Chapter 3 Neil
“I wasn’t going to let myself be hurt by her or anyone else.”
Neil
On edge.
That’s how I was feeling.
I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep because of that fucking girl.
Selene had an incredible capacity for changing my mood. Not that it was particularly difficult, but she had become an expert at it.
I hung up on her the night before because she didn’t deserve any explanations from me. From what I could decipher, Alyssa had told her a completely false version of what happened with the kiss, and Selene had believed her immediately without even hearing me out.
Wasn’t she the one who was always saying how important it was to communicate verbally? But what had she done instead?
She hadn’t let me get a word in edgewise.
Feeling disillusioned, I continued to stare into the smoke from my cigarette as it dissolved into the sex-saturated air.
“Mmh…” Jennifer mumbled next to me, one leg hooked over my waist.
I clamped the cigarette between my lips and looked up at the ceiling, my head propped up with one arm underneath it.
Blondie was plastered against me, naked and sleepy, while I felt like I was wrapped in chains.
A prisoner of the sick coping mechanisms that I’d likely never be able to completely banish from my life.
“How can you smoke like that first thing in the morning?” It was Alexia who spoke that time, lying on my other side.
I turned my gaze to her and found her also still half-asleep.
She was naked as well, and her hair was mussed, and her eyelids were barely cracked open.
Her breasts were pressed against me, and her hand was resting on my stomach.
She moved her fingers, stroking me, and I moaned in appreciation.
Usually, those kinds of obscene theatrics pleased me, but, in that moment, the idea that I’d fucked the both of them was repellent to me.
I could smell them, their skin, and their saliva on me, and a rictus of pure disgust twisted my face.
I shouldn’t have done it.
When Selene called me the night before, she wasn’t interrupting anything except one of my practice sessions with the heavy bag. I wasn’t with a woman the way I’d led her to believe because I wanted to get under her skin.
I hadn’t slept with anyone else since I’d gotten back to New York, but after her unexpected little speech, I couldn’t deal with the miserable feeling in my chest.
I felt like I needed to get back to the place I belonged, back to my world. So I called up the Krew girls to remind myself of exactly who I was and that I didn’t belong to anyone, least of all to Babygirl.
I wasn’t going to let myself be hurt by her or anyone else. Never again would some girl be able to wound and shatter me the way that Kim had done.
Selene didn’t want me in her life anymore, and she hadn’t been shy about telling me that.
So I wouldn’t chase after her. Instead, I would respect her choice. After all, that was exactly what I’d wanted all along.
I used her; she used me… We were using each other, and we both knew that we had an expiration date.
“How come you look so perfect even first thing in the morning?” Jennifer’s drowsy voice brought me back to the moment. She, like many of my lovers, insisted on elevating me above other men, despite the fact that I’d never put her on a similar pedestal.
I took a long drag from my Winston and gave Jennifer a frosty look. She responded by licking my bicep, tracing the lines of the toki with her tongue. Then she grinned impishly up at me, perhaps convinced that I’d be turned on by her bold overture.
I looked her right in the eyes, squinting ever so slightly. Her eyes were blue and bright, but they were not limpid. There was no ocean in them.
They did not make me think of a field of cornflowers at dawn; they were neither shy nor sweet.
They weren’t my Tinkerbell’s eyes.
And there I was thinking about her again.
I moved Jennifer’s leg off me with a growl of irritation and sat up. This turmoil inside me was impossible to soothe, and I didn’t understand why.
That girl was not supposed to have that kind of power over me.
No one fucking was.
I ran one hand through my disheveled hair. The other held a cigarette that wasn’t remotely calming me down. My mood was decidedly bleak.
Alexia dug her elbow into the mattress and rested her chin on her palm, looking at me with an arched eyebrow. I was sweaty; I didn’t smell like bath gel. I wasn’t clean in the way I usually was.
I felt dirty both inside and out.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself.
Feeling antsy, I clambered over Alexia’s slim body and got out of the bed. I clamped my cigarette between my lips as I pulled off the condom I still wore.
I was clean underneath: no climax, no cum.
Damn it, that was another reason why I’d returned to my old habits: I wanted to see if I was truly cured, if I’d really gotten over my inability to orgasm.
