Lie to Me (14 page)

I want to know I can have him, but that I don’t need him.

And I don’t even care how awful that is.

I also, incidentally, really just freaking want him. God, watching him flex his ripped eight pack as he sits up pushes most coherent thoughts out of my mind. He’s still sweaty. I love him when he’s sweaty. When he smells most like himself, musky and male.

“Hey,” he says, his voice low and rough. And those hypnotist eyes lock on me again.

I am suddenly incredibly aware of how long it’s been since I’ve had sex. My entire body is aware. I’m wet again. Embarrassingly wet, from just his voice, his look, the sight of his body. He doesn’t even have to touch me, and I can feel the pressure start to build between my legs. The physical response is almost overwhelming. Like he pushed a button and I’m his.

Damn it. That’s not being in control.

“What?” I say.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he says. His breathing is already back to normal while mine is getting shallow and rapid all over again, and I can’t help but watch his chest rise and fall. Watch all those very visible muscles work together. He is the perfect machine.

“Lo,” he says again.

I look up. Damn him. He’s smiling, but his eyes are burning, and I could swear he’s feeling the sexual tension just as much as I am.

“I’ve been thinking, Lo. I know it’s what you want, but I can’t tell you the details about how and why I left like I did, not now. But I can show you what I did in the meantime. I never stopped thinking about you, Lo, not once. I can prove it.”

I can’t look away from Marcus’s eyes, and when he says that—when he says he never stopped thinking about me, and he can prove it—the worst happens.

I give in. For a just a moment, I give in.

It’s like there’s this little version of me inside my heart, a version that never stopped believing that maybe Marcus really did love me, that there was some reason for the things that he did, for why he did the one thing he knew would hurt me the most—just leaving, no explanation—and she is growing. I’ve starved her over the years, shrunk her down to a manageable size and caged her up. And then Marcus says something like that and she grows.

For a second I’m her again. I’m feeling what she feels. I feel warm and happy and light, the grief peeling off of me in waves, leaving only relief behind. I feel happy, and I feel safe. Just for a second. It’s like looking through a window on a beautiful day.

And it scares the shit out of me.

I revolt. I need to push myself as far away from that vulnerable place of emotion as possible. I need to show him that’s not what this is about. What we’re feeling when we’re together, it’s not emotion. It’s not love. It can’t be. It’s just lust. And it can be satisfied.

I meet Marcus’s gaze and say, “You want to just cut the bullshit and go back to my place?”

He doesn’t say anything. Not at first. And then he just studies my face, frowning slightly.

He says, “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?” I say. I smile at him, casually. Like none of this matters beyond the physical. Like none of it is important.

I see him grip the grass with his hands. I hear the low rumble in his chest. He knows exactly what I meant. He knows I meant sex.

“Why would you say that like that?” he says, his voice rough again.

For the first time I’m nervous that maybe he doesn’t want me like I want him. That maybe I misread him. I mean, I can’t know him all that well, right? As well as I always thought I did? Otherwise I wouldn’t need answers from him in the first place.

“Why do you think?” I say.

I am feeling a lot less sexy. Marcus stares at me, dumbfounded. Then he shakes his head and says, “No, Harlow.”

Well, that’s it.

There’s only so much humiliation I can stand. So much embarrassment. It’s bad enough to spend time with the person who’s hurt me the most, have to play his games about what he’ll reveal to me and when, and have to do it all while fighting the memories he dredges up for me and the most profound attraction I’ve ever felt in my life.

But bald-faced rejection, too?

I just cannot.

I shake my head, unable to find the words, and push myself up off the grass, ready to just be anywhere else in the world. Anywhere, as long as it is far away from Marcus Roma.

“Lo,” he says, but I’m not listening. I’m done. I’m gone.

I take two steps before my quads give out and my legs buckle. Maybe I have the willpower to fake being in shape for a single workout, but I didn’t stretch or cool down, and my actual muscles don’t know about pride or spite. They fail me.

Worse, they fail me just as I’m stepping onto the lip of the track, and my ankle sheers and twists under me as I go down, and I know right away that I’m not getting back up on my own. The pain is sharp and excruciating, the kind that literally takes your breath away, and all I can do is press my lips together and claw at the ground below me.

