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More than I can stand.
‘You keep arguing the point like it’s academic, like you have no participation. I’m beginning to become quite offended.’ His tone holds a note of seriousness as he slides his hands towards mine. ‘Yes, I like hurting pretty girls, but you’re a pretty girl who likes to be hurt. I also like taking pretty girls—that would be you in this instance—out to dinner and the cinema, given the opportunity. I’d also like pretty girls— that’s you again, by the way—to be curled on my sofa with a book while I cook. We aren’t a nation of deviants any more than Americans are a nation of Bible-thumping extremists. Just because I like you over my knee doesn’t mean I resent my mother or that I secretly craved beingbuggered at school by the upper sixth.’
This isn’t working. This isn’t talking either of us out of it.
‘Nature versus nurture.’ He snorts, raking long fingers through his dark hair. ‘It’s such bullshit. We are what we are just because we are.’ But his eyes slide from mine in an uncharacteristically reticent moment. ‘And I like whoyou are more than anything else. I likeyou and want to be with you. Can’t you just accept that?’
My heart lifts as I swallow audibly. Not that it takes much to lift, malnourished and perhaps underdeveloped as it probably is. This isn’t the first time Dan had alluded to actual feelings, though it was the first time he’d done so outside the bedroom. But that he mirrors my own growing sentiments doesn’t help. Not one bit.
What if I can’t do this? What if I hurt him?
Without answering him, I reach for my coffee cup, hoping its bitter contents could dissolve the ache.
‘Not quite what you expected?’ His words are quiet, and there’s an almost rueful twist to his mouth. ‘An escape from the subconscious. Very much conscious, I’m afraid now. Becoming more so by the day.’ He clears his throat, straightening on his chair, his hand retracting slowly across the table.
Are we falling in love?
‘I don’t even know what you do for a living,’ I say, hoping to change the direction of the conversation. How was it possible we haven’t discussed this kind of stuff?For the same reason you didn’t want to tell him your name, my mind whispers. Because you didn’t want this to be real.
‘Because you’ve never asked,’ he said, standing and holding out his hand.
I thread my fingers through his; holding hands no longer foreign territory between us but feeling as natural as when he pins them to the bed. Things are changing. Maybe it’s time I stop lying to myself because casual isn’t the ache you feel when you’re home alone and wanting to be near him. It isn’t the clawing need to feel him between your legs. And it isn’t placing your teeth over his scar, desperate to overcome the brand with one of your own.
We trace our path back to his home but barely speak. At the garden gate, ever the gentleman, Dan gestures me ahead, giving rise to a sudden thought. My mother would think him ideal. She’d approve of his looks and his beautiful manners. And his accent, of course. My father, though... he doesn’t believe in divorce. But then, he doesn’t rule my life anymore. It’s strange how I can hear my mother’s voice asking me,Honey, what’s the problem?
Then I realise one of the problems stares at me from the door. A note in an immature hand.
Pulling it from the door, Dan reads, ‘Gone to Benjamin’s house. Mummy says you’ll pick me up. Can we have pizza for supper?’ Pausing, Dan looks to be thinking twice about folding it into his pocket.‘What in God’s name did he use to stick it to the wood?’ he mutters, his fingers rubbing through the sticky brown residue on the paint.
‘Looks like Nutella,’ I murmur as he pushes the door wide. ‘You should buy the boy a cell phone.’
Closing the door with his heel, Dan wraps an arm around my waist. I feel him sigh against my back as he rests his chin on my shoulder.
‘Is it Hal that worries you?’
I make to pull away, murmuring my denials as his arms tighten.
‘The idea of Hal? My responsibilities?’ I shake my head; it wasn’t really, was it? ‘Tell me what it is.’
I set my jaw and tilt my head, turning swiftly to look at him. ‘This wasn’t supposed to get real.’ If it sounds like an accusation, it’s because it is.
He sighs, this time with frustration. ‘You really are the most infuriating woman. This may have begun in the realms of fantasy—an unlikelyscenario, absolutely—for the start of a relationship. But at some point between our first fuck and the last, things have become very real. For both of us.’
My teeth feel the strain of biting back tears, my brow creases and my gaze not on him.What if? What if? What if?
‘Look at me.’ Harsh, his command leaks disapproval but not scorn.
Aiming for defiance, I raise my head slowly, chin rising high and haughty. My battle armour. My push to his shove. My silentgo fuck yourselfhanging in the air.
‘We’ve spent more hours together than most people do through months of dating,’ he says, stepping into me. ‘What started out as you exploring what you like to think of as your ugly side turned out to be quite beautiful in the end.’ His dark gaze bores into mine. ‘Admit it, Louise. You like me.’
Options, wants, and needs run quicksilverthrough my mind as his fingers tighten, his expression becoming fierce.
‘You’ll give me an answer,’ he grates out, ‘evenif I have to take it out of your hide.’ He smiles almost cruelly. ‘But that’s right up your alley, as they say. And not how this is playing out today.’
He spins me in his arms, pushing me along the hall to the base of the stairs.
Chapter Nineteen
