AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I point a finger at her. Because I am angry. I’m furious. It bubbles up, lava hot and I don’t know if she’s right or wrong here, only that I didn’t want her to leave.
More. I wanted more. Want more.
I point a finger at her and say, “You wouldn’t let me do that.”
“That’s your response, is it? I wouldn’t let you ruin the effort I’ve put into trying to make you a decent human?”
“Decent?”
Okay, so I hadn’t meant to say that to her, but what am I meant to say? I didn’t want her to go? I stare at my finger, at her, and then I breathe out and push my hair back from her face. “What are you wearing?”
“Things to sleep in, Ryder.” She waves a hand over the T-shirt and the boy shorts that show her long, shapely legs off.
“You usually wear ugly pajamas.”
“My apartment’s warm tonight and—” She stops and comes up to me and pokes me in the chest hard. “You’re a total ass, Ryder. You don’t know how to talk to women beyond seduction and sex.”
“That’s a lie.” The words come out a little uncertain.
“You know it’s not. Think about it. We had a moment and that was fine and now you’re back to judging what I’m wearing and being…actually, I don’t know what you’re being. It’s not abandoned. Because you don’t get abandoned. You usually do that. I just went home. I figured you’d be happy about that and we could move on.”
Something dark and cold moves through me. “Is that what it was? A moment?”
“Yes. Wasn’t it?”
I don’t know what to say. We have two areas. The uncharted waters that state There Be Dragons for me, waters I never wade into. Or we have the safe and familiar, the what it is, just move on and pretend it didn’t happen. She seems great at that. I should be even better. I’m not sure I am.
Because Elliot’s different from everyone and anyone I’ve met.
“It was a moment,” she says, voice flat. “And it was done, so I left.”
“You can’t leave.”
“I did.”
“I mean, you can’t walk out on me. I need you there. By my side. I’m paying you.”
Everything in her face shuts down. She’s a wall of spiked brick. And I immediately know it was the wrong thing to say. I want to pull her into my arms and seduce her. I want to taste those lips, have all that warm, soft flesh pressed against me. I want to drop to my knees and explore her sweet, hot pussy with my mouth.
I want a lot of things that her stony, barbed expression says I’m not getting.
“Elliot—”
“Go home, Ryder. I’m taking the problematic element out of this thing. We had sex. That’s it. We don’t talk about it. We pretend it didn’t happen. You get the best of all the worlds. Sex with no complications, and that should hopefully be enough to tide you over, because it’s not happening again.”
“You don’t know that.”
“A repeat performance? No.”
“Elliot, you’re twisting this, I want—”
“I know what you want. You got it. We get through this by forgetting tonight. We get through this by you doing what I say. Now, there’s an opening of an arts foundation that does a lot of charity work coming up. You’re going, it’s the kind of thing up the alley of the Sinclair board. Keep it in your pants, and try not to fuck someone on your way home.” She marches past me, opening her door.
We look at each other and I’m not done. Her body, her face, every charged ion in the air says she is.
“Goodbye, Ryder.”
I start to say something but think better of it, and head back out into the very early morning without a backward glance.
