Page 15 of Hate Sex
“I’m scared of me,” she says again in her soft voice, and my heart lurches.
“Open the door right fucking now, Kota.” There is no fucking reason in hell she should be scared of herself. None.
The lock on the door clicks, the knob turns like it’s in slow motion, and she opens it wide. She has gray sweats pulled up to her mid-calf, a t-shirt with ‘Sweet as Pie’ across the boobs, and her hair is pulled up in a bun similar to mine. But it’s her eyes. Her puffy, red eyes that are drowning in pain. Did I do that? Surely I didn’t. Did I?
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” I ask, stepping through the threshold of her home for the first time and locking the door behind me. She steps back making room for me, but she shyly covers her mouth with her hand. I pull her into my body and wrap my arms around her stiff one. She keeps her arms in front of her but doesn’t push away. Her body shudders, and I’m not sure if it’s from sadness or from me being so close to her, but I’m not letting go.
I inhale the vanilla scent that I’ve missed these past few weeks, letting it ease me as I rub small circles on her back. Her body continues to move slightly and wetness falls to my shirt. I pick her up like a groom would do his bride and sit on the couch, her on top of me. “It’s okay, Kota. Let’s talk about all this,” I say softly in her ear just as she sniffs her nose. Damn, I’d do just about anything to stop her from crying. “Baby, look at me.” She shakes her head against my chest.
Damn. “Alright, I’ll start.” Nothing like hanging my balls out there and hoping she’s not going to slice them off in the end. “I haven’t fucked anyone since we’ve been together. It’s only been you. It’s been you for years, and when you showed up at my door, I grabbed that shit like a man who hasn’t had water in years.” Her body tenses in mine, and her head comes up, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes are red and puffy along with the tip of her nose just slightly.
“Do not lie to me,” she barks, anger taking over her tears. “Iknowyou’ve been with others. Don’t you dare lie to me.”
I keep my temper leashed knowing that I’m right and getting her to see that may prove difficult. “I’m not lying to you. Tell me, Kota. Can you say the same thing?” I need to know if she’s been fucking Spencer. This won’t be able to go where I need it to go if she is.
She moves to get up off my lap, but I don’t allow it. Instead, I band my arms around her tightly, holding her in place. She doesn’t struggle but makes a sound in her throat telling me she’s resigned herself to staying put. “I’ve seen you with the others. You can’t tell me that you haven’t been sleeping around while you’ve been seeing me. The pictures, Teo. All the magazines run them on their social pages. Your arms around the women, smiling and them looking at you like they want to throw you down on the floor right there and fuck you. You’re lying.” She says the last two words in a whisper, almost like she doesn’t believe them or doesn’t want to believe them. I’m not sure which.
I grab her chin with my thumb and finger, pulling her face to mine. Her eyes stay cast down. “Kota, look at me.” She shakes her head no, her hands coming together, holding each other in a death grip. “Kota. Look. At. Me.” I can tell she’s fighting it, but my words make her obey, and that’s when I get a look at her red-rimmed, sparkling blues. My heart constricts in a way so damn foreign to me that I swear barbed wire is doing it, and it’s about right as I’m about ready to bleed myself out for her. “Never. Not once since you showed up at my door.” I keep her gaze locked on me hoping she can see inside to what lies beneath, hoping she can feel this. “I haven’t even kissed another woman.” Her breath catches, and I know she is thinking about the one picture with Carissa where she’s kissing my cheek. “It was only on the cheek. She tried, hard, but I didn’t.”
I practically plead with her. Damn, I’m a pussy.
Her eyes soften a bit as she lets the words I just spoke register. I give her this time because I so fucking need her to believe this. She has to believe this. As the time expands, unease begins to set in, and fuck that shit if I let it take root. “Kota. I’m dead fucking serious. Once you opened yourself to me, I knew what I was getting, and none of that other shit mattered to me. None of it.”
“I…” Her words trail off, leaving a long pause, and I feel so damn anxious about what is going to come out of her mouth. “What happened to your lip? Did Spencer do that?”
Rage bubbles at the sound of his name on her lips, but I tap it down and answer calmly as possible. “No, that was from your brother.”
