Chapter Seventeen

______________

 

Leah

 

 

 

Dom seemed different somehow when he came in my room. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, which my eyes feasted on greedily. I hadn’t seen him shirtless since another hotel room, which felt like ages ago. Then, I didn’t let myself look. I didn’t even admit that I wanted to.

Now, I looked. He was all dusky brown skin and tight, thick muscles. He wasn’t bulky like he spent hours at the gym every day, but instead had the cut definition that was the direct result of fighting and keeping active. I looked briefly over the shark tattoo on his side before my eyes caught on another one that was inked in the skin below his left shoulder. A black bird spreading its wings and flying. None of his tattoos had any color in them. None of the ones I could see, anyway. I still wondered where the devil woman was. Maybe I’d be able to find it.

But then I looked back to his face. He seemed tired, weighed down, with not a hint of the playful flirtation I’d come to crave from him. “Are you mad at me?” I asked.

He shut the door behind him with a nudge of his foot, never breaking eye contact. “Why would I be mad at you?”

“You answered a question with a question instead of just saying no. That’s kind of telling.”

His face didn’t shift into anything lighter. “No. I’m not mad at you. What did you want to tell me?”

Well, I couldn’t tell him now. He was being too weird and making me second guess myself. My fingers fidgeted with a loose thread in the bed cover, pulling it, trying to make it long enough to twist around my index finger. “What were you fighting with Davis about?”

“You,” he said with no hesitation, and my mouth opened in surprise. “And we weren’t fighting.”

“What about me?” I asked, ignoring the last part.

He stepped further into the room, closer to the bed. Closer to me. Instead of answering me, he said, “What do you want? From me, I mean.”

Now was the perfect time to tell him, since he’d asked. But there was something almost accusing in his tone, something that made me feel startled and defenseless. “I, uh…thought that was kind of obvious.”

“Is this all about marking something off on your list?”

My mouth fell open for a second time. “What? No. You have nothing to do with my list.”

He didn’t look convinced. “Tell me about the guy, then.”

“Huh? What guy?”

“The guy. At the party.”

It took me a second, but then I realized which guy he was referring to. “Why do you want to hear about him?”

“Just curious. Why he was the one.”

“Is that what this is about? I knew you were freaked out by what I told you earlier.”

“I looked freaked out?” His face was still made of stone, and I answered him honestly.

“Kind of, yeah. Look, can you sit down or something? You’re making me nervous standing there looking down on me.”

After a second, he nodded. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, just a few inches from where I sat with my legs tucked under me, he looked at the air in front of him with a thoughtful look on his face. When he turned back to me, there was finally something softer to his features, like he was putting pieces of me together. “Why have you only been with one guy?”

“I don’t know,” I said, looking down at my fidgeting hands. “I guess I never wanted anyone. I told you last night, there’s something wrong with me. I don’t feel anything usually. I’m not attracted to anyone.”

“But with him, you were?”

After a moment, I shook my head. “No.”

He looked confused again. “Then why…?”

Shrugging, I said, “I just got tired of it. Tired of thinking it was going somewhere and then backing off. I wanted to know what it was like. I wanted to know I could do it, without…”

“What?”

“Without freezing up. Without feeling like I was going to have a panic attack.”

He didn’t say anything right away, and it was like he was weighing his words. Not because he didn’t know what to say, but because he didn’t know what to say first. “Did something happen to you? To make you feel like you’d have a panic attack from being with a guy?”

I stared at him. “You know what happened to me.”

“So this is about what happened when that guy tried to kidnap you?” He almost looked relieved, and it hit me then that he’d been worried I’d been raped or molested by someone. “Did he hurt you?”

Shaking my head briefly, I said, “No. Not physically.”

“Thomas said he’d been fired and that’s why he went after you. But that you fought him off.”

I tried to speak through the lump in my throat. “He was…I don’t really like talking about this.”

“I know. I wish you would, though. I wish you’d talk to me.”

