
“No.”
“Did you ever use them on her?”
“No.”
“Is she the reason you started really manscaping?”
“Sort of.”
“There’s no ‘sort of’, here. You either did, or didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
Paige took a couple of long, deep breaths, telling herself it didn’t matter if he’d initially done it for Ashley, because she was no longer around to enjoy it, while Paige was; still, it rankled. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Did you take baths with her?”
David could tell this answer mattered more to Paige than the one about the handcuffs, probably because of the orgasmic bath they’d shared not long ago and he was extremely glad he could answer in the negative. “No.”
“What about showers?”
Fuck. “Yes.”
She didn’t like that very much. “Did you have sex in the shower?”
“Yes.”
She liked that even less. “A lot?”
David put a hand to his face, rubbing his beard. On the one hand, the uncomfortable questions were killing his soul, but on the other, Paige’s fiery, territorial demeanor and naked stomping around was like crack-laced Viagra.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Paige said, then took a deep breath. As she did, the faint scent of sex, mingled with his cologne, teased her nostrils. “Did you wear the Hugo Boss cologne I bought you, when you were with Ashley?”
“Yes, I wore it a lot. Like … every day, actually.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Well, that’s really not what I wanted to hear.”
“What did you want to hear? That I never wore it?”
“Uh, yeah. That would be better than hearing Ashley got to enjoy the way you smelled when you were wearing my cologne, that’s for damn sure.”
“Technically, it was my cologne, since you gave it to me,” he argued. “And I don’t know if she enjoyed it or not, since I didn’t ask. However, she never said she didn’t enjoy it, so I assume she did. Although, had she known you’d been the one to give it to me, she probably would’ve raised hell and thrown it in the garbage, no matter how much she liked it.”
While it made sense he wouldn’t have told Ashley about the cologne, it didn’t make sense that he’d still wear it, especially after their painful divorce. “Why did you keep wearing it?” she wanted to know.
“Because it reminded me of you.”
His admission stunned her into silence for a second. “You … wanted to be reminded of me? Why?”
“Because I wasn’t ready to let go of you completely.” He held up the wrist with his Tag Heuer on it. “It’s the reason I wore this.”
“Did you wear that when you fucked her?”
Her blunt question barely gave him pause. “Sometimes.”
Immediately, the unwelcome vision of David wearing the watch while his hand roamed between Ashley’s legs, or played with her young, perky tits, filled Paige’s head. “Well … that really pisses me off,” she muttered, starting to pace again.
“I hardly ever took it off, actually,” he continued. “So, sometimes I was wearing it during sex—and no, I don’t know how many times that was. Which doesn’t mean it was a lot, it just means I don’t know.”
Paige stopped for a moment to cross her arms under her breasts and gave him a dirty look. “I wasn’t going to ask.”
“If it makes you feel better,” he said, moving along, “Ashley gave me a Breitling, which I hardly ever wore. That really pissed her off.”
Paige knew that Breitling watches were on the expensive side, and the one Ashley bought him could’ve cost more than the Tag Heuer. “That does make me feel a little better,” she admitted slowly, before asking, “How pissed was she, exactly?”
“Really fucking pissed. We had a few arguments about it. Nothing compared to the arguments about your name inked on my back, though. Those were pretty epic.”
“Like … yelling epic?”
“Almost.”
Paige really wished she had one of those on video—seeing Ashley lose her shit would’ve been nice, especially when she didn’t get her way. “I’m glad you didn’t get rid of it. That would’ve really, really pissed me off.”
“I find that funny, considering you were so wonky about me getting it in the first place.”
“I wasn’t wonky. Jesus.”
“Yes, you were. You were totally wonky. You were worried about another woman in my life seeing it on my back and not liking it, remember?” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “That was you, right?”
“Fine. Yes, it was me. So?”
“So, you were apparently full of shit.”
“I wasn’t full of shit,” she hotly denied. “I was worried about another woman seeing it and not liking it, until—”
“Until the moment ‘another woman’ turned out to be Ashley?”
“That’s right.”
“And then you weren’t worried anymore?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Paige’s hands were now on her hips, and the slightly aggressive stance made her breasts look fantastic. Not even bothering to hide his appreciation anymore, he ran his eyes hungrily over each one, lingering on her tight nipples before trailing down to the neatly trimmed triangle of light brown hair at the juncture of her thighs, then back up to her face. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” he murmured, “but the sooner you finish asking all your questions, the sooner you and I can have angry sex.”
“Angry sex?” She blinked at him. “Are you serious?”
He flipped the sheet to the side. “What do you think?”
She tilted her head, her eyebrows rising at the sight of his very hard cock. Her knowledge of ‘angry’ sex had been attained from reading books, in which the hero and heroine get into a heated, verbal sparring match, followed by ripping each other’s clothes off and banging one another into oblivion. Paige had always thought it seemed a little unrealistic, because who would really be in the mood for sex right after a huge fight? However, as her eyes lingered on David’s impressive erection, it was clear that not only was he in the mood for it, he was really in the mood for it.
And … so was she.
Paige pressed her lips together as their eyes met once again. “I’m guessing you’ve had angry sex before?”
“Yes.”
“With Ashley?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Well,” he drawled, knowing his answer would likely bring on another burst of fire, so he didn’t hold back. “She was good at making me angry so … pretty often.”
Paige began stalking toward the bed. “Well, you’re going to have better angry sex with me than you ever had with her.”
Unable to stop himself, he laughed out loud.
“That wasn’t meant to be funny,” she warned, her tone cool but her gaze burning.
“I know. But … it was. Now get the fuck over here.”