Page 36 of Ruin
Creating space between our bodies that I don’t want or need. I need him to take me, right here, right now. I need him to throw me onto the kitchen counter and fuck me like I belong to him.
His face is lined with shock as he stares at me - like he can’t believe what he just did.
“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping around me.
As though he can’t get away from me fast enough.
“Why are you sorry?” I ask, turning, my voice slightly shaky as nervous energy runs through my body.
He runs his hand through his hair, and I can’t look away from his abs, the overwhelming need to lick them stunning me.
What the hell happened to me last night?
The desire to lick anyone has never entered my mind before. It’s as if witnessing that erotic act has unleashed a torrent of desires I never even knew I had.
But Sebastian has never been justanyoneto me.
Shaking his head, there’s no sign of the usual mask of calm on his face. “I don’t know what just happened.” His brows knit together, as though he’s trying to solve an impossible riddle and getting absolutely nowhere.
“You kissed me. That’s what happened.” I try to lighten the mood with a smile.
His gaze narrows. “That’s not how things work for me, Lily.”
Guess we won’t be using humour to get out of this one, then.
I raise an eyebrow. “You don’t kiss?”
Sighing, he grips the back of his neck with his hand, and my eyes fall to his abs once again.
He’s really gotta stop doing things that make those defined ridges even more prominent, cause it is not helping my out of control libido right now.
“I kiss my partners, but everything I do… It’s about control. Not control like what he did to you, which I honestly can’t even think about right now, because I may very well punch something if I do. But when… I don’t have sex for my own release with most people. I don’t form emotional attachments with the people I interact with. The closest I’ve come is with…” his words trail off, a troubled look on his face. “You’re going to have to tell me what Annika told you, because I don’t want to divulge any information that isn’t just mine to tell.”
Taking a deep breath, I search his face, taking in the emotions swirling across his features. My libido is going to have to calm the fuck down, because it’s obviously not getting what it’s craving right now. He’s clearly too off-balance, which is also throwing me off, because I’ve never seen him so stressed like this before. Actually… I’ve never seen him stressed, full stop.
“She said you have an arrangement with Imogen. And that you sleep with the sex workers when they ask you to help relieve the tension if they’ve been left unfulfilled after sleeping with a client. She said that people come to you because…” Although a blush is easing it’s way up my neck, I force myself to keep going. Can’t very well expect him to fuck me if I can’t even talk about what I want from him. “Because you are a master of control and know what people need more than they do. She said that you’re a dominant.”
He studies me for a few beats, his expression almost blank now. Like his brain has just shut down. Which it probably has, because this is the rawest conversation we’ve ever had.
“Okay. So she told you everything. Remind me to have a word with her, because she had no right to go into such detail.”
“No, I won’t be reminding you of that, because someone needed to be honest with me. And she respected me enough to answer my questions,” I reply with a shake of my head.
A muscle in his jaw twitches as he glowers at me. “It was none of your business, Lily. It had nothing to do with being honest with you, or about respecting you. Do you expect everyone to tell you about their sex lives?”
Gritting my teeth at the accusation in his tone, I cross my arms and glare back at him. “It became my business when I was brought into this world. Or better yet, it became my business when you told me not to expect people to change how they live their lives while I’m here. But if I didn’t know what that meant, how are they expected to be comfortable around me? It’s obviously why you’ve been avoiding me for weeks, because you’re scared to be yourself around me.”
Letting out a long breath while he stares up at the ceiling, his throat bobs as he swallows, and I can tell he’s trying to compose himself.
Before my marriage, we’d only had one conversation like this. The last conversation we’d had for over eight years. He’d always kept me at arm’s length, but that night, he’d been a mess.
The night I told him Joseph had proposed.
I never let myself think about that night. Because the radio silence afterwards nearly broke me.
But it’s fascinating to see him exhibit true human emotion, and I shouldn’t be as turned on as I am in this moment. But after years of denying how much I’m attracted to him, it’s like something inside me has been unleashed now, and I can’t turn it off.
“That’s not… I haven’t been avoiding you.”
