“Cruel!” She spins around, tossing a T-shirt to the floor. “Are you really going to use that word, Diesel? Are you seriously going to use that word? Cruel, cruel … and what? It isn’t cruel to make an innocent, struggling family homeless? It isn’t cruel to risk their lives? It isn’t cruel to go around setting fire to shit without thinking about anybody but yourself!”
She walks closer to me with each step, until she’s standing a few feet away, lips trembling, hands shaking. She looks like she wants to hit me. She raises her eyebrow and I realize she’s actually waiting for an answer.
“Of course that’s cruel,” I mutter. “I’m not denying that.”
“So what, then? What did you think was going to happen? How did you think this was going to end?”
I lick my lips. My mouth is suddenly dry, my tongue stuck to the inside of my cheek. “I don’t know,” I mutter.
“Don’t tell me it’s cruel, then.” She marches back to her bag. “I’m leaving because it’s the only choice I have. I can’t stay here and …” She shakes her head. “No, I can’t stay here.”
“But you want to.” I walk into the room, closing the bedroom door behind me. My anger is fading now. Her words hit home. I think about the wrecked kitchen with embarrassment. “I know you want to stay with me. You can’t say what we shared last night—” The words “what we shared” are so far from something I’d usually say that I stop for a moment. I’m getting feelings for this woman. That’s the truth. That’s what I should tell her. And yet when I open my mouth again, I sound far less emotional than I feel. “You can’t say last night was a mistake.” My voice is cold, and I wish I was like other men who can act like a woman and think nothing of it.
“We were both drunk,” she says. “Isn’t that normally when mistakes happen?”
“Look me in the eye and tell me it was a mistake,” I say, walking around the bed and standing over her, staring down at her.
She turns her brown-flecked blue eyes up to me, her lower lip quivering. I think she might be going to cry but then she thumps me in the chest, in the belly, slaps me across the face. I step back, shocked. “I don’t have to say anything to you,” she says. “This whole situation is wrong, twisted. It makes no sense. None of this has any real connection to how things should be. It’s all upside down.”
“Upside down,” I repeat, smiling despite myself. “From what I know, Willa, our lives ain’t exactly been easy swimming right-side up, so what’s wrong with a little upside down?”
“You can’t do that.” She takes a step back so that she’s a few feet away from me, at the head of the bed. “You can’t smile and say that and think that everything’s just going to work itself out. That’s not how this works. I’m leaving.” She zips up her bag. “Now get out of my way, please.”
I want to tell her I care about her. I want to tell her how much she’s changed me. I want to tell her that meeting her that day is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But the words won’t come out. I just stare at her dumbly, wishing I could let out something inside of me. I wish I was drunk, or at least tipsy. There wouldn’t be this block inside of me then.
I look her up and down. She’s wearing denim shorts and a tank top, her legs perfect, her calf muscles tensed and defined, her thighs making me want to kiss up them toward her pussy. My cock gets hard. I can’t help it. Emotion has failed me, but this never has. I want her. I need her.
I take a step forward.
“Get away from me,” she whispers, eyes flitting to my groin. I see the familiar quick movement of her chest, rising up and falling down as her heartbeats gets faster. I see her fists clench and then release, her fingers fidgeting. Lust rises in the air. I can smell it. Nothing makes sense except for this. We want each other. We need each other. That’s certain, even if everything else is confused.
I take another step forward.
“I mean it, Diesel,” she says. “Don’t come another step closer.”
I take another step closer, so that I’m looming over her. She cranes her neck back, looking up at me, lips parted, tongue between her teeth, breathing heavily. “I’m leaving,” she says.
I reach down and grab her wrist, guiding it to the front of my jeans, pressing her hand down on my rock-hard cock. Her eyes go wide; she’s biting down hard on her tongue now. I move her wrist so that she’s stroking my cock. I can see she likes it by the way her eyes flit around, her pupils getting that big horny look, her body vibrating as though a chord has been struck somewhere inside of her. I make her rub me faster and faster. Her hand feels so fucking good. And she looks so sexy as I jiggle her around, her braless tits bouncing in her tank top. She doesn’t want me to pounce on her but she’s going to dress like this, goddamn.
Quickly, she snaps her hand away, pressing herself into the wall, biting her lower lip. Releasing her lip, she says, “You’re a fucking animal. You’re a fucking beast.”
Maybe she wants to sound disgusted, or scared, as she says this. But really she just sounds as if she likes it, as if she wants more.
“Yeah.” I growl as I press her into the wall, pushing my groin into her belly. “I’m a fucking beast. How does that make you feel, Willa?”
My balls ache as I slide my hand down her leg. She’s hot to the touch.