Pulse - Part 3 (Pulse 3)

"Just to you." I roll my eyes. "Drew didn't want to fuck me. Well, he did technically, but…"

"You don't understand." He studies me. "Men want you. How can they not?"

I reach to embrace him. "You want me. Don’t think that means other men do too."

He grazes his hand over my bare back. "I can't take that chance. That's why I wanted your number."

My heart dips at the words. It's not from elation, that's not it. I'm disappointed that once again he's confessing that he wanted my number to keep me from sleeping with anyone else. "You asked for it that night because you felt threatened by Drew."

His body tenses beneath me and I immediately know I've struck a nerve. "Not threatened," he corrects me in an even tone. "That's not what it was."

"What then?"

"I asked for it because I realized that if I didn't, you were going to slip away from me."

I jerk back so I can look into his eyes. "You put my number into your fuck phone." It's meant to sound hostile. It's an insult, regardless of how he spins it.

"I've never been in a relationship, Jessica." He bows his head as if he wants to run from the truth.

"Are you serious?" The question sounds so much more callous than I wanted it to. "How is that possible? You're thirty-one."

"I started sleeping with women when I was a teenager." He pauses as his glides his hand over my arm. "I've dated a few women but it never went anywhere. I like being alone. I like keeping my business life separate from my work."

"That's why you had a phone just filled with women you fuck?"

"I could leave it alone when I'm not in the mood. I could forget about all of them. I wanted to leave that all behind me. When I took your number that night, I had that phone in my pocket. It wasn't because I was going to call someone else to fuck. It was because I was ready to toss it."

"You put my number in there with all of them." The gravity of the statement stings as I hear myself say it.

"I put it in my phone." He stresses the last two words. "Right after you left, I put it in the phone I have with me all the time. It was a big step for me. I wasn't ready to call you from it because I didn't know how to explain it. I've always kept my fucking separate from the rest of my life."

"That's why you had that hotel suite?"

"I arranged that shortly after I arrived here because I felt the same old urges to…"

"To fuck random women?" I fill in the uncomfortable blank.

He buries his face in my neck. "I'm not proud of who I was. I wanted to change. I tried and I didn't fuck anyone until I met Cassie."

"You took her to the room?" I need to know. I want to tell myself it doesn't matter if he did, but that's a lie. He told me he only had sex with her twice. He told me it never happened in that hotel suite.

"No, never." The words whisper across my skin. "You were the only one."

I pull back. I can't absorb that when he's so close to me. I can't think straight when I can feel his breath hot on my body.

"Jessica, don't run." He grips my arm. "Don't do this."

"I'm not." I try to reassure myself as much as him.

"You are." His tone is level and calm. "You want to race out of here because you're afraid I'm lying to you."

"You are lying." There I said it. It's what I feel.

"You were the only woman who ever set foot in that hotel suite other than my sister. The only one."

"I don’t believe you." I can't lie. I won't lie to him.

He pulls me back into his body. "I'll prove to you that I'm not the man you think I am."