I guess I don’t keep my back to him completely. A blush creeps over my skin. I try not to think about what I’m doing. Just get dressed. Don’t maul him. “Kent,” I warn.
“I figured you’re a virgin. Why shave your pubic hair?”
“Because I can. Why are you looking at my vagina anyway? Can’t I have some privacy?”
“I want your vagina. That’s why I’m looking at it. I want to taste it, fuck it, and own it.”
My knees nearly buckle. I stand there with my back to him, breathing so hard I know he can hear it. I’ve never wanted to attack someone in my entire life the way I want to attack him.
Without responding, because I have nothing to say, nothing at all, I put my bra on and then my shorts. Lastly I put my black top on and then grab my makeup bag. Kent’s face is reflected in my compact as I apply it. His handsome, breathtaking, painful face. I look down and grab my foundation. After last night I need a layer of it.
“I invited Auburn Hair.” He puts his cell back in his pocket.
I close my eyes and break. “Good for you.” I grab my gold shadow and apply it with a shaking hand, bringing out the brown and green color in my eyes. After some liner and mascara I am hypnotizing. I want to be hypnotizing tonight. “Can I borrow a condom tonight? I don’t have any. You know, because I’m a sweet untouchable virgin.”
He laughs darkly. “You’re not hooking up with anyone. If you don’t want me then you’re shit out of luck. I’ll make sure of it.”
I whirl around and throw my peach gloss at him. But I do want you!
He moves out of the way and picks it up, twirling the tube around with ease. “Willow despised gloss. She was a red lipstick kind of girl.”
I picture the onyx beauty wearing red lipstick. “Where did you two meet?”
“At a party. We locked eyes across the room and that was it. I was done for.” He smiles sadly. “Before her I dated girls, but I never loved them. I liked them enough to try, but with Willow I had to have her. I cleaned my act up. I deleted all the women from my phone. Stopped hooking up with other girls. We were so damn in love I asked her to marry me after being together a year. I was sure we were going to be together forever. And then one night we got into a fight over something stupid and I went out and got drunk and ended up screwing some random chick. She packed her shit and was gone the next night. I tried to get her back but she met another guy. Another guy, Rain.” His voice is gruff and pained. He blinks like he’s blinking away tears but his eyes are dry. This dark look enters them as he keeps going. It gives me goose bumps. “Apparently they’re in love, her and this other guy. She says we were too young to know what love was. He’s older. He’s rich. He’s better than me. He knows what love is.”
I can’t stand the way he talks about her. There’s so much longing in his voice and I’m sitting right here longing for him the same way.
Without a word I leave the room. I bite back the tears, refusing to ruin my makeup
What are you doing? My common sense screams at me.
Pack your shit and get out while you still can.
Kent follows me into the kitchen. We both want the same thing.
I get the shot glasses over the sink and he gets the whiskey off the counter. We’re a team.
Our eyes lock as we swallow our shots, running from each other right before our eyes.
People trickle in slowly. I hang out in the kitchen, awkwardly pouring shots for Kent’s friends. I don’t relax until Sophie and Samantha get here. I hug them so hard because for the first time I’m glad I have friends other than Becca.
“Come on, girls.” I take their hands and lead them into the kitchen, passing Kent and Zeke on the way in. I ignore them and pour Sophie and Sam a shot each.
Sam glances at Kent as she wipes her mouth off.
He winks at her.
I look away.
I have to.
Sam’s my friend.
“Hmm,” Sophie murmurs. She leans over and whispers in my ear. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him. He’ll be crying in your lap tonight.”
“Sophie, don’t.”
“Don’t what?” she coyly asks, grabbing my hand. “Let’s dance, girly. I love me some Pitbull.”
The open space in the living room is now a dance floor thanks to Sophie and me. At first I can’t relax. I can’t stop thinking about everything. About the eyes I know are on me. The hands that touched me. The man I can’t have.
Sophie grabs my hand and grabs my attention. “Forget about him for a few hours.”