I wanted to test myself, to prove that I could reach just as strong a sexual climax with other people as I had with Babygirl, but the experiment had been a total failure.
I’d been able to do it with Selene, though it had been difficult, and yet with two hot and skilled women in my bed, I hadn’t managed it.
My body had tensed up, had gotten right up to the pinnacle of arousal, and then it refused to release the tension.
What is my fucking problem?
“I’m going to take a shower. Get dressed and leave. I want you gone when I get back.” Was all I said as I stubbed out my Winston. My right hand had started to shake, and I tried to hide it. Neither of them knew anything about my problems, and they weren’t going to either.
I turned around only to find them giving me the usual fawning looks that I couldn’t stand.
I hated being watched with heart eyes, like I was the very best sex toy on the market, like I’d put on the best performance they’d ever had between their legs. Or like I was some dream lover who could fulfill all their fantasies.
I was just another bastard, nothing more and nothing less.
“Well, good morning to you too, you little ray of sunshine,” Alexia teased. I ignored her.
I went to the bathroom immediately. I couldn’t breathe the air in that room anymore. It reeked of a mixture of sex and the kind of fruity, too-fucking-girlie perfumes that I could also detect on my own body.
“Nice ass, Miller!” Jennifer called out with a laugh.
I shook my head as I slammed the door behind me, heading straight for the shower. Then, I halted and turned around, determined to make the situation clear for them.
“Jen, I’m serious. I want you out of here in five minutes!
” I raised my voice and pounded my fist on the closed door to emphasize my point.
“Do you hear me? Five fucking minutes!” I repeated angrily.
I forced myself to keep my distance because I knew I didn’t have any self-control when I was too agitated, and the only thing to do then was to either stand way back or lock myself up somewhere like a rabid beast.
“Go fuck yourself!” Jennifer shouted back challengingly.
So I abruptly threw the door open and took a few steps out.
I could feel the fury burning along the tendons of my throat and in the raised veins on my arms. I must have looked frightening because they both went pale when they saw me, naked and enraged.
Jennifer was putting her barely there thong back on, while Alexia was already half-dressed. Of the two of them, I preferred Alexia because at least she knew when to quit pushing. Blondie, on the other hand…
She was either stupid or pathologically attention-seeking. She knew how attractive she was, and she thought that meant she should be able to have me any time. She was like a cat in heat, willing to do anything, no matter how wrong, to get my attention.
“What?” she snapped. She bent down with an impish shimmy, picking up her bra from the floor and putting it on. She gave me a heated glance as she closed the front hooks in a slow, seductive fashion, a move carefully calculated to ensnare me. But I wasn’t going to fall for it.
I wasn’t the easy kind; she couldn’t win me over with a few banal little tricks.
I stared darkly into her eyes. Her face changed, suddenly growing worried as though she had finally realized I wasn’t kidding around at all.
Still, my anger didn’t want to dissipate; it kept me bound, completely subject to its unstoppable power.
My body was tense, my muscles were tight, and my jaw hurt from how hard I’d tightened it.
I passed a hand through my hair and then snatched a shitty nearby lamp and chucked it at the wall with all my strength. The girls both jumped, backing up.
I wasn’t remotely satisfied.
I was still so worked up; I wanted to smash everything.
I was on the brink of reducing the pool house to a pile of debris, just as I had done before.
“Piss off. Silently. I don’t want to even hear you breathing,” I said in a low, menacing voice, alternating my gaze between the two of them. Alexia was frozen with her fingers still resting on the elastic of her skirt. Jennifer, however, had inched closer to the door, terrified.
When I was satisfied that they both knew enough not to argue with me, I turned on my heel and went back into the bathroom.
I kicked the door closed behind me. My heart felt like it was going to burst from my chest, and my head was spinning.
I rubbed my forehead. I stepped into the shower and took refuge under the warmth of the spray.
I put my hands up on the smooth tiled wall and tried to relax each one of my muscles.
I didn’t know why I was feeling like that…except maybe I did.
It was that fucking girl’s fault.
My beautiful but perilous Tinkerbell.
There was no other explanation.
Selene was right: You couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be saved.
I had no interest in changing my life, my character, or my whole way of being just to be accepted by her. But, despite my obstinacy and her decision to cut me loose, I still had to have her.