by Maisey Yates
“I already told you, sex is sex. It’s not connected to anything outside of it. It is what it is. Thank you for the orgasm.”
“Stop it, Alik,” she said.
“It’s reality, the reality of being with me, Jada, so get used to it, or find another man.”
She didn’t want another man. Not any other man, not even the one she’d loved. A shocking, jolting realization.
But she didn’t particularly want this one, either. Not this version of him.
“I’m going to bed,” she said, turning away from him.
“No thank-you for me? I made you come three times.”
She whirled around, anger coursing through her. “And? I can get my own orgasms, Alik, without having to deal with this kind of treatment after! The thing you don’t understand, is that what makes sex better than your own hand is the connection you get from it. But you don’t offer that and you don’t accept it. So there’s no point, is there?”
It wasn’t true. Sex with Alik was beyond anything in her experience. But it had also forged a bond with him she didn’t want. One that was tearing her apart from the inside out, stripping away every defense. The way he was acting hurt, but it wasn’t why she was pulling away from him. It was because of what he made her feel.
Because of who he made her.
“I suppose not, for you. Good night.”
He made no move to go. He picked his glass up from the mantel and walked over to the bar, pouring himself another drink. As if nothing had happened. Nothing that mattered. And he was dismissing her now.
“Right,” she said. “Good night.”
She stalked from the room, only realizing later that she’d left her underwear. If Alik didn’t get them, the housekeeper would. She decided it was less of a humiliation than going back for them in Alik’s presence.
So she just went up the stairs and flung her bedroom door open, and resisted the urge to slam it closed. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how hurt she was. But then, would it even mean anything to him?
“Ah, what does this mean when you slam doors, Jada? I do not understand complex human emotion.” she said to herself, imitating Alik and his accent, poorly. “It means I’m mad at you, you jackass, because you are the most insensitive and horrible human being on the planet!”
She flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling with gritty eyes. This was the time when she had to figure out if Alik was worth it, or if she should just abandon ship.
What do you want from him? Surely not love and marriage? Real marriage? You had that. This is not that. It never could be.
No. It never could be. Partly because Alik wasn’t her first husband. And partly because she didn’t think she could ever be that woman again. She was changing. But this wasn’t the same kind of change she’d made in her first marriage. She wasn’t changing to make Alik’s life easier, to make their marriage more harmonious.
She wasn’t changing to fit a mold. The change seemed endless, with no boundaries closing in. It was the kind of freedom she hadn’t wanted, the kind she didn’t truly understand.
She had always tried to please the people in her life, but Alik seemed to ask her to please only herself. And this woman that she was…this woman wouldn’t have been happy with her life three years ago. She would have wanted more from her marriage. More passion. More honesty. Less hiding.
She was afraid of what he made her want. But she didn’t want to walk away, either.
She didn’t like that Alik wasn’t simply in her present, that he hadn’t just changed her future, but that he was changing her view of the past, as well.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT HADN’T WORKED. Alik didn’t like failure. He rarely failed. In fact, his only failure to date was the condom failure he’d suffered more than a year and a half ago during Leena’s conception. If he’d failed otherwise, with the sorts of endeavors he’d engaged in, he would be dead.
But he had failed in putting things back into place inside himself. He had failed in his attempt to feel normal again after the carousel ride with Leena.
He had failed in holding Jada at a reasonable distance. He had failed in putting her back there. He had tried.
He’d thought if he couldn’t see her face. If he just took it back to sex at its most basic, then he would stop aching inside. That it would give him the high, the euphoria that sex had always given him.
But sex with Jada had a cost. And each time it seemed higher.
If only the price could be paid in money. He had that. This was asking for pieces of him, demanding he lower his guard to pay, and he really didn’t like that. He had emotions. He knew it now. But he’d built up a wall around them so thick, so high, that not even he had been able to pull it down at his own whim.
He’d given all the credit to Leena before. But Jada was the one with the wrecking ball. She was taking down his defenses, and everything was spilling out now. Years of need, of unmet emotional longing, bleeding endlessly from him.
He found he couldn’t even scowl about it, because he was, at that moment, sitting on the floor in Leena’s room, watching his daughter toddle around in a circle. She was wearing a short, pink dress that showed off chubby legs, the skirt flaring out in the back, thanks to her diaper.
“Fashion forward,” he said to her, as she wobbled and her legs folded, dropping her straight on her bottom. “And practical for you, I imagine it cushioned you some.”
She gurgled and let out a long string of jabber that she seemed to think were words, because when she was done, she looked at him expectantly.
“I don’t know what you said.”
She responded with more jabber and flapping hands. In spite of his foul mood, he felt a smile curve his lips. Jada was right about one thing, babies were very cute. Although, he didn’t think babies in general were all that cute. But Leena was. Leena was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. So perfect and tiny.
He shifted and lay down on his stomach, propping himself up on his elbow and taking her hand in his. He counted her fingers. Five of them. Then he took her other hand and counted the fingers there too before moving on to her toes.