“I invited Trevor.”
She grins salaciously. “Good girl. This is going to be so fun. The only man I want you worrying about tonight is Trevor. That’s it. Don’t even look at Kent.”
“Kent who?” I whisper.
I allow him to fade away. Because if I don’t my brain will explode. Sophie and I dance to so many songs I lose count. I’m sweaty and take the shot Sam offers me. As I swallow it down I spot a familiar face hanging out on the edge of the party. James looks so out of place it breaks my heart.
I grab Sophie’s hand. “Come meet my friend James. Be nice,” I warn, not kidding.
She nods vigorously. “Nice. Got it. Ohh, he’s cute.”
“Hi, James.” He nods at me. I have a feeling he’s not going to talk in front of anyone tonight. “James, this is Sophie. Sophie, this is James.”
She offers him her hand and he takes it, shaking it weakly. “It’s nice to meet you, James.” She gives him a flirty smile and laughs when he doesn’t buy it. “What’s wrong with him? He looks fine to me,” she whispers in my ear.
“Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s great. And deaf,” I whisper back, using her hair to block my lips.
“Oh.”
I grab his hand. “You owe me a dance.”
He looks at his feet.
“Please?” Leaning over, I catch his gaze, giving him my hopeful face.
Finally he nods, appearing dreadfully nervous. I ignore Kent. I ignore that man with all my might, and lead James over to where Sam and Sophie are dancing.
I wrap my arms around his neck and bring our faces close together so he can read my lips. “Follow my movements.”
James can’t hear the music, but he can feel my body. I take his hands and place them on my hips and then resume my hold around his shoulders. At first James is stiff as stone. I don’t let it bother me. I keep dancing, feeling the beat and letting it guide my hips. Soon he starts to move too. He matches my movements, and I realize too late he can feel it in his feet. He knows exactly what to do.
“Is this fun?” I ask, pulling back to meet his eyes.
In response he kisses me right on my mouth.
I don’t think he can help himself. I asked for it, grinding against him. I don’t kiss him back. I’m too shocked. It unnerves me how used I am to Kent’s lips already. James’s lips feel wrong. They don’t fit. In a way it feels as if Kent’s lips were made for me, but he’s too busy using them on everyone else. The depth of my desire for him hits me like a steamroller. It takes James’s lips to show me how much I truly want another’s.
He pulls back suddenly and looks into my stunned eyes. “Just once,” he mouths, then lets me go and walks away.
I frown after him, touching my lips in shock. He disappears into the hall. I try to go after him but Kent steps in my path.
“What the hell, Rain?” He screams so loud the entire party stops partying. Pain and betrayal fills his eyes.
I cover my mouth with my hand, as shocked as he is. “I’m sorry,” I say. “He kissed me. I didn’t mean it.”
He looks disgusted. As Kent is looking at me like I am scum, nothing, and a cheater, I realize I never want him to look at me like that again. It isn’t who I am. None of this is who I am. I’m losing myself so quickly I feel pieces of me slipping through my fingers like sand, indistinguishable amongst all of the pieces I’ve already lost.
He grabs my hand and yanks me into the hall and then his bedroom. He
slams his door and whirls on me. The music still penetrates the walls, and the bass pounds in my feet, but it suddenly feels like we’re in a bubble.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know. He kissed me.”
“So you fell on his lips and kissed him back? I saw you. You were into it. Don’t lie to me!”
I shrink back. I’ve had enough alcohol to confuse me. I need to stop drinking.
“I wasn’t enough? You invite Trevor. You needed James too? Are you even a virgin? Because you’re sure not acting like one!”
The pain of his comment is unleashed so suddenly I have no time to protect myself from it. I gasp and stare, openmouthed, at this man who is driving me completely and disastrously insane. “I am a virgin. Before I met you I hadn’t kissed a guy in years.”
“So it’s my fault you’re a whore?”
