Chapter Thirty-One #2
Having power over another person’s emotions was always something I reveled in.
But not now. Not this. It seemed like an awful lot to bear…
I didn’t want the responsibility of knowing I could hurt her.
Hell, I just ran out into a raging, angry storm after her to keep her from getting hurt.
Now she tells me she was out there in the first place because of me.
I dealt with her feelings the best way I knew how. Not at all.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
If the change in topic surprised her, she didn’t show it. “Yeah.”
“Let’s get changed and I’ll make some spaghetti and you can ice that ankle.” I helped her up the stairs and into her room where she assured me she could manage, and so I left her, going to change into a dry pair of jeans and shirt.
The fire was almost out so I added some more wood to it and then went to boil the water for the noodles. Frankie appeared when I was pulling a jar of sauce out of the cupboard. She grabbed some ice out of the freezer and hobbled over to the table and sat down, propping up her foot.
“I don’t think it’s that bad. Barely hurts anymore.”
I made a sound and added the noodles to the boiling water.
We made small talk. Mostly she asked me about Scotland and I answered.
The conversation stayed the same while we ate and the storm still raged outside.
Underneath the light conversation, a tension was building.
I didn’t know if she felt it too or if it was purely my own frustrations starting to come to a head, but it made me feel restless and moody.
There was so much between us that wasn’t said, and the hurt I was responsible for would flash in her eyes every so often, there only long enough for me to recognize it before it was gone again. It was a relief when she went to bed, saying the events of the day had made her tired.
I thought once she was gone and I was alone, the tension coiled inside me would lessen, that it would go away. It didn’t. It got worse. It was like being away from her made my body want to search for her.
Maybe I should just admit it.
I wanted her.
I had feelings for her.
Frankie made me feel.
I growled in frustration. But even still, what I said earlier held true. There was no future for us; there couldn’t be.
The next thing I knew I was standing in her doorway, peering into her dark room at the bed, wondering if she was asleep yet.
She wasn’t in the bed. She was standing at the window, looking out at the moon.
She was wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top, an outfit that left little to the imagination.
Lust slammed into me so quickly that I almost stumbled. The need to touch her, to claim her, almost had me across the room and pushing her onto the bed.
But I held back, needing to tell her.
“I’ve thought about it too.”
She jumped, my voice startling her, and she turned, glancing at me over her shoulder through the dark.
“Since the other night on the beach, I’ve thought of little else.
” The more I did this talking thing, the easier it became.
And when she looked at me like that, with her blue eyes wide like I was doing something extraordinary by just telling her what I was thinking, it made me want to make things up to say just so she would keep on looking at me.
“Charming, I—”
I held up my hand and she stopped. “I just wanted you to know that. I didn’t want you to think that I hadn’t thought of you at all.
Because I have. You make me… feel. I thought I had bypassed that a long time ago.
And that’s why we—why I can’t be with you.
I can’t even think about being with you.
Because it’s selfish. Because if I let you close to me, I would do what I do best. I would kill you. ”
“Charming, you would never kill me.”
“Yes, I would. Just not the kind of killing I usually do. This kind would be slow. It would start with you pretending you were okay with who I am. I would take away pieces of you one by one until you were just like me: dead.”
“Charming,” she whispered, taking a step toward me.
“For the first time since becoming an Escort, I care if someone lives or dies,” I whispered. “I won’t kill you. I won’t take the only life I value on this earth away.”
“If you had wanted to push me away, you should have told me I was fat, thrown me out of the house, or left me out there today in that storm. But what you just said… those words… all they did was pull me closer to you.”
See, this is what happens when a guy tries to talk.
It backfires.
“I should have known you were crazy enough to twist what I said into something romantic.”
“Ahh, now you try the insults,” she said, a smile creeping into her voice.
“If I was insulting you, you would feel insulted,” I muttered.
“Hmmm,” she said, taking a step toward me.
“I’m not trying to pull you closer.”
She took another step and another. “What if I want to be closer?”
“Didn’t you hear anything I just said?”
“I heard.” She stopped directly in front of me, tipped her chin back, and looked up. “So you do this noble thing, you stay away from me, and you ‘save my life’ by not being with me.”
She hooked her fingers in the belt loops on the front of my jeans and tugged, bringing me that much closer. “But what about you?”
“Me?” How was I supposed to think with her hands in such close proximity to the fly of my jeans?
She made a sound of agreement and released my belt loops, but instead of pulling back, she ran her hands along my sides and across my lower back.
It was the first time she ever touched me…
well, touched me first. Usually she didn’t touch me until my lips were devouring hers.
Most of the blood flow left my brain and all rushed downward…
into my jeans. I knew once the brain downstairs took over, I wouldn’t be leaving this room.
It took everything in me to reach around and pull her hands away, to gently return them to her sides.
I didn’t look back as I left the room because if I had, I wouldn’t have left it at all.
It occurred me then the reason I spent so much time doing the wrong thing was because doing the right thing was too damn hard.