“What kind of statement is that? Trust me, I’m a sexy beast, even though from the way I behave you would expect pretty much any Arctic land to be less frigid than I am?”
“Do you want me to provide references?”
“I’m just saying the way you’re acting towards me when it comes to this topic is making me feel incredibly uncomfortable, and suggestions like that are not helping at all.”
Devin took another step forward. I retreated a little out of some growing habit, but he’d never acted against me with more force than was necessary, so my fear receded quickly. Then as my back pressed against the vertical line of a shelf behind me, the adrenaline spike and my elevated heartbeat mingled to create something else.
The bastard, he gave me absolutely nothing, but I was responding to him all the same.
And then—a flicker. I didn’t know what it meant, but he seemed to be experiencing some response when he looked down on me. His expression twisted like he was rebooting for a moment there.
“It’s fucked-up that you’re even pushing for this,” he told me. “I decided to snatch you from your bed a few days ago. Anything could have happened to you.”
Of course he had to hit me right where I was most uncertain about how I was proceeding myself. “But you already know I’m fucked-up, a bit twisted, not like other girls.”
“Not like other girls.” Devin tipped his forehead forward, gently contacting mine. “I’ve heard that line before too, you know.”
“I know, and I’m sure you’ll agree it was pretty rude of them to go taking my—”
He put his mouth gently over the rest of my bluster. My knees failed to lock and I probably would have lost contact with him and fallen in a heap on the floor, but the shelves behind me gave me something to lean on, plus he was so close I took it as invitation to grab onto him, using his strength to keep me balanced.
I didn’t get a chance to work out how I felt about the kiss. It was over in a flash, leaving me clinging to firm fabric over firm arms with my heart racing.
Devin’s eyes moved over my face the way I’d seen the really invested kids at school study their textbooks. There weren’t a whole lot of words to be found in my head though.
“I can give you what you want,” he said. “But it’s not going to matter. It’s just a service to me, is that the sort of experience you really want?”
A service? It felt like a pretty powerful service to me, but I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want him to change his mind.
Devin seemed to be able to reach right into the back of my mind and dig out things about me I didn’t want him to have, but I was starting to think maybe I could be able to do the same for him too. Maybe the reason I was so drawn to him against all logic was that we were so similar I couldn’t really find it in me to fear him.
Well, Devin could say all he liked about it not meaning anything, but I was certain all of that would come to bullshit in the end. So I fluttered my cute little eyelashes and murmured, “If that’s all you’re willing to give me, that’s what I want.”
“You are a truly troubling young woman,” said Devin, and kissed me again.
That time it lasted long enough to make its way to the thinking part of my brain: yes, there was nothing about this that felt like just a service.
Then my thoughts turned themselves off again, aside from inane blips the likes of yes, you very bad mafia man. Devin’s hands were wandering all over the place, down my back and my backside and then my skirt was creeping up through some mechanism I didn’t understand…
And then he’d pushed me back again so my head bumped against the shelves, although I only felt it as a vague discomfort in the background.
“What?”
“Your rice is burning,” Devin told me, “and we need to eat dinner.”
And all of those seemed like things that he would have known before he charged in on me like that, but there was no way Devin was going to admit he’d been hoping to get in and out in seconds, put me in my place and then move on with dinner… until he found himself liking the buildup too much.
Maybe if I was completely clueless about men, I wouldn’t have understood it. As it was, I thought I was starting to understand more than I ever had before. I would have called Devin out on it once, worked on him until he cracked, but I kept my mouth shut this time. I was confident I was going to win anyway, and this was the best way to do it.
I winced a little as I wondered if Devin and his mother were so doubtful of my ability to make even a good fake partner for him because there were so many ways in which I wasn’t being sensible in my dealings with them. Tells I hadn’t even learned to see yet. It was probably why my parents weren’t willing to let me in on the extent of their crazy world. That was kind of depressing though, because my parents were hardly in a position of tremendous competence. They seemed to be mostly existing by deluding themselves into utter overconfidence.
Devin had already moved away to set the table. And there I still was, my lips burning from the way his mouth had tasted, certainly not hungry for food. But Devin gestured me towards the table with a stare that said I was going to have to eat that slightly compromised stir-fry, or nothing.
The food was terrible, even for me with my disgusting lack of taste. I hardly noticed it. I kept staring at Devin, eating with roughly the same attitude he’d brought into that expensive restaurant, not even spilling the sauce on the black parts of his suit where it wouldn’t show. I kept trying to convince myself that what I was craving was the worst craving anyone had ever had, including anything that had been thought up by
a brain on pregnancy. But it was ridiculous to be so worried about whether I did or didn’t sleep with him when I was already making myself vulnerable to him, right? Or was this just how I was convincing myself to go along with wherever my lust took me?
I don’t think I ate much. I wasn’t really looking at my plate. Then when Devin abruptly slid his chair backwards and stood, I startled like a tiny animal that could run away if provoked further. I knew damn well I couldn’t run.