Page 54 of Dirty Love

When we fuck, it’s hard and rough. I hold her down and she pushes against me, her eyes on fire. I slam the first spurt of my seed deep inside her, hot and scalding, then pull out and mark her with the rest.

A white rope of come across her belly.Mine.

Another shot across the swell of her tits.Mine.

The last one catches her chin and drips onto her neck.My fucking woman.

She rubs it all in, every last drop, but then climbs out of bed and walks silently into the shower.

I don’t join her.

It’s dawn when I admit I’m not going to sleep.

I roll out of bed and sit, legs wide, head in my hands.

I feel her stir behind me and I don’t turn around until she says my name.

“Wilson…”

I glare at her. “Is this all you want from me?”

“I can’t…” She stiffens, then lifts her chin and looks me right in the eye. “Yes. This is all I want. This is what works for me. And this was the deal. I don’t want any more than this.”

It’s a damn lie. And we both know that this isn’t the end of anything, that I’ll be back for her sooner than later. But right now? I don’t want to see her face a single second more. “Then you don’t get me.”

I’m shaking as I do the one thing I swore I’d never do, and walk away from her.

—twenty-four—

Tabitha

Seattle

December

Christmas Day

I don’t hear from him for a month.

The silence is deafening, and deep inside, I can feel myself unspooling because of it.

Turns out there’s something worse than love. I can’t even name it, exactly, but what Wilson has unlocked by dragging me back to that buried pain has made me reckless.

Now I’m reminded constantly of that fleeting awakening when I finally, desperately knew what it was to love another person, only to have him snatched from me. Too small, too new, too fragile for this world.

Not Wilson, though. Nothing about him is small or fragile. But I lost him anyway, by the bonds of my own making.

I lost him, but…

I know he’s watching. I have no doubt he’s bugged my house top to bottom, and when I get back from Los Angeles, I hole up on the couch. In a weird way, that makes me feel a little closer to him, but I know I’m just deluding myself.

He’ll keep an eye on me because he’s noble, a dark knight, but I’ve wounded him.

And the worst part is, it’s for the best. I’m about to go on tour. Grant will be there constantly and I wouldn’t be able to easily hide a rendezvous.

We weren’t going to last forever, I keep telling myself.

It feels wrong. It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach no matter how often I repeat it.

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