Page 84 of Vivacity
‘I have. Have you never?’
‘Can’t say I have. I don’t play it much. I prefer Wordle.’
I stare at him, aghast. ‘You’re what they call a basic bitch. You know that? You’re not even living! What is this bleak, Connections-less existence you call a life?’
He laughs again and kisses me. ‘I’d better start playing, then, hadn’t I? Now, what shall we do about all this horniness you have going on?’
I awakeone afternoon from my nap in our enchanting white bedroom to find Ethan gazing at me from his spot next to me on the bed, an experience that is altogether sexier and less creepy than it should be. My nap was ajust because I cankind of nap: the very best kind. It was a floaty nap, the type where you’renot entirely sure how deeply you slept but you do know that you were all up in those delicious alpha brain waves.
He wasn’t here when I lay down. He had some calls to do. But he’s here now, and he’s so gorgeous. He’s wearing only a pair of board shorts, his already golden skin newly sun-kissed and hair tousled and face soft.
‘Did you sleep?’ I ask him, rolling onto my back so I can stretch. Above me, the ceiling fan whirrs lazily, framed by the sides of the teak four-poster.
‘Nah. Just came in. Sorry for waking you.’
‘That’s okay.’ I stretch again, feeling like a cat, and roll back to face him. I’m still in my bikini—coffee and white zebra stripe today, with gold hardware—and his eyes rove over my body once more. ‘So you just came in to perve?'
‘Something like that.’ He brushes his fingertips down my upper arm.
‘Well, perve away, mister. I like your eyes on me.’ I give him a lazy smile. ‘You’re so fucking hot.’
He smiles in return, but it’s not the smirk I’d expect. It’s more tremulous than that. I snuggle in closer, and he hooks a hairy leg over mine.
‘You alright?’
‘Can I ask you something?’ he says stiffly by way of answer.
‘Of course.’
He purses his lips like he’s thinking about what he’s going to say, then he speaks. ‘Do you think that if I wasn’t… if I wasn’t paying you, you’d still be here with me?’
‘What?’I ask, stunned. A second later, it hits me: I shouldn’t be stunned, because this is the Eightest thing he could ask. If an Eight’s biggest fear is being betrayed, then letting me get even this close to him is a huge step for Ethan. I recover before I force the poor man to respond to my stupid question. ‘Babe, of courseI’d be here. You can’t think for a second that I wouldn’t—can you?’
I falter on that last part, because of course he can. That’s what he does. That’s why he tests the important people in his life over and over. I may have passed all his tests to date—I wouldn’t be here otherwise—but he’s still entitled to have his doubts. And the very question he’s just posed is such an immense act of vulnerability for him.
Here’s the thing. It’s always the thing. Our nervous system doesn’t understand words—it’s hundreds of millions of years old in parts. It needs tofeelto understand.
So I need to make him feel. And in order to do that I need to tamp down every Seven part of me that wants to make a joke, to grab his dick—anything to lighten the atmosphere, to move away from the discomfort that being vulnerable necessarily elicits.
First, I start by using my words, because I’m not about to leave him hanging.
‘Sorry,’ I amend. ‘I heard you the first time.’ I shimmy my body forward, wedging myself further under his leg, and I slide my top hand through his hair so I can cup his head. My bottom hand I place on his taut pec, right over his heart.
‘Listen to me,’ I whisper. ‘Nothing about us, here, is about what you pay me for. You hear me?Nothing.’
His beautiful grey eyes go hard and cold, and I know he’s already regretting flaying himself open. He removes his leg from mine, and I feel instantly bereft. ‘That’s not entirely true. I asked for exclusivity. We agreed I’d go bare when I fuck you.’
I keep my hands where they are, pressing my palm against his rapidly beating heart. Grounding his body in safety. ‘You did. Both of those things are true. And if I’d wanted to keep things very boundaried within that arrangement, I would have fucked you on demand, sure, but I would also have requested my own room, or I might even have refused outright to come here on thebasis that it would blur lines.’ I slide my hand over his jaw, over the muscles tensing between his skin and his stubble. ‘But none of that is what’s happening here, and I know that, and I think you do, too.’
I sigh, because his insecurities—and I mean that in the most literal sense that he has a perceived lack of safety—are prompting me to have to be very vulnerable too, in a way that I never was with Thad and had no intention of being with Ethan. Not that I ever imagined I’dfeelvulnerable to the feelings he’s evoking in me.
‘I’m here out of contractual obligation just as much as you’ve brought me here for a convenient fuck. Both things may technically be true, but they’re not thereasonfor us being here.’ My hand smooths over that tense jaw and down his neck. Over the domed, muscular shoulder I love so much. And, in response, his hand finds the crook of my waist and settles there. ‘I think we’re here together because we’re both deeply, ridiculously attracted to one another, and because, despite all initial signs to the contrary, we feel seen by each other, which makes us drawn to each other on a totally different level. I’d say this is pretty special. What do you say to that?’
His eyes flicker over my face, moving from my eyes to my mouth and back again as if he’s trying to perform a visual polygraph test. I’m walking a tightrope between reassuring him and freaking him out. He may need to know that I’m here because I want to be, but who the fuck knows if he’s ready to admit to himself that this thing between us is escalating out of both of our control?
My guess would be that he’d like our dynamic contained in a Goldilocks space where he knows I won’t betray him but he also knows he can control his emotions—and mine. Then again, he’s displayed a textbook disorganised attachment style to methroughout the past few weeks, so god knows where he’ll land on this.
‘Special,’ he repeats slowly, as if trying it on for size.