“Ten and ten,” he said. “Had to check.”
“That was the first thing I did when I held her at the hospital.”
He looked over his shoulder and straightened into a sitting position. “Is it?”
“Yes.” Jada walked into the room and he wondered how long she’d been standing there. He didn’t like her being witness to all this stuff. Mainly because he didn’t want anyone to witness it. These feelings for Leena, the feelings he kept having in general, were like new skin growing over wounds. Tender. Raw.
“I wanted to make sure.”
“Well, yeah. You have to do it.”
“I didn’t get to hold her at the hospital,” he said, suddenly choked by regret. “I wish I would have known about her. And I hope if I had I would have cared.”
“Are you honestly afraid you wouldn’t have?”
“Seeing Sayid with his family…that started changing my thoughts on babies. But…a year ago? I’m not certain what I would have done.”
“You would have done the right thing, Alik. Because it’s what you do.”
“No, Jada, it’s not.” He pushed up into standing and Leena shrieked, holding her arms up and looking at him plaintively. He couldn’t deny her. He bent and picked her up and she giggled, triumphant. “I’ve spent my life doing what was best for me and to hell with everyone else.”
“What changed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe me. We can only hope.”
Except last night he’d done it with Jada. Done what pleased himself. Had looked out only for his own well-being. Although, it hadn’t gone as planned. There had been none of the detachment he’d bragged about to her in the beginning.
“Do you want to change, Alik?”
“If it’s possible.”
“You hurt me last night,” she said.
H
er words hit him like a slap to the face. “Where? What did I do?”
“Not physically,” she said, her cheeks coloring. “Physically it all felt good. But the way you treated me after…Alik, I understand that you don’t want love and all of that—that’s fine. But I don’t want you to try and prove the point that you feel nothing every time you’re with me.”
“Do you want love, Jada?”
She shook her head slowly. “Not from you.”
He didn’t know why, but the admission stabbed at him. “Then what is it you want from me?”
“Respect. Being treated like more than a whore.”
“I don’t treat you like that.”
“You do. You did last night. Like a woman who was there just to satisfy you.”
“I gave you pleasure,” he said, “more than I did the night that…”
“You know what? I preferred the night you came first,” she said, the color in her cheeks deepening.
“How?”
“Last night was balm for your ego, Alik. You can’t pretend otherwise. So you proved you were a stud and you…” Her eyes drifted to Leena. “I know she doesn’t know what we’re talking about but I can’t help thinking that this could be a scarring early life experience for her.”
Alik set his daughter down in her crib and put a shape sorter in front of her, and even though she shot him an indignant look, she didn’t scream. “Outside.”
He and Jada walked out of the nursery and he closed the door behind them. “You may finish telling me why I left you sexually unsatisfied now,” he said dryly.
“You were proving something about yourself,” she said. “You weren’t giving to me. That other time? You just lost control. And I think I liked that better. It was honest, at least. I’m tired of…I’m tired of not having honesty.”
“When have I not given you honesty?”
“You did at first, but now…now you’re protecting yourself and I’ve had that relationship, Alik. Where everyone is hiding what they want so they don’t hurt anyone, so they don’t hurt themselves.”
“I thought you didn’t want love.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why bother to make comparisons?”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t. But I would rather have fast, than pleasure brought from your calculated control.”
“That makes no sense, Jada. Sex is about pleasure.”
“That’s not all it’s about. Didn’t you hear what I said to you last night?”
Yes. He’d heard it. That she would have been better off alone than with him when it came to getting pleasure. He hadn’t liked it at all. The rejection had cut through his compromised defenses with stunning accuracy.
“Hard to miss.”
“Sex is about intimacy with someone. About connection. It’s not about an adrenaline rush, or feeling good for a few minutes. Until you realize that you’re missing out on a huge piece of what sex is. You’re missing out on making love.”
“And you’re an expert?”
“Alik, I’ve had the best sex with you. No question. In terms of pleasure, in terms of excitement…I didn’t have any clue it could be so good. But I’m lonely after. And I’m cold. And I’ve had quite enough of that.”
He didn’t like hearing that. That he hurt her. That he was spreading the chill inside of his soul to her. She was so warm, so beautiful and full of light. Thinking he might be damaging that…the pain of it stabbed right through the walls he kept around his heart.
“I am sorry for that,” he said. “It wasn’t my intention to hurt you.”
He’d been too busy trying to protect himself to worry about what pushing Jada away might do to her, because until he’d listened to her talk just now, he hadn’t truly understood how sex could be connected to emotion. To the way you felt about yourself.
That wasn’t entirely true. He’d been on a journey to understanding it since the first time he’d touched her. Because when they were done, the feel of her lingered. Her smell haunted him, feminine and exotic, jasmine and spice and pure enticement.