She lets out a small chuckle, then her face falls.
“I haven’t been with anyone either.” A tear slides down her cheek from the corner of her eye and splashes down to my arms still wrapped around her. The relief I feel from her statement is indescribable. The thought of anyone touching what is mine rocks me to my fucking core.
I pull her tightly to me and give her a hard squeeze that from the whoosh of air escaping her lips by my ear has knocked the wind out of her. I release her, letting her catch her breath and giving myself a minute to formulate a word.
“Thank fucking Christ, Kota. You’re mine. You hear me? No more bullshit. No more hiding. I go to an event,you’re on my arm.Youare the only one in my bed. It’s been two damn years…” I trail off, shaking my head as she pulls back again to look at me.
“If you’ve wanted this for two years, why the nasty words? Why make everyone think that we hated each other, because I’ll tell you, there were many times that I really did hate you. I hated that you took other women. I hated the thought that you were giving them something that I felt was mine. A lot of those times when we had sex, I was pissed as shit at you. I wasn’t hiding.” Her brow furrows. I lift, giving her a soft kiss on it as it recedes.
“I was pissed too many of the times. Fucking sucked that I was only good enough to be your secret,” I huff out a deep breath. “You remember what my father said to me all those years ago?” Her body relaxes, the stiffness coming out of her spine and shoulders. She only nods not giving me words. “I don’t deserve you,” I say quietly, feeling like that moment when my father echoed those words to me. Fuck, I hate this shit. Her lips open to speak, but I place my finger on them, halting her words. “I really don’t deserve you, Kota. The woman you’ve grown up to be is spectacular, caring, successful and gorgeous, but I’m fucking taking it. Tell me you’ll let me have it. Forever.”
Tears well in her eyes again. Fuck, did I lay that shit on too thick? Probably made a huge pussy of myself. Fuck me. She stares at me; no words, but I feel her inside me, almost searching for something. She lets out a huff of breath and rubs her hands under her eyes, washing away her tears.
“Your father was wrong.” Now it’s my turn to tense and still. “You deserve everything in this life. Your father loved you, he just wanted you to go down a different path, and I have no doubt that he loved you. You need to get his words out of your head. You want to know why I think you deserve this?”
I sit there unable to speak and not knowing if I want the answer. She doesn’t give me the option. “Because I deserve this. Ten years I’ve known you. Two years I gave you my body, but what you didn’t realize is that my heart went along with the package. Want to know why I never stayed after sex?” she asks, and it’s been something that’s eaten at me all this time, but part of me doesn’t know if I can take more of this. “I couldn’t let you see the hurt I felt. I couldn’t let you see the tears of feeling like another one of your conquests. I couldn’t let you see my heart ache so hard that I had to bend from the pain constricting my chest. I had to leave, run or I would have bared my soul. Had I known for a second that you felt any way toward me besides a quick lay...” She shakes her head, and I pull her down to my lips. I need her to stop talking for a moment because the damn tears that have welled up in my eyes are threatening to spill over, and I damn well do not want to cry.
Her hands thread through my hair pulling the holder loose, but still confining my hair. My tongue explores her mouth, tasting every crevice. Her tongue does the same, our lips melding. It’s not hard and fast like all the times before, no this is slow, sweet, and something else I can’t put my finger on at the moment.
Desire pulls me, my cock rock hard beneath her thigh. She wiggles on my lap, and I groan from the sensation. I pull away from her lips reluctantly, but there is something that needs to be said. Her eyes slowly open like she’s been in a trance, and I make sure her focus is on me before speaking. “You were never”—I accentuate the word letting her know it wasn’t even on my radar that she was—“ever, a notch on my bedpost. You are so much more than that to me. So much.” I brush her lips, giving her a wisp of a kiss, her body trembling in my arms at the contact.
“We’ve wasted two years,” she says on trembling lips.
“No, baby. We wasted nothing. We were just together and hadn’t opened our eyes to it. Now, our eyes are wide open.” I pull her to straddle my hips, her hands not moving from my hair; if anything she clutches on harder. “Now, we take our future.” Our lips connect, and I’m fucking lost in her.
