Page 35 of Misadventures of a Curvy Girl
“Because you’re mine.”
Her eyes flick over my face, searching me. “You mean that?”
My hold tightens on her. “Yes, baby. You’re mine and Caleb’s, and you’ll remain ours until you don’t want to be any longer.”
“Yours.” She tries out the word, as if the entire concept is foreign to her. As if no one’s ever tried to possess her before.
Then they were all fucking fools.
“Ours,” I confirm roughly, yanking her close once again. “As long as you want us.”
She nibbles on her lower lip, and I can’t help it. I bend down and bite that lip for her. “Do you still want us, Ireland?” I murmur against her mouth. “Will you stay and let me make it up to you?”
Chapter Thirteen
Ireland
A couple of years ago, I was watching a movie with a handful of girlfriends as we traded gossip and passed around popcorn and bottles of wine. And we got to the part of the movie where the hero makes his grand gesture, chasing after the heroine and declaring his love for her. Declaring that she was his.
The room gave a collective groan at this, popcorn flying at the screen, and someone pronounced how utterly backward and chauvinistic that was and how she’d never be caught dead with a man who looked at her and said mine. A man who looked at her like she was a prize in the machine simply waiting to be claimed.
I stayed silent.
Because I wasn’t going to argue that on a structural level men should act proprietary with women, and I never would. But on a personal level, well…
It was hard to look at my friend, who was slender and sleek and would no doubt have men wanting her everywhere she went and not think easy for you to say. Her body was the kind of body that people wanted to claim, wanted to stake some kind of sexual ownership of, and mine was not—never had been, and as years of pointless diet torture had taught me, never would be.
So it was hard not to wish I had the luxury of scoffing at male desire. It was hard to watch those movies and know that, according to them, people like me didn’t have heroes chasing after them. People like me are the best friends, the comic relief, maybe even the villain.
And in real life? In real life, the kind of male attention I received was dangerous and demeaning. Aggressive frat boys who told me I should feel “lucky” to have them fuck me and then got belligerent and nasty when I refused them. Mean men at bars who grabbed and groped and assumed I’d be grateful for the assault since clearly nobody else would ever want to touch my body.
Girls like me, we didn’t get chased, we didn’t get claimed, we didn’t get the happily ever after. Not in movies. Not in real life.
And was it such a crime to want those things? I burned to have them, ached to be the heroine standing in the rain or at the airport or whatever while the hero pleaded and begged and humbled himself for the privilege and honor to be with me. While he ached and burned for my attention and my body.
And now here I am, listening to Ben plead and beg. Listening to him lay his claim.
Mine. Ours.
The corollary to Ben’s words darts around my mind, and it swallows up every other wound and worry: Theirs.
I’ve never belonged to another person before, not in the way that Ben is implying. Even Brian always made sure to tell people we were friends with benefits—or worse. At one memorably shameful work event, he told his boss I was his cousin in town for the week.
So, no, I’ve never had someone stand in front of me, eyes blazing with possessive lust, and practically vibrate with the need to claim me. Declare I’m theirs.
I’ve never been the heroine. Until now…and God help me, I like it. I like having this man on his proverbial knees while he also looks like he wants nothing more than to pin me against my own car and fuck me until the only word I remember is his name.
“Please, Ireland,” Ben says, his voice hoarse and his eyes swirling with a mixture of desperation and lust that my body can’t help but answer. “Please.”
I suck in a breath, my anger blowing away into nothing. “You have to promise to treat me with dignity,” I say, sliding my hands up his chest. “You can’t hurt me again.”
“Never again,” he vows, and then his lips are tracing back over mine with hungry, greedy kisses. “God, Ireland, never fucking again.”
He wraps my hand in one of his big ones and tugs me inside the house with the kind of uncompromising urgency that brooks no argument. Not that I’d argue anyway. There’s something about having a six-foot-plus, square-jawed, dark-eyed soldier yank you up to his bed that makes a girl eager.
But he surprises me—he takes me to Caleb’s bed instead, sitting back against the headboard with his long, muscular legs sprawled.
“Shorts off, panties off,” he says. It’s not a question.
