Domination (Explicitly Yours 2)

“Look at me and say it,” Beau said.

She found his eyes with hers. They weren’t words, just breaths. “I love you.”

He pulled on the neckline of her T-shirt, grabbed her breasts. She arched into his hands, throwing her back against the steering wheel. The horn honked and her jeans ripped somewhere and she was coming as hard as he was thrusting up into her. He groaned louder and louder until he also came.

She reached out to grab onto anything. Her palm connected with the cold window, her other hand landing on his heaving chest. They were real things, unlike love, unlike fear, which she couldn’t hold.

The car was closing in on her. She opened the door and would’ve tumbled out if Beau hadn’t caught her waist. She slapped his hands away and stood. It took her three fumbling tries to get back into her jeans. She ran both hands through her hair. “Fuck,” she screamed. It bounced off the gray, concrete walls. Nothing had ever seemed as dire. She loved two men, but she loved them differently. With Johnny, it was in a way that she’d let him go before she returned with only part of the heart that had belonged to him. With Beau, her love wasn’t that selfless. It was an annihilation of her senses. A conquest, a theft of her entire self. She squatted between two painted white lines and pulled hard on her hair. “I’m so fucked,” she said between hitched breaths, rocking back and forth.

A car door slammed, echoing around the garage. Beau walked up next to her.

This had to be her moment alone. She deserved to do this on her own for the way she’d led everyone into this mess. She could’ve ended it all with a firm, simple no. “Go away. I can’t do this right now.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I mean it,” she said.

“You’re in the middle of a parking spot.” He leaned down to help her up, but she jumped to her feet. He had tricked her. Pulled the wool over her eyes. It was the only explanation. She hadn’t even tried to keep love out of it, because love hadn’t been an option. It had blindsided her completely. She shoved him backward. “I said go. I hate you.”

He took two large steps and grabbed her wrists before she could push him again.

“I hate you for this,” she said. “You ruined everything. We were fine before you. We were happy.”

“You said it yourself—you wouldn’t be here if that were true.” He forced her against his chest where she broke down and bawled. He wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her back with his large hand.

“Nobody has ever made me feel so alone,” she said.

He pulled away slightly. “I make you feel alone?”

She’d learned her lesson as a kid when her dad had walked out on her and her mom—the only person she could rely on was herself. Not even Johnny or her mom. But she couldn’t see beyond tomorrow, beyond Beau, when she’d have to go back to a life that had been fine before him. “I could always take care of myself. I’ve never needed anyone.” She wouldn’t look at him. “I haven’t even left yet, and I already feel alone.”

Even she didn’t trust herself. Just yesterday, it’d been Johnny she’d loved. Nothing could erase that, but their love had stopped growing somewhere along the way—not because it hadn’t been nourished or tended to, but because from the start, it could only get so big.

What she felt for Beau was new, but already it seemed as though it could reach a terrifying size. It couldn’t be trimmed, monitored or kept. It was a vine that had the potential to overtake everything in its path. Lola didn’t know which of the two was the right kind, only that after glimpsing the possibility of her and Beau, a stunted love with Johnny wouldn’t be enough anymore.

Beau covered her hair with both hands. His grip was firm, but his words were soft. “I don’t want you to feel alone.”

She looked up finally. “What do you want me to feel?”

“Loved.”

“Johnny loves me.”

His eyes darted between hers. The garage was silent except for the one rapid heartbeat between them. He opened his mouth and shut it. He put a hand on her cheek. “Lola.”

He said her name so thickly, she could almost reach out and touch it. Her fingertips tingled. She was back in the drugstore as a teenager about to commit a crime. She wouldn’t stand in the way anymore. She wanted him. She’d chained it up inside early on, but it was coming loose. If Johnny had fought for her at all, Beau had fought harder.

His eyebrows gathered as he frowned down at her. “Sometimes I think you can see through things other people can’t. You see me. You make me powerful, but more,” he paused, swallowing, as if the words were fighting within him, “you make me powerless.”

Powerless. That was what she’d seen in his eyes when she couldn’t read him. It wasn’t that he’d been asking anything of her, but that he’d been unable to do anything for her, and Beau thrived on his power.

“And I don’t want to put you in that car at sunrise,” he said.

“You don’t?”

“No, but I have to. It’s our agreement.”

“I don’t care about the money,” she said. “I love you. I love him. Tell me what to do, Beau. I’ll do it.”

“Okay.” He was dependable. He made decisions in her best interest, not his. Even when he commanded her, he did it to give her things she hadn’t known she wanted. He smoothed his hand lovingly over her hair until he was cupping the back of her head. “Here’s what you’re going to do, Lola. You’re going to go home. You’re going to tell Johnny it’s over.”

Involuntarily, she curled her hands harder into his T-shirt. They were two distinct concepts in her mind. There was loving Beau, and there was ending it with Johnny. They’d been two mutually exclusive ideas, one she was submitting to and one she hadn’t seriously entertained. Beau wanted to merge them. “Just like that? Over?”

“Isn’t it?” he asked. “How can you be with him after this?”

She shook her head. “How can I do that to him?”

“I told you once, you can’t sacrifice yourself to make him happy. You know what you want, but somewhere along the way, he helped you bury your instinct. Go there again. What does it tell you?”

Her heart swelled. Johnny liked Lola’s edge, but it was true. He preferred her a little dulled. Beau, on the other hand, wanted what he’d been asking for all along—her. He hadn’t even put one day between meeting her and making his proposition. Within an hour of their sidewalk encounter, he’d told her she had his attention. His assurance was in his actions. Maybe he’d known all along. Maybe this had always been his plan. It was the reason she’d been pressing him for. He’d chosen her because he was a man who knew what he wanted.

“My instinct tells me that Johnny and I have history,” she said, “but that he’s not my future.”

“And why not?” he prompted.

“Because you are.”