Chapter Five #4
“I need to ask you a couple of questions, Wildfire. The answers are important to me. To us. I need you to be totally honest with me.”
She rubbed her face with the wet cloth she had in her hand and slowly sat up. She didn’t make one of her usual smart-ass comments, she just regarded him steadily.
“When you think about living with me, do you picture me sticking with just you, or do you see me with other women?”
She frowned. Watching him. She took a moment to pour more cool water on the cloth and applied it to her temple. Not her eyes, her temple. That headache was still vicious. “As it is an impossibility for us to be living together, I don’t give that any thought.”
“Give it a thought. Would it bother you to have me go off with another woman?”
Her frown deepened. “I don’t understand.”
“You understand the question; you’re avoiding. Give it some thought. I need an honest answer.”
She pressed the cloth harder against her temple. “You’re being very persistent about something that isn’t going to happen, and that’s what I don’t understand. Why you’re pursuing this when it is clearly upsetting to both of us.”
“I need an answer. Would it bother you?”
“Keys, any woman who is with a man and he’s acting like a partner to her would be upset if he ran around on her.
It would be disloyal and disrespectful. I put loyalty right up there with the things I value the most in a person.
Respect as well. I wouldn’t ever put my man in a position where others would ridicule him or laugh behind his back.
I would expect the same from my partner.
Having said that, you and I aren’t that way with each other, and I don’t feel you’re being disloyal.
You’re being you. You’ve always been up front with the way you feel about relationships. ”
“But it hurts.”
She looked away from him. “Sometimes. I know I’m not your type, but sometimes I can’t help but feel inadequate.
No woman wants to know she isn’t pretty enough or sexy enough.
Again, that’s on me, not on you. You’ve always been honest with me, and I accepted there would be limits on our relationship. ”
“Did it occur to you that I chose to be with all those women? I didn’t have to be with them. I had no reason to make a commitment to be with one woman because I hadn’t found her.”
Her lashes, sticky from the wet cloth, fluttered to cover her expression. She gave a little shake of her head. “We discussed this on more than one occasion. You said you were never going to be trapped by a woman. You preferred to live your life the way you have.”
She sounded puzzled. Young. Confused. She wasn’t getting it.
“Yeah, babe, I said all those things, and they were true at the time. Things change. That’s not what I want or need anymore.
I fucked a lot of women, but that didn’t mean I had no choice.
There’s always a choice. I’m not addicted to sex.
I love sex. I will expect a lot of sex. I won’t lie about that.
My kind of sex. You’re not experienced, and that’s a good thing.
You’ll learn to enjoy sex the way I prefer it. ”
“You think we’re going to have sex?” Her voice hit a high note. She looked so shocked he realized she still hadn’t been following what he was telling her. She’d been so convinced they could never be together. He’d been the one who had convinced her.
“I know we’re going to have sex. And we’re going to be exclusive. I told you I need you with me, and I meant it. That was me being real. Things have changed between us, taken a new direction. I know it’s going to take some time for you to get used to the idea, but we’ll get you there.”
She shook her head and pressed one hand over her heart. “I can’t take that chance. If we tried and things went south, which they would, I told you, it would crush me. I wouldn’t recover. I think it’s best if we just keep things like they are.”
“You have every reason to be scared, Wildfire, but that isn’t going to stop us from moving forward together.
We’ve gotten this far, we can go all the way.
There aren’t any guarantees in life, but there is commitment.
We can make that commitment to each other and mean it.
You want loyalty and respect, so do I. We turn to each other.
We have each other’s backs. The odds were against our friendship, and we’re best friends.
The odds were that we wouldn’t survive this little adventure, and here we are.
We’re good together, Lyric. With a little work and a lot of communication, we’ll make it happen. ”
She regarded him with that faint frown he was beginning to think of as adorable, which really made him whipped.
“You’re giving me a headache.”
“You already had a headache.”
She sighed. “That’s true, but you’re making it worse. We’re not going to talk about this anymore. I think you were hit on your head a lot harder than you think, and it’s scrambled your brain. We’re just going to stop this right now, and when you’re back to yourself, we can go back to sparring.”
Keys found himself laughing. “Whatever you say, Wildfire. Just curl up and go to sleep knowing everything has changed in a big way.”
She did her best to roll her eyes, but the effect was more of a vampire having a seizure, so she gave up and curled back onto the sleeping bag.