Page 21 of Destined for the Devil
Ow. That hurt. Somehow, I didn't expect her to say something like that to me. Damn, Isla was a mystery. She seemed so sweet and innocent, but then she delivered a blow like that. She wasn't totally wrong, though, damn it.
"I don't only...take." I tried to justify myself.
"Yes, you do. It's obvious. You like to fuck and discard. And you wouldn't discard if you knew how to give and pleasure someone else besides yourself." She shrugged easily, but I became infuriated at her words. She didn't fucking know me! How could she make such judgments?!
The sushi was served, but neither one of us picked up our chopsticks, both staring at each other as if in a duel.
"You're coming with me." I made the fucking decision and focused on the sushi in front of us, not interested in the food in the slightest.
Isla reached for the soy sauce, and before pouring it into her little bowl…she poured it into mine. It ignited inside me again—that feeling of uncontrollable desire and deep admiration. I was touched that she would do that. She...was taking care...of me.
"Okay, boss. Sounds like I have no choice." Isla spoke in defeat and put a small piece of sushi in her mouth, chewing carefully, deep in thought.
"Isla, how many men have you slept with?" I blurted out the question, all of me in disarray.
Immediately, she choked on her food and began coughing, turning red both from lack of oxygen and embarrassment. I savored the flustered expression on her face. She finally took a sip of water and cleared her throat, still not looking at me.
"Why the fuck are you asking me all these questions today, Roman!? How is it any of your business?!"
She was right, it wasn't any of my business, but at this point, things were going downhill so fast that I didn't fucking care anymore.
"It's a simple question that adults ask each other." I shrugged easily. God, please don't tell me that she'd only been with the Grant guy. Please tell me she was a complete fucking slut or something.Somethinghad to be off about her because so far, she was literal perfection, and I was dying inside.
Her perfect angel eyes finally looked into mine, defiance spelled out in capital letters, but I held her gaze, dying to find out the answer to my question.
"I really don't know you well enough to share such personal details. You're not my girlfriend who I can discuss my sex life with." She held her ground, and I liked it. I was hoping she was going to put up a fight.
"If I tell you my number, will you tell me yours?" I moved the conversation along, and she considered it for a brief second. Without waiting for her to answer, I continued talking. "I actually don't knowhow many women I've slept with. Can you believe that? At some point, I stopped counting." I chewed slowly, unable to stop my smile. Isla looked back at me with such disgust that I shook with laughter.
"You...you don't know how many women you've had sex with? That's insane,” she added, stunned.
"I know! Let's see, I'm thirty-five. I lost my virginity at fourteen, so that's twenty-one years of sex. Let's conservatively say I slept with one girl a month, so that's twelve girls for twenty-one years, which makes…" I paused, doing the math in my head. She did the math too because her jaw dropped right before I calculated it. "Two hundred and fifty? Damn, that's a lot." I chuckled at that number. It probably wasn't that much, but it was close.
Looking repulsed, Isla found her voice relatively quickly. "So we can deduce that you've never been in a long-term relationship then?"
I didn't see that question coming. My longest relationship was probably three or four months, and that had probably happened only twice in my life.
"No, I have been," I lied, but she knew that.
"And out of your two hundred andfiftyfuck buddies, how many of those women actually had an orgasm while with you? Or were you only concerned with getting what you wanted?” She took another small sip of her drink, looking all sweet and innocent while throwing out such accusations.
"Many! Not all, of course, but I know how to satisfy a woman!" I spoke a little louder than intended, getting heated at her insinuation that I only took and never gave. Butfuck,she wasn't completely wrong. I pressed on, asking what I was dying to know. "Now tell me your number."
Isla shook her head, showing me that she didn’t care for this conversation, but my stomach sank at her next words. "One. I've slept with one man."
God. Fucking. Damn it.
There was no way I could sleep with her now. Nomotherfuckingway. Until the last second, I hoped that my guess was wrong.
"Fuck," I whispered, closing my eyes and dropping my head. Isla would be the end of me. I wanted her more than I ever wanted anything else in life. It was physically breaking me apart. But I knew we were polar opposites. I killed people regularly and defrauded the government for hundreds of millions of dollars, and she probably never even stepped on a cockroach.
I couldn’t fuck her—I didn’t want to hurt her. I couldn't keep a relationship; I knew that. I was addicted to sex or addicted to having no commitments, I wasn’t exactly sure. And Isla deserved a normal life, with a regular guy who could give her a family. Especially after everything she had been through. Inevitably, I was somehow going to hurt her, and I never wanted to do that.
My already nonexistent appetite evaporated in a second, and I just sat at the table, my head in my hands, as Isla watched me crumble to pieces.
"What? Are you okay?"
Concerned, she reached over and placed her hand on my forearm. Waves of pleasure and desire ran through me at her touch, and I almost groaned from the emotional and mental pain I was in.
