"Sure. Fine. Let's say that's true. Let's say you've been open and honest with me since day one. Fine. It's still not fair."
"What isn't fair about it?" I demanded.
She slammed the pan down onto the burner, finally letting her anger show. "Because you got to do it! You got to do whatever you fucking wanted. You knew I didn't feel great about it, but you did it anyway. And then you fucking teased me about being jealous." When she looked up at me, her eyes were flashing with rage. "And now that I finally might have someone who's interested in me, you suddenly want to close things up. Because you don't want me to see him. Because you're jealous and you're too up yourself to even use the words."
Her words hit hard, like a slap in the face. I opened my mouth to tell her she could have been seeing anyone she wanted while I was seeing other people, but then I closed it again because could she have?
Would this conversation just have happened earlier if that had been the case?
I didn't know if it was me not wanting her to see anyone or if it was just because Simon seemed so much more well suited to her than I did. I couldn't say for sure what I would have done if this had happened months ago.
She stood there, breathing hard, tension and anger in every line of her body, and I still wanted to back her against the counter and kiss her senseless, even though I knew that was a terrible idea that would result in me getting punched more than likely.
She just had this way about her, even she was angry. Maybe even especially when she was angry, that made me want her even more than I already did.
But that wasn't productive.
"Fine," I said finally. "You're right."
"I know I'm right," she snapped. "I don't need your validation. And I don't need your permission if I want to see Simon. I hadn't even decided yet, and here you are trying to make rules about it."
"I wasn't trying to make rules," I insisted. "I just wanted you to know how I felt."
"Great. Noted. You don't want me to see him. Why?"
Why? I thought that was pretty obvious. "Because I want to be the only one who gets to—” I cut myself off, not sure how to finish that sentence.
But of course, she wasn't willing to let it go. "Who gets to, what? Tie me up? Make me cry? Do things to me I'm not even really into? Congratulations, Killian, you're the only one. Simon isn't even interested in stuff like that, thank goodness."
Now it was my turn to laugh. "Still pretending you're not into it, then?"
"Shut up, that's not even the point."
She was right. It wasn’t the point, but it was something to latch onto that wasn’t dealing with my own turbulent feelings, so I would take what I could get at the moment.
“You’re lying to yourself,” I said, pushing it. “You’re telling yourself that you’re still some victim of my wicked whims or what have you, when that hasn’t been the case for months, and you know it. You like it just as much as I do. You crave it. You want me to hurt you and fuck you and use you the way I do. If you didn’t, I don’t think you’d come quite so hard when I do it.”
Ash was silent, face impassive as I spoke. She turned the stove off, leaving the egg in the pan, in some state of doneness. I thought she was going to scream or throw something at me, but she just looked at me, like she was daring me to continue.
And I’d never known when to back down and shut up, so I did. “You know I’m right,” I continued. “You know you want it, and you know no one else will be able to satisfy you like I can.”
“Fuck you,” she said, and there was a noticeable lack of heat in it. “You’re so fucking self-righteous, I can’t even deal with it. You think everything is about how good you are in bed, and you’re crazy. There is so much more to life than that.”
I was taken aback by that because it was not at all what I’d been expecting her to say. I’d thought she would deny it, tell me I was wrong and that she could get pleasure from anywhere. But she was staring at me, and there was disappointment in her eyes.
“Maybe you’re fine with everything being about sex or pain or pleasure,” she said. “Maybe that’s enough for you. You can go to sleep happy at night because you got me off and that’s all that matters to you. But do you know what? Even if I wasn’t satisfied with Simon, there’d be more there. There would be conversation and understanding and a relationship based on something other than using each other. And at the end of the day, I would be satisfied with him because he’s not a self-absorbed idiot who thinks he can buy or talk his way into getting whatever he wants.”
“That is not what I think,” I snapped, because it was the easiest thing to refute, and I didn’t even know where to start with the rest. “You have no idea what I want.”
“Then tell me,” she fired back. “What do you want from me, Killian? Am I just supposed to be your plaything for the next six months and then try to get my life back on track when you’re done with me? This isn’t a relationship. This is a business arrangement with sex, orchestrated by you, so don’t you stand there and look at me like I’m the one in the wrong here. I’m just playing by your rules.”
She stood there for a second longer, like she was waiting for me to say something profound or to argue with her, but I didn’t know what to