Everything else outside of us had disappeared. The events of the day. Davis. Audrey. Dom’s weird mood and my uncertainty. There was just him and me and the pull between us that gave me no way to hide. And just then, I found that I didn’t want to. “I didn’t fight him off. Not really. I mean, I tried, but it was my neighbor who scared him away. He’d been fired, that part’s true. I don’t remember why, something about a bad investment he’d made that cost them a bunch of money. But that’s not why he came after me. It’s just what gave him the courage, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

I looked away, and my hands fidgeted in front of me, my nails biting into my palms. “I’ve never told this to anyone. My dad doesn’t even know that I know. But I heard him talking to my mom about it when she was in town after it happened. This guy, he was…he’d been stalking me. Spying on me and taking pictures. I barely even knew him. I’d been introduced to him maybe twice, and somehow he’d concocted this complete fantasy about me. I don’t know, I guess it really fucked with my head. I was only fifteen. And he had other stuff they charged him for. Porn with underage girls and all this horrible shit.”

“Sick fucker,” Dom said, his voice gritty and his eyes glinting with anger.

“I just kept thinking how he almost had me. He almost had me and he would have done things. It could have been so bad.”

“But he didn’t. You got away and his ass is in prison.”

“I know. But just the idea of it was enough to scare the shit out of me. So when my dad went all crazy overprotective with security and stuff, I didn’t mind at first. It didn’t even feel like enough. I still didn’t feel safe. I didn’t feel like I would ever be safe again. I felt so completely violated.”

“Understandable. So what changed?”

“It wasn’t just one thing. It kind of happened slowly over time. But the first time I really thought about it was last semester after spring break. Looking at some of my friends’ pictures and hearing about all the fun they had. And then my suitemate, Abigail, fell in love with this guy from her Art History class and it was like she was a different person. Like she’d seen this whole other world I knew nothing about. Everyone was having all these big experiences and it was all passing me by. I didn’t even have my dad’s security on campus, but I was still too caught up in my own fear to do anything for myself. So I decided I was going to make a change. That’s what led me to the party that night, and that’s why I hooked up with Landon. We’d been friends for awhile and I trusted him, and it just seemed like it could be…good.”

“And was it?”

I gave him total honesty. “No. It was like nothing. It was just…mechanics. But I was still kind of proud of myself for going through with it. That might sound stupid, but I’d been so turned off at the idea of being with someone like that ever since all that happened. It was getting to the point where I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to be with anyone. I would get close and just freeze up and overthink it like I overthink everything.”

“Okay, but what’s the point of sleeping with someone you aren’t even attracted to? What does that prove?”

“That’s the thing. I wasn’t attracted to anyone. And it had to all be in my head, you know? I thought if I could make myself get through the act, then all the other stuff would follow. Does that make sense?”

“I guess in a strange Leah sort of way.” I shot my arm out to punch his leg, but his hand caught my wrist before it made contact. Jeez, he was fast. Instead of letting me go, he lightly rested my hand against the top of his denim-clad thigh, his hand still loosely holding my wrist. “But did it ever occur to you that the reason you weren’t attracted to anyone was because you were going after the wrong types of guys? I mean, not that it was your fault. These high maintenance prep school kids are part of your world, but they just don’t do it for you.”

I blinked. “How do you know?”

“Because if they did, you wouldn’t freeze up when they touch you. It wouldn’t even be an issue. You wouldn’t talk yourself out of anything. You wouldn’t be thinking at all.”

Shakily, I said, “It’s not that easy. You don’t know what it’s like being inside my head. It’s like I’m never really here, in the moment, because I’m too stuck in my head and it makes everything too…”

His fingers tightened around my wrist, and he pulled. It wasn’t hard, just a gentle tug, but it stopped my words and easily pulled me toward him. My arm hit the solid mass of his body and my hand clenched the top of his thigh for balance, and then his hand was in my hair and his lips were on mine and, yeah. There were no thoughts. He kissed me gently, with lazy pulls at just the right angles like we had all the time in the world to explore, and so that’s what we did. I marveled at the feeling of his lips and how soft they were, how delicious they felt fitting against mine. I tasted them with a brush of my tongue and I heard him groan. He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes and already I missed the contact, was leaning forward to catch his mouth again before I even realized it. But he held back until my eyes focused in on his, and what I saw there made heat rush through me and every nerve tingle with want. Without words, he assured us both that I was there. In the moment, with him.

