Page 52 of My Enemy, My Obsession

At some point, we end up in reverse—him against the wall, then him on the floor with me straddling him, riding him. It’s the true definition of bump and grind with wicked heat and a wild rush of want and need. We end with trembling bodies, our breaths wild and intense, me draped over the top of him. We stay like that until his cellphone blasts through the air, and my hands press to his shoulders as I lean back to look at him. “You’re going to have to take that call, Ethan.” I blink with the realization I need a towel. “Oh God. We didn’t use a condom.”

Ethan rolls me off of him and onto my back on the hotel floor. “I’ll get you a towel.” He starts to move away, and the dampness between my legs freaks me out. I catch his arm. “We didn’t use a condom.”

“I know, baby. It’ll be okay.” He leans in and kisses my belly, and then moves away. I lay there, wet for all the wrong reasons, mentally screaming.What if I get pregnant? Isn’t there a morning after pill? Should I take a morning after pill? Maybe. Probably. I need to get on the pill. That’s all there is to it. Ethan reappears beside me and slides the towel between my legs. I grab it and sit up, uncaring of my skirt to my waist and my nipples pushing up over the top of my bra.

“Shouldn’t I take a morning after pill?”

“I have no idea what that is, Sofia.”

He doesn’t know what it is? I mean, I guess I only know because a friend took it in college. “It stops you from getting pregnant and I do not know that from experience. Girls just know these things.”

He reaches over and tucks my nipples back in my bra. “I can’t think when you’re like that, and you're thinking enough for both of us. This is really upsetting you.”

“Why isn’t it upsetting you? I could trap you with a baby.”

“I didn’t get trapped. I’m the one who didn’t take the time to put on a damn condom. Maybe I’m the one trying to trap you.”

“Ethan, I’m serious right now.”

“As am I. Stop. You’re getting in your own head and chasing trouble. And frankly, you’re a hell of a lot better person than I will ever be. Ifeither one of us is better than the other, it’s you over me.” His cellphone rings again, and he curses. “For the love of God, why can’t he stop fucking calling?” He rotates away from me and stands, offering me his hand, in no rush to go after his phone.

I accept, and he pulls me to my feet, helping me with my skirt. The hotel room phone begins to ring now, and he grits his teeth. “If that’s him, I’m going to call the fucking police and call him a stalker.”

“Your brother?”

“Yes. My fucking brother.” He moves away from me and answers the phone where it sits on the desk, offering me his back, his shoulders knotting beneath the fine silk of his shirt. “I’ll be there,” he says after a long few beats of simply listening.

He doesn’t immediately turn, and I discard the towel to step to the side of the desk. Seeming to know I’m there, he rotates to face me. “I have to go to the office.”

“Okay,” I say, and while I want to ask what just happened, I can feel the wall around him. He’s shut off. He’s not in a place where he wants to invite me right now. “I understand completely.”

He captures my arms and tugs me gently to him when I sense there is not much more “gentle” in him right now. “You do, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“When I get back, I’ll take you to dinner. There’s a place down by the water I think you’ll like.”

I don’t remind him I have a flight tomorrow, and an early one at that. I don’t think it’s what he wants or needs to hear right now. “I’d like that,” I say instead, because the truth is, I want to live that experience with him. And maybe then, maybe when whatever is going on is over, he’ll talk to me about it, though I have this sense it will be a long while before Ethan fully opens up to me.

There’s something dark and damaged beneath his surface, and I don’t think it’s merely a creation of his brother and ex-fiancée’s liaisons either. There’s more, and for reasons I don’t understand, I am able to see this inEthan when I’m not sure others can, not fully. I think I’ve been allowed access to that window into his soul, but I’m not sure he ever intended for me to find that part of him.

Only it’s too late now. I have. And I’m glad for it.

Because I know he’s human now, and that doesn’t make him less attractive to me at all.

It draws me to him in ways I never thought possible.

“I have to go change into a fresh shirt, baby.” He releases me, and a few minutes later, dressed sharp and ready to kill, there is an edge to him when he kisses me goodbye. “I’ll try to be fast.”

“Don’t be fast for me. I have plenty of work to do. I need to deal with my inventory.” I don’t really, but I really want to remove any pressure he feels from me.

He departs, the scent of vanilla and musk still lingering in the air and on my skin, and I lean on the hotel room door, lost in my thoughts. I’m falling for him. I’m falling so hard, so fast, I think…I could love him. It’s crazy and a good formula for self-destruction. The hotel room phone rings, and I rush to answer it, thinking it might be Ethan. Is my phone dead? I glance around for it, not sure where it’s at, grasping the receiver and pressing it to my ear, to hear a rough, older man’s voice spit, “Leave the bitch in the room, and get here now.”

Chapter Forty-Three

Ihang up thephone without speaking a word. It rings again, but I don’t even think about picking it up. That was Ethan’s father calling. I’m sure of it. I don’t know how I know, but I know, and he apparently knows me as well. I’m “the bitch,” and the man has not even met me. I hug myself, blood swishing in my ears, the beat of my heart magnified tenfold, uncomfortably present in my chest. My first reaction to what feels like an attack and belittling of me as a person is a need to withdraw and leave. But after pacing the room several times, I’ve found logic. That caller wasn’t Ethan, but he was another example of just how shitty the people in his life are, and not the people he chooses to have in his life either—case in point, Harper. This is about the ones forced upon him—his family.

Ethan just told me to stop putting him on a pedestal. That man on the phone put me in the sewer. I wonder how many times he did that to Ethan himself. Between his brother, Anna, and his father, it’s no wonder Ethan’s a control freak, but it’s incredible that he has the gentleness in him and fairness I’ve seen as well. Nothing Ethan has said or done makes me feel as if he wants me to leave.

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