Page 90 of Blitz

I force myself to pull away. She whines deep in her throat, and I run my nose along the shell of her ear, pressing a kiss to the place right in front of her ear, memorizing her scent.

One of the guys whistles. “Damn, son.”

I tip her face up, her eyes meeting mine. “Did you get your issues worked out?”

She bites her lip. “King…”

I sigh. “You know I want to, baby. You don’t know how badly I do. But until we figure this out…”

“It’s just sex,” she sighs.

Ice flushes through my veins, putting a quick damper on any potential there was for sex.

“You know it’s not to me,” I tell her quietly. “It’s so much more than that.”

Chapter thirty-seven

Tucker

“It doesn’t have to be,” she says. She toys with her lip again. I reach out and pull her lip from between her teeth, running the pad of my thumb across it.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mase. This is a hard no for me. I don’t want you to ever not feel good with me. That you’re okay with it worries me.”

“That’s what sex is like. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s not.”

“The sex not being good isn’t great either,” I tell her. Her friends are clearly listening in. I block them out, focusing only on her. “But what I’m talking about is the emotional component. Your mental state. If you’re not in a good headspace, we shouldn’t be having sex. It’s as simple as that.”

“There doesn’t have to be a big emotional component.”

“There does for me.”

She throws her hands into the air, sloshing beer onto the carpet. “It’s not like that with other people, Tucker. It’s about sex. Dirty, mindless fucking because it feels good. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

My heart is in my throat. I disentangle myself from her, taking a step back. “Maybe you should be having sex with other people, then. People who aren’t me.”

“I don’t want to have sex with other people,” she shouts, catching the attention of half the party. “I only want to have sex with you!”

“You mean you want to fuck me,” I snap.

She takes a step back. Some of the fire goes out of her eyes. “What’s the difference?”

“I don’t want to fuck. I want to make love to you, and have you love me.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“No, Mason, it isn’t.” I step towards her and cup her cheek again. “I don’t want a fling. I don’t want to toss you aside after I’ve had my fill. I want to be with you. And you just want me to fuck you.”

“Tuck, no. That’s not what—”

My breath comes in rapid bursts, like I’ve just run up and down the stairs of the arena in full pads. “It feels like you’re using me. And that’s not cool with me. I’m not some toy you can turn on and off with the flick of a switch. I’m a real person and I have real feelings.”

She frowns. “Of course you are—”

“You treat me like I’m just some guy, any guy with a dick desperate to fuck you. Like you don’t care that it’s me, that it’s us.”

She flinches.

“I’ve been up front about what I need the entire time,” I tell her carefully. “I need that emotional connection, and you aren’t giving it to me. So either we don’t do this, or you figure out what’s going on with your head and fucking talk to me.”