Page 50 of Obsessed with my Temptation

I raised an eyebrow. “Was it? For you?”

He pressed his lips together, as if he was considering whether to say it or not, and I waited him out. “You could say that.”

I had seen how much his own reputation weighed on him sometimes and what he said only confirmed it. Scott told me about how he started becoming aware of said expectations, of trying to fulfill them and be what people wanted him to be.

“The summer after graduation, I had a girlfriend. She was…a little wild you could say.” He smiled wryly as he remembered it. “I hadn’t yet had too many… you know. Submissive fantasies. And I wasn’t yet ashamed of them. We were eighteen and excited about life. So when one day, she took me out to a secluded part of a park and started making out with me, pushing me against a wall and being a bit rougher than I was used to…I loved it. And of course, it had to be the time we were caught.”

Scott told me that the woman who found him had shamed him half-to-death.

“I was chastised harder than other people when I did things that weren’t according to the perfect guy I was supposed to be, but this? It was a before and after. I was very careful from this point on to embody my ‘perfect’ persona.”

I kept running my hands through his scalp as he was saying this. My chest was tight, hurting for him. I wanted to punch that fucking intruder in the mouth for doing this to him. No one deserved to be ashamed of what they wanted.

“You understand you have nothing to be ashamed of, right?” I really wanted him to. Because only worse than Mark ruining him was the thought ofmeunknowingly doing it by feeding his shame and self-hatred.

Scott looked at me, shaking his head.“You never make me feel ashamed. You make me feel…almost normal.”

“Youarenormal. There’s nothing weird about being submissive. Or about having whatever fantasies you have. People are just fucking prudes and don’t talk about it.”

His lips ticked.Finally. Something fluttered in my chest. “See? This is what I meant,” Scott said.

I kissed him, because I just had to. I thrust my tongue into his mouth and he sucked on it, pulling me to him with his hands, trying to get us closer.

We kissed for what felt like forever, but were probably only a few minutes. There were few things I liked more than kissing Scott Matthews senseless.

“Is this…is this a date?” he asked all of a sudden.

My chest tightened. My instant internal reaction was thatyes, this was a fucking date.

But did he want it to be?

“What if it is?” I asked.

What the fuck was I saying?

My eyes followed Scott’s tongue as it licked his lips. “I would be…fine with it.”

“Would you, now?” I asked, delighted to see the way his cheeks pinked and his eyes narrowed, justdaringme to tease him about it.

Yes, he’d be fine with it.

And I was too.

I had to sober up, though. “It still doesn’t mean I’m your boyfriend. I’m not relationship material, Scott.”Even less for you. The knowledge made me ache.

“I know. But you’re still mine.”

Yes.

“And you’re mine.”

Scott exhaled raggedly before saying, “You said you’ll tell me if it stops working for you, right? I just…I don’t want to have to guess.”

In this very moment, I felt like I had Scott’s heart in the palm of my hand. The savage need to protect him at all costs, protect this precious vulnerability he was sharing with me, threatened to overwhelm me.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I will. And you will, too.”

This was a two-way street.

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