I like to think I’m a strong person. My past and present have collided in a way where I’ve had no choice but to be. I’ve had to deal with neglect, domestic abuse, and being on my own with Becca. As I’ve inevitably persevered, I’ve also built a wall around myself and the world. It protects me. But it starts to shatter at Kent’s words. Pieces of my wall fall around me in dangerous shards.
“I am not a whore!” I snap. “You are. You’re a whore, Kent.”
He sinks down on his bed and glares up at me. “I know you’re not a whore, Rain. Don’t be ridiculous. Why the hell did he kiss you? Why did you kiss him back? I keep seeing his mouth on yours like it’s his. It isn’t his!”
“I don’t know who I am anymore.” I have to bite back my sob.
“I know why he kissed you. It’s the same reason why I kissed you. Because you’re irresistible.” He isn’t listening to me. “You’re sweet and real, and we don’t ever meet women like you. Women who are as beautiful as they are unattainable, just as a sexy as they are aggravating. You aggravate me, you tempt me, you are driving me crazy, Raina. You—”
He keeps going. Something unhinges in his brain and all his reasons are revolving around me. I can’t hear the sweet words he’s saying to me without also hearing his anger, so I try not to listen at all. He’s giving me things and simultaneously taking them away. He said point blank he wasn’t over Willow. He’s not the guy for me. I can’t pretend I don’t know it’s true. Those are thoughts I’ve had more than once.
So then why am I beautiful, sexy, and real?
Why am I a whore he wants to punish?
“Look at me. Please,” I cry. He finally does. His eyes leak the darkness inside of him. “We need to stop this once and for all. I can’t do it. I’m not cut out for this. For you. I’m not Willow,” I wail, falling to my knees. My tears block my eyes.
I feel lost, as if this man is sucking the life out of me while breathing life into me and I am willingly giving it to him because I don’t want it without him.
His face falls. He drops to his knees and crawls to me, picking me up awkwardly and placing me on his lap. His arms come around me tightly. “I’m sorry, Rain. You’re not a whore. You’re anything but, and I’m a dick for calling you that.”
“I’m not a whore,” I sob. I can hear my father screaming at my mother. You useless whore!
“You’re not. Listen,” he says firmly. He grabs my chin and brings my eyes to his. He wipes my tears away with his thumbs, and then brings my face as close to his as he can without kissing me.
I want him to kiss me.
“I didn’t mean it. I was mad. I saw you kissing my best friend and I snapped. Please forgive me.”
“Never call me that again.”
“Never,” he promises fervently.
I believe him. Because next time I won’t cry. He will.
“I was trying so hard to forget you and then we started dancing and he kissed me. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
He kisses my wet cheeks, sliding his lips over my tears. “I know you didn’t. Of course I do.”
I sag against him. “What am I doing? I need you tell me point blank you don’t want me. I need to hear it, otherwise I’ll torture myself.”
He looks away, at his bed, at his dresser, anywhere but at me. “I’m just a guy?”
He isn’t going to do it. Kent will not release me from this disastrous attraction. I try and get off his lap, and the selfish bastard he is, he wraps his arms around me so I cannot move. I need to free myself from this man before I become the girl I’m trying not to be.
“Yes!” I screech. “You’re just a guy to me.”
“That’s a lie.”
“We barely know each other.”
He squeezes me tighter. “You need to sleep this off. Come lie in my bed.” He rises fluidly with me in his arms.
The last thing I want is sleep. Why can’t he say I don’t want you? “Let me go.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Let me go.”
“I can’t!” he hisses, setting me roughly down on his bed. “I can’t let you go. After Willow there’s no way in hell I’m letting you go, Rain. I don’t understand what’s going on between us, but there’s something there. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. It’s been a dark year and then you come in and it’s still dark, but for the first time I’m starting to realize it doesn’t have to be this way.” He pounds on his chest. “I don’t have to be this way.”
His admittance is so sudden I have to look away. He’s been so adamant that we were only partners in his game. He promised I didn’t have to worry about him wanting me, that he wasn’t the right guy for me. To hear that he might have struggled with his desire the same way I did with mine shines a brand new light on this torturous want of mine.