Marcus is there instantly.

“Lo!” he shouts, and his arms are around me almost before I hit the ground. I fight him. I don’t want him to help me up. I don’t want him to be the one who saves me, again. Especially not after that spectacular rejection.

“Leave me alone, Marcus!” I hiss. I’m grinding my teeth in pain, but I will not lose my composure.

“Let me see it, Lo.”

“Fuck off!”

“No!”

I finally raise my head to glare at him through the tears gathering in my eyes, and that fierce concern on his face kills me. This was what I couldn’t deal with. Marcus Roma playing at caring about me, even when he doesn’t want me.

He glares right back at me anyway, and I know I’m screwed. He really is a pit bull when he wants to be. I know he’s not going anywhere, and it’s not like there’s anyone else around to help me but some grandmas doing tai chi on the other side of the park.

God damn it.

“Give me your goddamn leg, Lo,” Marcus orders.

I let out a string of curses and gingerly stretch out my leg for him. He puts those big, heavy boxer’s hands on my flesh and I’m almost completely distracted from the growing mountain of pain that is my right ankle. Almost.

How can he not see how his touch affects me? He runs his hands down the length of my leg, easy, a light touch, for no discernible reason except that maybe he doesn’t want to startle me when he gets to my ankle. Like I’m an injured deer or something, apt to jump and try to run away, hurting us both. He gets down to the rapidly swelling joint and touches it slightly with what looks like a feather touch but lances through me like a knife.

I gasp, and he grimaces.

“Just a little more,” he says. And I close my eyes while he feels around the joint, looking for a break. Jesus God, but that hurts.

“It’s a sprain,” he says. “We should still go to the hospital.”

I laugh, though at this point everything I do or say is just background noise to the cacophonous waves of pain emanating from my leg.

“You think I have health insurance?” I say.

He frowns. “I’ll pay—”

“I swear to God, Marcus, do not finish that sentence.”

Marcus looks at me and frowns, and I know he’s actually contemplating physically taking me to the hospital anyway, and it’s at that point that I try to get back up again on my own. I manage to launch myself off the grass, but I don’t exactly have the one-legged launch balance thing down, and I fall right back down again—until Marcus catches me.

He has one arm around my back, and I think he just decides it’ll be easier to deal with me if I’m not actually touching the ground because there’s a pause, and then he just scoops me up entirely.

“Marcus—”

“Relax. I’m taking your stubborn ass home.”

Marcus’s voice rumbles in his chest again, this time next to my own. He’s hugging me to him, holding me as easily as if I were weightless, lifting me up and down slightly as he walks so as not to bump my ankle. I have no choice but to throw my arms around his neck and hold on.

I’m pressed against his bare skin. I can feel his muscles working effortlessly, tirelessly.

He knows what it does to me when he carries me. He knows the effect it has on me. It’s an immediate turn on for me, always has been. Damn it.

I’m actually kind of grateful for the pain in my ankle. One, the endorphins or opiates or whatever it is your brain doles out when you’re in pain—those have started to kick in. I’m a little woozy. And two, the pulsing, throbbing ache is, in a way, displacing the pain I feel over Marcus. All that humiliation, the rejection, the reopened old wounds—my body doesn’t have the energy to get worked up about all that when there’s an actual physical injury to deal with.

Thank you, evolution.

Plus, I’m being carried around by a shirtless demigod. In my natural high, pain-crazy state, that doesn’t seem half bad, so long as he doesn’t open his mouth and remind me of all the reasons I have to hate him. It would make me almost delirious, turned on, and comforted all at once, the way it always did when he picked me up, if it didn’t mean he was carrying me down the street to my own house like some demented mockery of a wedding.

Yeah, because it’s not like I haven’t had that fantasy before.

Wow, I am really losing it. That is most definitely something I would never allow myself to think about under normal circumstances.

“How you doing?” he asks me, looking down at me.

“Fine,” I say, maybe too quickly. He holds me tighter.

When we get to my house, Marcus refuses to put me down. Completely refuses.

