Page 54 of The Muse
He stops, lets go of my arms and then flips me over onto my front. His hands dig into my hips and pull me up towards him. “Keep that arse in the air for me, Seffi.” I look up at him to try and find his eyes, to make him see what he’s doing, but he pushes back inside of me, and this time it feels… better. I can’t help the moan that sneaks from my lips, and I bury my head in the pillow.
“This is fucking. Hard. How does that feel?” His words are harsh and don’t hold the sexy edge they always have done, but my body doesn’t seem to care. “You’ll take it now.”
As his hands push my back down, his pace increases, his hips slamming against my body. In this position, I can’t see his face, and I desperately want that. I want to feel that he’s with me, too, and not just using me like some other girl.
The thought is sobering.
Despite the drink, he’s having no trouble keeping rhythm or keeping my body in that desperate limbo wanting to fly apart but not quite there. My skin prickles and my muscles twitch, wanting to reach my peak.
“I think you like it a little rough.” He smacks my arse, the flare of pain only heightening my pleasure. My head begins to spin, and he smacks me again.
“Shit,” I muffle into the bedding. I don’t want this. Not like this. Scott sounds angry, like he’s punishing me the only way he can. “Scott…”
He rotates his hips and presses deeply inside of me, and I shatter apart, my eyes closing as my body pulses from my centre. “Yes!” His grunt and the press of his fingers into my skin signal his own release.
As soon as he’s taken a breath, he lets go of me, letting my body slump to the bed as if he’s finished with me. It’s like he's used me for what he wanted and has discarded me. A chill wipes out any of the pleasure that came from being with him.
He strides off to fetch another drink before he comes back to sit on the bed. I wait for him to say something. Anything, but he just gets back to drinking.
The pressure builds in my chest.
“What was that?” I pant, unsure of the mixed emotions running through me. I know that my body physically reacted to him. But it was… different. It wasn’t anything like our first time. There wasn’t a connection.
“Fucking, Seffi. It’s called fucking. I think we covered that first lesson a while ago.”
My brow furrows, and I pull my legs up into the foetal position. This is all wrong. As is his attitude. He's being mean, dismissive and almost hateful. Drink is one thing, but this constant distance he's keeping me at is overwhelming my nerves.
“Why are you being so cruel?”
“Cruel? That’s a new one.” He pulls the sheet over him and sits up in bed before grabbing for the dregs of his drink.
“You’re doing this on purpose. If you don’t want to be with me anymore, at least have the courage to tell me.”
He rolls his eyes as the drink reaches his lips. "You wanted me. You got me. Stop being stupid, Seffi.”
I’m not. I can feel it in the way he touched me and held me. It wasn’t like it was before.
“I might be young and inexperienced, but I know what I want, and it’s not this.” I twist my legs out of bed and walk, unashamed, to pick up my clothes. Clutching them to my chest, I know I can’t leave without telling him everything. It’s up to him if he chooses to hear me. “I want you. Us. What we had. It was something special, at least to me. Born from bad circumstances maybe, but it led to us being together, and I refuse to regret or be sorry for that." He scours me with his gaze at first, but then turns to stare out into the rain that's come from somewhere. "If you can’t deal with who I am, Persephone Broderick and not just Seffi Castlewood, then there’s no point in this. We won’t work.” I keep pushing out the words because if I can’t be honest now, I’ll never have a second chance. “And as tempting as it might be, I won’t accept second place or second best in anything. I’ve worked too hard in my life, and I deserve the best in everything. And that includes love.”
With the heat of my tears threatening to stream down my face, I take my clothes to the bathroom to get dressed. I've done everything I can to make him listen.
It’s up to him now.
Chapter Twenty One
SCOTT
The bathroom door slams, and I’m left with nothing but the sound of silence.
I stare at the door as if trying to see her through the wood. I’d like to say I’m unaffected, but I’m not. I wasn’t the moment I saw her in that hotel room, and I’m certainly not now I’ve been inside her again. No matter how much I tried to forget whose body it was that I was fucking.
Christ.
Turning away, I stand and pull my jeans from the floor and yank them on. What the fuck do I do now? This isn’t nothing to me—she isn’t. She’s more than just a fuck, but my feelings are so swept up in hatred and animosity about her family, I’m barely able to form rational thought around her.
My plan is screwed, if it was ever a sensible plan in the first instance. I can’t play with her any more than I could play with my art. Sheismy art. She’s too ingrained in some subconscious part of me that I can’t process yet. Her smile, her frown lines. Fuck, even her little temper seems to provoke a reaction from me that would normally be ignored.
I head into the kitchen and discuss anger management with myself, perhaps hoping to kill the thought of strangling her father for ever bringing such a creature into the world. It’s not right. None of this is. And her standing there berating me for being an arsehole with her during sex is just making me more irate with myself. She's right. I was. And I was going to continue to be until I got bored. Maybe I was even going to prolong the pretence until she was all used up and defeated. Instead, once again, I’m contemplating a life I don’t have because of this feud and wondering what I can do about making it a reality.
