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“If all I wanted was to use your body,” he went on, perfectly calm, “then explain to me why you are sitting in that corridor. I have three hours left. There is nobody coming. You were in this room, and I let you walk out of it.” Okay, well, he had a good point there.
“Why did you?” I forced myself to ask but he didn’t answer right away, and I almost questioned if he would at all.
“Because when I take you the right way, it will not be in a locked room in an institution with somebody due down those steps at any time ready to take you away from me… that is why, little nurse,” he said firmly and my nickname this time sounded more like a reminder as to why I would get taken from him at all.
“Oh.”
“I will not have that moment tainted by the walls of an institution, a hospital, a prison, or any other fucking thing someone thinks they can put between us… like two state lines, for example.” And there it was. A firm statement deliberately made in the same breath as hospital and prison. Because of course in his mind, any obstacle put in front of something he wanted was categorized under the same thing… my own actions included.
Two state lines. Two months. Everything I did to get away from him, and he had just put it on a list of things that were never going to be allowed to stand in his way again.
Not the walls. Not the distance. Not the law.
And not my own decisions either.
That should have had me out of that chair and up those steps in a heartbeat. But what I actually felt, underneath all of it…
Was wanted.
So, I let that brew in my mind for long minutes before asking the one question that had been sitting in my mouth for far longer than I wanted to admit. Or at least I tried to, as it was like he could tell I was trying to get it out.
“Ask,” he prompted and I even shook my head and backtracked.
“It’s nothing.”
“Anna. Ask.” It didn’t sound like a request this time and maybe that was what I needed. A demand by a man I knew had it in him to make them and have them carried out.
“Why have you never kissed me?” I asked it quickly and quietly, half of me hoping he hadn’t heard and missed his opportunity.
“Do you want me to kiss you?” he asked instead and again, it felt like I was trying to swallow sand.
“That is not…” I closed my eyes. “Well… I mean… It is what usually happens… Before… You know. Before a man…” I stammered like an idiot.
“Before I put my fingers inside you. Before I fuck you with them. Before I lick every inch of your sweet pu…”
“Yes! That… all of it,” I quickly interrupted making him chuckle at my embarrassed outburst.
“Same reason as why I haven’t fucked you, little bird,” he replied like this should be obvious, making me frown and point out,
“It doesn’t take long to kiss somebody.”
“No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t. But then I have no intention of rushing anything where you are concerned, and I do not imagine a kiss would be the exception.” I had thought his last reply was bad enough. This one put something else entirely in my head, and I went hot all the way down.
But then, after a moment, he spoke again and in a completely different voice this time.
“I have never been much for kissing,” he confessed and I swear I felt my whole body slump. Although it was somewhat of a contradiction to what he had just said a moment ago about taking his time, which I chose not to point out.
“Oh,” is what came out of me instead, and even to my own ears it sounded small and flat and about ten times more disappointed than I had any right to sound. Which naturally meant that I hated myself instantly.
“But I want to kiss you,” he rumbled in a heated way, like he was currently imagining what that would be like. Which was why I stopped breathing.
“Then… then why haven’t you?” I made myself ask after needing to stop to clear my throat.
“I have my reasons,” he said. “And we will leave it there.”
“That is not…”
“We will leave it there, little bird.” The command in it went straight through me and I obeyed it before I had decided to. Then as if I was still shivering from his dominant tone, he changed the subject.