A movement catches my eye. “Kent?”
He pauses with his hand outstretched for the door.
“Don’t leave. Stay with me?”
“I don’t sleep in my bed with women.”
“Because of Willow?”
He nods slowly. “I can’t stand the idea of sleeping with anyone else in my bed. She and I owned that bed right there.” He kicks the end of it. “We made love in it, talked in it, and promised each other things that never happened in it. I can’t sleep with you in the same place I made love to her.”
I can’t stand the way he talks about her.
I want him in this bed. I will have him in this bed.
“Kent Nicholson, you will get in this bed with me or I’ll walk out of this room and never come back. Do you want that? Because I don’t want that, Kent.”
“What do you want? You can tell me,” he promises when I balk.
“I don’t understand why. Or maybe I do. Maybe that’s why this is so hard. But I think all I want is you.” I swallow hard. “And you want me to, don’t you, Kent?” My uncertainty is thick in the air.
Please say yes.
For a few seconds Kent simply stares at me, red-eyed and torn. Then he nods once, a silent admission of his want. “The second you walked into this apartment I haven’t been able to think about anyone else. There was something about you. It was so good, so everything I wasn’t. That’s why I let you move in. Something was screaming at me to say ‘yes, I will make an exception for this girl.’ So I did. And now I’m ruining you. You really want a guy who’s going to drag you down?”
There were those words. Kent was dragging me down.
“Maybe we don’t have to do that to each other. Maybe we can try not to.”
“How?”
“Stop doing what’s hurting the other. Like don’t punish every vagina within a five mile radius.” My bitterness shines through.
He glares at me. “Okay. And how about you stop kissing me like I matter and then talking to men like Trevor and hooking up with my best friend?”
“Right there. We try to hurt each other so badly. It isn’t healthy. I want healthy. I don’t want to be reminded of my father and you’re reminding me of him. How many times do you think my parents had this conversation? My dad never changed. He still did drugs, they still fought, and he
dragged her down the entire way. The next time you remind me of my father I’m packing my shit and leaving. I’ll deal with the pain if I never have to live with him again!” I am seething. I grab his pillow off his bed and launch at him. “Will you at least sleep on the floor?”
He catches it and hugs it to his chest. After a second he sighs and locks his door. He drops down onto his back and lies on the pillow.
“Happy?”
“Not yet,” I admit. “I think if you tried you could make me very happy.”
He groans and his face falls. “I want to make you happy. I want to be healthy again. Me again. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t help myself. When Willow left I promised I would never let another woman hurt me that bad again. She killed me, Rain. I wanted to punish every woman the way she punished me. So I fuck the shit out of them to make them feel as worthless as I feel. I treat them all like shit, because that’s how I feel. I don’t want to do that to you. I’m not going to be able to stop overnight. I’ve been this way since she left. People can change, but it never happens like that.” He snaps at the end. “It takes time. I have to want it as much as you do.”
“Do you want it?” I hold my breath and stare into his unfathomable eyes.
“If I do, you stay?”
“I will.”
“Then I want it. I want you, Rain.” He smiles a little. “You’re turning me into a pussy already.”
I want you, Rain. “I thought you liked pussy.”
“I like your pussy. So you’ve never been with anyone but me? No one’s ever fingered you before?”
He may not be the most romantic guy around…“No one’s even seen me naked.”
“How have you accomplished that? You’re one of the sexiest women I've ever met. Everything you do tortures me. The way you look at me, the way you walk, your ass in those shorts, and those damn hazel eyes. I know I’m not the only one—Zeke, James, and Trevor—you leave men in the dust without even trying.”
I torture him? If it’s the same way he tortures me then he deserves it. “They let me.”
“So you never let one of them touch you at all?” I shake my head. “You only want me to touch you?” he clarifies, seeming pleased but still cocky.
My Sweet Demise (Demise #1) Page 16