He had never been able simply to have her and put her out of his mind. He’d never been able to look at her and then put her out of his mind. Like her spice lingered on his skin, Jada always lingered in his thoughts.
“I know, Alik. You never intend to hurt anyone. You just don’t always understand how other people…feel.”
He didn’t. Because he didn’t feel in the same way other people did. And he hated that in himself now. Hated it because it had caused Jada pain. Because it might cause Leena pain later.
“I always thought if I smiled enough,” he said, “then I would start to feel happy. If I did enough things that made me feel good, it might turn into something more. It doesn’t work that way. It never made me feel a damn thing. But Leena does. You do.”
“Me?” she asked, her cheeks paled.
“Yes. I am sorry I hurt you. Knowing that I did…it hurts me.”
“Empathy.”
He nodded slowly. “New for me. I am pleased to have found it. I owe you, for the way I treated you last night.”
She shook her head, her dark ponytail swinging in time with the movement. “No, you don’t, Alik. That’s not how it works. It’s not a trade system. Just don’t do it again.”
“I want to take you out,” he said. He did. He wanted to make her smile. Wanted to be in public with her at his side, wanted to show everyone that she was his. It was a strange desire, new. So many new feelings and needs in the past few weeks. He was starting to feel like a different man. Finally. After so many years of trying.
“What about Leena?”
“Marie is here.”
“I know, but I don’t like giving her all the responsibility.” Jada had a hard time giving up control to the au pair, but Alik, selfishly, liked that it ensured she had more free time in the evenings with him.
“One night out is hardly giving her all the responsibility. Please, come with me.”
“All right, but I have to change. I’m not going out in my sweats.”
“Wear something red.”
“I haven’t been to a club in…maybe ever,” Jada said, eyeing the crowded room. People were seated at bistro tables that circled the dance floor, all of it packed in tight. The concept of personal space a total loss.
It wasn’t like a flashing lights techno club or anything, for which she was grateful. It was dark and smoky, live jazz music provided by a band on stage.
“You’ve never been to a club?”
“I got married very young and got busy with being a homemaker. We went out, but not dancing. And certainly not anywhere like this.”
“Didn’t you ever want to?”
“We just…we didn’t.”
He frowned. “And now, are you here because of me only? Because it is something we do? Or do you want to be here?”
“I want to be here, but it’s not…it’s not like he was holding me back. At least, I didn’t think so. I liked what we had. Yes, the baby thing caused some problems but I know we would have worked it out.”
“But tonight you want to dance?”
“Yes. Tonight I want to dance.”
Alik tightened his hold on her and turned her to face him, his eyes skimming over her body. She had followed his order and put on a short, red dress that hugged her figure a bit more lovingly than she normally cared for. Or maybe that wasn’t true anymore.
This was a dress she’d bought last week, and it had seemed perfect. And she’d had Alik in mind when she’d bought it. He was even changing her taste in clothes.
“The last time I danced was at my first wedding,” she said.
“Too long, Jada.”
He released his hold on her, then laced his fingers through hers, leading her into the center of the packed dance floor. The crush of bodies around them wrapped them in an intimate cocoon and when Alik pulled her against his arms, she melted into him.
They danced slowly, her head tucked against his chest. I
t was so simple, so romantic.
“This doesn’t seem like the kind of club a billionaire would frequent,” she said, trying to dispel some of the misty haze that had descended around them.
“Maybe it isn’t, but it’s exactly the kind of place I used to go to when I came to Paris for the first time. I thought it would be nice to…show you. To share with you.”
That made her heart tighten. “Thank you.”
The music stopped for a moment, then the bassist started plucking strings, fast and hard, setting up a rhythm that didn’t support the gentle sway she and Alik had been moving in. A smile curved Alik’s lips and he dropped his hands from around her waist, took her hands in his.
She wasn’t experienced at dancing, but Alik was easy to follow. He twirled her and drew her into his body before releasing her again. She laughed, a light, fizzing sensation filling her chest, her head.
The music kept going and she kicked her shoes off at some point, throwing them under one of the bistro tables. She and Alik danced until her brow was damp with sweat, until her voice was hoarse from singing and laughing.
“Last song,” Alik said, in response to the announcement from the lead singer. “Want to dance to it?”
“I’m going to fall over, Alik. You’ve exhausted me,” she said, wandering back to the table and bracing her hand on the surface, tugging her shoes out from beneath it and putting them back on. “That was…fun.” The most fun she could remember having in years. “Thank you. I didn’t know I would like dancing so much.” It was on the tip of her tongue to say they should go again. That she wanted to make it a regular thing. But there was no point to that. None at all.
“I didn’t, either,” he said. He took her hand and led her out of the club, back into the crisp night air. It felt cool and dry on her skin after the moist heat of the dance floor. “I didn’t know a lot of things about life until you, Jada,” he said, pulling her close, kissing her lips. It was tender, sweet. Frightening.
“I want you to teach me,” he said, his voice rough.
“Teach you what?” she asked.