Whatever he saw in me must have satisfied him, because when I leaned in again he didn’t stop me, just angled my head and caught my mouth, harder this time and with more urgency. Or maybe that was me. Our explorations became deeper, hotter, and every sweep of his tongue against mine made me want more of him. I pulled with a hand at the back of his neck to get him closer, and he shifted and our bodies came together like it was what they did all the time, my thighs opening around him and his weight settling onto me with ease. And he never stopped kissing me even as his erection pressed into me and our hands were all over each other. My legs squeezed his hips and I tilted up, chasing the feeling of his hardness grinding into me and he gave it to me, moving his hips with a carnal, confident ease that was unbelievably sexy to me.

I wanted more of him. The burning low in my stomach and between my legs was getting unbearable.

His hand snaked under my shirt and curved around my breast, bare because I was dressed for bed, and then he impatiently pushed the entire material up and over my head so I was naked from the waist up. His hot mouth was instantly on one of my breasts while his hand massaged the other, and his tongue was circling my nipple and I couldn’t help the moan that escaped my lips as I arched my back and pressed up. I felt the barest pull of teeth on my nipple before his mouth released me.

“Fuck,” he said, and his voice was different, raspier. He was breathing hard against me. “I’m trying to go slow, but…”

Slow? My dazed mind rejected that word at once. “Don’t,” I panted, my fingers curling into his biceps, pulling him back to me. “Don’t go slow.”

He kissed me and it was nothing like the languid explorations of before. This was pure hunger and need, all tongue and teeth and hot breaths. The feeling of our naked skin together was amazing and my hands touched him everywhere they could reach, memorizing the feel of him, marveling at the hot skin and corded muscles under my fingers.

He broke away and licked a path down my chest, between my breasts all the way down to my belly. I lay back and gave him my body to taste and touch where he wanted. I trusted him completely.

Fingers hooked into my shorts and pulled them down my legs and away. My underwear went with them and I kicked my feet to help get them off, anxious to see them go. Then he buried his head between my thighs and feasted on me like he was starving for me. I felt self conscious for about a second. No one had ever gone down on me, and it was such a new, shit’s-getting-real kind of experience. But then my eyes glazed over and I let the sensations take over. Some immeasurable amount of time later, I even tilted my hips up and started moving against his mouth, to which he gave an approving sound. Lifting his head but keeping his fingers at work, I looked down to find his eyes on mine, an intense glare crossing over them.

“Move against me like that. Tell me what feels good.”

“Everything you’re doing feels good,” I moaned helplessly.

His hand shifted and two fingers slid inside me, stroking my walls and making the pressure burn in my core. His other hand lay flat on my stomach, pushing down gently while his thumb reached to pull my skin up so I was more exposed to him. I felt his tongue on me again, tracing up to circle my clit, tasting me slowly and while it felt amazing, it wasn’t like the onslaught of before. It wasn’t what I needed, not then. I was too close.

“More,” I heard myself say. One of my hands slid into his hair like encouragement, and I both heard and felt a low chuckle before his lips started to pull and he moved harder and faster against me. My head fell back and I heard myself making all sorts of noises I had never made before, moans and curses and dirty prayers, but I had no embarrassment at all and he seemed to like it, because every time some sound or word escaped he shook his head and delved in deeper, using fingers, tongue, even occasional teeth. Fuck, he was good at this. The beginnings of an orgasm tingled through me, starting with a tightening in my stomach and spreading like wildfire through my entire body, my chest rising up in anticipation and then I was coming hard, fingers curling, thighs shaking, crying out desperately as it tore its way through me and left me shivering and breathless and amazed.