“How do you propose to get in the house, then?” I ask him.

“Get the key out of your shoe and unlock the door,” he says. He says it like it’s an order. Another one.

And he knows I still keep my key in my shoe.

I curse again and pretend not to see the smile curling at the corners of his mouth, and do as he says. He carries me into the living room and I suddenly think about how I haven’t changed anything. It’s almost exactly the same as it was when my parents were alive, except for a few lamps Dill and I have broken playing tag in the house (because I am still a cool big sister, even if I am also the grown up), and for the first time it occurs to me that this might be weird.

I look at Marcus closely to see his reaction. He does stop and take it in. But he’s not weirded out. He looks…

He looks sad. Regretful.

“Is the right side of the couch still the good side?” he asks me.

“Yup.”

Marcus doesn’t move immediately, but I feel his fingers press into my flesh and it makes my breath hitch. Finally he takes a deep breath and walks across the living room, bending down and very slowly, very gently lowering me to the couch. Carefully he lifts my leg and stuffs a few pillows under it, then pulls me forward and puts one behind my back.

He straightens up and gives me a stern look. He looks about a hundred feet tall from where I am.

“Don't move,” he says to me. “Do you hear me?”

“I’m not actually an idiot, Marcus.”

“So what are you not going to do?”

I sigh. “Move.”

There’s no point in fighting this. I do occasionally manage to pick my battles, and this looks like one I’m going to have to strategically surrender. I lean back and listen to the bizarre sounds of Marcus Roma moving through my house. I never realized that I recognized the distinct pattern of his footsteps before, but I do. It couldn’t be anyone else but him. I’d know them anywhere. And I can tell that he knows exactly where to go, that he’s already gotten an ace bandage from the medicine cabinet upstairs, that now he’s making an ice pack in the kitchen.

By the time he comes back with bandage, ice, water, and ibuprofen, I’m feeling even more out of it. This is just completely surreal to me.

It isn’t until Marcus lifts my legs, sits down on the couch, and then elevates my leg on his lap before arranging the ice pack that I really come to.

“I can do all of this myself,” I say.

He laughs. “Yeah, I can see you hopping up and down the stairs. Good idea.”

Marcus puts one hand on my knee, not even sexually, but just because it’s there and we’re kind of in an awkward position. And it still sets me on fire, which is still disorienting and confusing. And because of that, a fresh wave of humiliation washes over me.

I asked him to come home and have sex with me. I propositioned him. And he said no. He looked at me like I was insane for even thinking it, and he said no.

I stiffen.

“You should leave,” I say.

Marcus looks at me, shaking his head. Then he smiles. “Make me.”

I bite my lip. I did not expect that. I didn’t expect just blatant, arrogant refusal. It’s shocking and offensive as hell, and I don’t know why I find it so sexy. I don’t want to find it so sexy.

Although, in some ways it’s not so different from what he did after my parents died. He just refused to leave my side then, too. He’d sneak in through windows, show up in classes, whatever. But he was quiet about it, not forceful. Just always there. Now…it’s different. He is forceful, and unapologetic, and aggressive.

Really aggressive.

And I really do find it incredibly hot. And that kind of disturbs me.

Which means I both want him to leave, since apparently every moment is going to be a turn on, only reminding me of how he’s rejected me twice now, reminding me of how screwed up I’ve been since he left, and I also want him to stay right where he is. Maybe move that hand a little bit.

Nope, that’s dangerous. He has to go.

“What are you doing?” I ask as he digs in his pocket. He’s still not wearing a shirt. Just loose shorts. Thin, loose shorts.

He doesn’t answer me, just pulls out his phone. It’s already dialing.

“Get me the concierge,” he says. And then a moment later, “I need you to get a special delivery to 232 Conselyea Street. Can you do that? I need crutches. Female, five foot five and a half.” He doesn’t even need to look at me to remember how tall I am. “Great. Have someone bring the bag in my suite, same address. Keep my suite until I tell you not to.”

I’m speechless. I didn’t know hotel concierges did that kind of thing.

“You really need to leave,” I say as he hangs up the phone.