Chapter Seven #2
Not only had he taken her in his truck like a beast—a fancy justification for sidestepping the word monster if ever there was one—but she had also been a virgin.
And he hadn’t stopped.
When he had hit that resistance, when he had seen that flash of pain on her face, he had waited only a moment before he kept on going.
She’d lifted her hips, and he hadn’t been able to do anything but keep going.
Because she was beautiful. And he wanted her.
More than beautiful, she was soft and delicate, and an indulgence.
And he hadn’t had any of that for more than five years.
Sinking into her tight body had been a revelation. As much as a damnation.
“Dammit to hell,” he muttered, straightening and pulling his pants back into place. He chucked the condom out the window, not really giving a damn what happened to it later.
“What?” she asked, her petite frame shivering, shaking, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, as though she was trying to protect herself.
Too little, too late.
“You know.”
“I don’t,” she said, shrinking more deeply into the far corner of the truck, her pale figure cast into a soft glow by the moonlight. “I don’t... I thought it was good.”
Her voice was trembling, watery, and he could hear the sigh that she breathed out becoming a sob.
“You didn’t tell me you were a virgin,” he said, trying to keep the accusation out of his voice, because dammit, he had known. On some level, he had known. And he hadn’t been put off by it at all.
No, he had told himself to be put off by it. By her obvious innocence and inexperience. He had commanded himself not to be interested in it. To chase after someone more like him. Someone a little bit dark. Someone a little bit craven. But his body didn’t want that.
Because his soul was a destroyer. A consumer of everything good and sweet.
Hadn’t Alicia been sweet when he’d met her? Hadn’t she transformed into something else entirely over their time together? How could he ignore the fact that he was the common denominator at the center of so many twisted scenarios in his life?
Him.
The one thing he could never fully remove from the equation unless he removed himself from the world.
“So what?” she asked, shuffling around in the car, undoubtedly looking for her clothes. “I knew that.”
“I damn well didn’t.”
“What does it have to do with anything?”
“You told me you knew what you were doing.”
“I did,” she said, her voice shrinking even smaller. “I knew exactly what we were going to do.” She made a soft, breathy laugh. “I mean, I didn’t know that we were going to do it in the truck. I expected it to take a little bit...longer. But I knew we were going to have sex.”
“You’re crying.”
“That’s my problem,” she said.
“No,” he said, reaching across the space and dragging her toward him.
He gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger and gazed into her eyes.
It was dark, but he could see the glitter in her gaze.
Like the stars had fallen down from the sky and centered themselves in her. “Now it’s my problem.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I made a choice. My lack of experience doesn’t make it less my choice.”
“Yes, it does. Because you didn’t really know. I hurt you. And because you didn’t tell me, I hurt you worse than I would have.”
“Again, that’s on me. I wanted to have sex with an older guy. One who knew what he was doing. I’m way too old to be a virgin, Levi. I never found someone I wanted to change that with, and then I met you and I wanted you. It seems simple to me.”
“Simple.”
The top of his head had just about blown off. Nothing about this seemed simple to him.
“Yes,” she said.
“Little girl, I hadn’t had sex in more than five years. You don’t want a man like me in bed with you. You want a nice man who has the patience to take time with your body.”
“But I like your body. And I like the way it made mine feel.”
“I hurt you,” he pointed out.
She lifted a pale shoulder. “It felt good at the end.”
“Doesn’t matter. That’s all I have. Rough and selfish. That’s what I am. It’s all I want to be.”
“Well, I want to be my own person. I want to be someone who makes her own choices and doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. So maybe we’re about perfect for each other right now.”
“Right now.”
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know why you find it so hard to believe, but I really do know what I want. Do you think I’m going to fall in love with you, Levi?”
She spoke the words with such disdainful incredulity, and if he was a different man, with a softer heart—with a heart at all—he might’ve been offended. As it was, he found her open scorn almost amusing.
“Virgins fall in love with all kinds of assholes, sweetheart.”
“Have you deflowered a lot of them?”
“No. I haven’t been with a damn virgin since I was one.”
“Then maybe calm down with your pronouncements.” She was wiggling back into her jeans now, then pulling her top over her head. She hadn’t bothered to put her bra back on. And he was the perverse bastard who took an interest in that.
“I’m a lot more experienced than you. Maybe you should recognize that my pronouncements come from a place of education.”
“It’s done,” she said. “And you know what? It was fine. It was fine until this.”
“I’ll take you home.”
“Take me back to my car,” she said.
“I’d rather not drop you back in the parking lot at this hour.”
“Take me back to my damn car,” she said. “I don’t want to arrange a ride later. I don’t need my car sitting in the parking lot all night, where people can draw conclusions.”
“You didn’t mind that earlier.”
“Well, earlier I didn’t feel bad or ashamed about my choices, but you’ve gone and made that... It’s different now. It’s different.”
If he had a conscience, he would have felt guilt over that. But it wasn’t guilt that wracked his body now. It was rage.
Rage that the monster had won.
The rage had nothing to do with her. Nothing about the way it might impact her life. It was about him.
Maybe that was selfish. He didn’t really know. Didn’t really care, either.
“If you’d like to withdraw from the job, I understand,” he said when they pulled back into the parking lot of Ace’s bar.
“Hell, no,” she said, her tone defiant. “I’m not losing this job. You don’t get to ruin that, too.”
“I wouldn’t figure you’d want to work with me anymore.”
“You think you know a lot about me. For a man who knows basically nothing. The whole...intimacy-of-sex thing is a farce. You have no idea who I am. You have no idea what I want, what I need. I will finish this job because I took it on. And when I said that I wanted you, when I said I wanted this, I knew we were going to continue working together.”
“Suit yourself.”
“None of this suits me.”
She tumbled out of the truck and went to her car, and he waited until she was inside, until she got it started and began to pull out of the space, before he started heading back toward his place.
But it wasn’t until he parked in front of his house that he realized she had left her bra and panties behind.
The two scraps of fabric seemed to represent the final shreds of his humanity.
He reached out and touched her bra, ran his thumb over the lace.
And he asked himself why the hell he was bothering to pull away now. She had been...a revelation. Soft and perfect and everything he’d ever wanted.
He wondered why the hell he was pretending he cared about being a man, when being a monster was so much easier.