“Wow.” It was all I could say as I tried to catch my breath.

Dominic settled beside me, kissing my shoulder and settling a hand on one of my breasts in a way that almost felt possessive. I was still completely naked and it had never felt more natural. Dom, however, was still wearing his jeans, and it made me frown when I felt the rough fabric against my leg. I turned toward him and started to say something about it, but he immediately leaned in to kiss me, his mouth still carrying a vague muskiness that I knew was all me. I didn’t know why that was so hot to me, but it was. He tasted like me.

My fingers moved down to stroke him through his jeans and he felt huge and unbelievable hard. I was eager to explore him now, but he caught my hand as it went to find the button of his jeans.

“Wait,” he said. “We should really put the brakes on this.”

I made a noise of disbelief, then swiftly moved so I was on top of him. I braced my hands on his arms and looked down at him. “No,” I said.

His eyes were already drawing down toward my breasts, a distraction I hadn’t even counted on but took, anyway. Whatever worked.

“You are sexy as fuck,” he said with a gritty edge to his voice, and my body hummed in response. I had never really felt sexy before, but he somehow made it seem true just by saying it. He made me feel sexy and bold and fearless. When his hands came up to cup me, fingers gently molding the soft flesh there, I pushed into his palms and ground down on his erection. His lips tightened and his hands fell to my hips. “Leah…shit. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you need to stop. We can’t take it that far. This was all for you, okay?”

It took a bit for his words to break through my need. But then my body fell still and my eyes sharpened on his face. “What?”

“This was for you,” he repeated. “But we can’t take it further than that.”

Something akin to dread traced down my spine, cooling the fire in my belly. “Wait…hold on.” I moved off him and suddenly, for the first time, felt naked. I quickly looked around for my shirt and found it on the floor beside the bed. I pulled it on and tried to get my thoughts together. “What do you mean, that was for me? Like out of pity, you mean?”

Confusion clouded across his face, and he pushed himself up on his elbows. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, was that all about trying to prove you could make me feel something? Well, congratulations. You win over the prep school guys you clearly hate so much.”

He climbed to his feet without taking his eyes off me, like he was keeping watch on something wild that was ready to strike. “I think I already proved that at least once before,” he said shortly. “Look, you’re overreacting. I might have gone in with that agenda because of what we were talking about, but I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I didn’t need to. It was kind of obvious already, and that’s what I wanted to show you.”

Ugh. Just the fact that he’d kissed me with an agenda made me feel exposed and completely stupid. Especially considering the way I’d touched him and begged for him. And this was twice now that he’d given me an orgasm and not allowed me to reciprocate, and it was very much starting to feel like he was giving me handouts while not sharing anything of himself in return. After everything we’d talked about, everything I’d shared with him, that really burned. “Well, thanks,” I said coolly. “That was nice of you and all, but I’m done now. So you can go.”

He rolled his eyes. “This is turning into a big mess already, this is exactly why…” His lips tightened like he was cutting off his words before saying something he might regret. Still, I pushed.

“What?”

After a beat, he shook his head. “Nothing. Good night.” And that was all before he left. I crumbled onto the bed and buried my face in my hands. I knew I’d freaked out when I shouldn’t have. The thing was, I wasn’t even mad at him. Just embarrassed and let down, and trying to cover it up. I’d been ready to give him everything. He’d merely been proving a point. The reality of it was like a kick in the chest after what had just happened between us. I hated that I had no filter for my words or actions, and no armor for my emotions. This was why, I realized. This was why I closed myself off from guys and dating and sex. It wasn’t because they were all rich, cocky assholes, because as much as Dom would like to believe that, it just wasn’t true. And it definitely wasn’t because I was frigid, as Dom had helpfully demonstrated. It was this. This feeling of vulnerability and messy, irrational emotions. The pain of opening myself up to someone only to be rejected or hurt. The knowledge that when I went in, I went all in, and the crushing disappointment when the other person didn’t do the same.