My Sweet Demise (Demise #1) (20 page)

In response he kisses me right on my mouth.

I don’t think he can help himself. I asked for it, grinding against him. I don’t kiss him back. I’m too shocked. It unnerves me how used I am to Kent’s lips already. James’s lips feel wrong. They don’t fit. In a way it feels as if Kent’s lips were made for me, but he’s too busy using them on everyone else. The depth of my desire for him hits me like a steamroller. It takes James’s lips to show me how much I truly want another’s.

He pulls back suddenly and looks into my stunned eyes. “Just once,” he mouths, then lets me go and walks away.

I frown after him, touching my lips in shock. He disappears into the hall. I try to go after him but Kent steps in my path.

“What the hell, Rain?” He screams so loud the entire party stops partying. Pain and betrayal fills his eyes.

I cover my mouth with my hand, as shocked as he is. “I’m sorry,” I say. “He kissed me. I didn’t mean it.”

He looks disgusted. As Kent is looking at me like I am scum, nothing, and a cheater, I realize I never want him to look at me like that again. It isn’t who I am. None of this is who I am. I’m losing myself so quickly I feel pieces of me slipping through my fingers like sand, indistinguishable amongst all of the pieces I’ve already lost.

He grabs my hand and yanks me into the hall and then his bedroom. He slams his door and whirls on me. The music still penetrates the walls, and the bass pounds in my feet, but it suddenly feels like we’re in a bubble.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know. He kissed me.”

“So you fell on his lips and kissed him back? I saw you. You were into it. Don’t lie to me!”

I shrink back. I’ve had enough alcohol to confuse me. I need to stop drinking.

“I wasn’t enough? You invite Trevor. You needed James too? Are you even a virgin? Because you’re sure not acting like one!”

The pain of his comment is unleashed so suddenly I have no time to protect myself from it. I gasp and stare, openmouthed, at this man who is driving me completely and disastrously insane. “I am a virgin. Before I met you I hadn’t kissed a guy in years.”

“So it’s my fault you’re a whore?”

I like to think I’m a strong person. My past and present have collided in a way where I’ve had no choice but to be. I’ve had to deal with neglect, domestic abuse, and being on my own with Becca. As I’ve inevitably persevered, I’ve also built a wall around myself and the world. It protects me. But it starts to shatter at Kent’s words. Pieces of my wall fall around me in dangerous shards.

“I am not a whore!” I snap. “You are. You’re a whore, Kent.”

He sinks down on his bed and glares up at me. “I know you’re not a whore, Rain. Don’t be ridiculous. Why the hell did he kiss you? Why did you kiss him back? I keep seeing his mouth on yours like it’s his. It isn’t his!”

“I don’t know who I am anymore.” I have to bite back my sob.

“I know why he kissed you. It’s the same reason why I kissed you. Because you’re irresistible.” He isn’t listening to me. “You’re sweet and real, and we don’t ever meet women like you. Women who are as beautiful as they are unattainable, just as a sexy as they are aggravating. You aggravate me, you tempt me, you are driving me crazy, Raina. You—”

He keeps going. Something unhinges in his brain and all his reasons are revolving around me. I can’t hear the sweet words he’s saying to me without also hearing his anger, so I try not to listen at all. He’s giving me things and simultaneously taking them away. He said point blank he wasn’t over Willow. He’s not the guy for me. I can’t pretend I don’t know it’s true. Those are thoughts I’ve had more than once.

So then why am I beautiful, sexy, and real?

Why am I a whore he wants to punish?

“Look at me. Please,” I cry. He finally does. His eyes leak the darkness inside of him. “We need to stop this once and for all. I can’t do it. I’m not cut out for this. For you. I’m not Willow,” I wail, falling to my knees. My tears block my eyes.

I feel lost, as if this man is sucking the life out of me while breathing life into me and I am willingly giving it to him because I don’t want it without him.

His face falls. He drops to his knees and crawls to me, picking me up awkwardly and placing me on his lap. His arms come around me tightly. “I’m sorry, Rain. You’re not a whore. You’re anything but, and I’m a dick for calling you that.”

“I’m not a whore,” I sob. I can hear my father screaming at my mother.
You useless whore!

“You’re not. Listen,” he says firmly. He grabs my chin and brings my eyes to his. He wipes my tears away with his thumbs, and then brings my face as close to his as he can without kissing me.

I want him to kiss me.

“I didn’t mean it. I was mad. I saw you kissing my best friend and I snapped. Please forgive me.”

“Never call me that again.”

“Never,” he promises fervently.

I believe him. Because next time I won’t cry. He will.

“I was trying so hard to forget you and then we started dancing and he kissed me. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

He kisses my wet cheeks, sliding his lips over my tears. “I know you didn’t. Of course I do.”

I sag against him. “What am I doing? I need you tell me point blank you don’t want me. I need to hear it, otherwise I’ll torture myself.”

He looks away, at his bed, at his dresser, anywhere but at me. “I’m just a guy?”

He isn’t going to do it. Kent will not release me from this disastrous attraction. I try and get off his lap, and the selfish bastard he is, he wraps his arms around me so I cannot move. I need to free myself from this man before I become the girl I’m trying not to be.

“Yes!” I screech. “You’re just a guy to me.”

“That’s a lie.”

“We barely know each other.”

He squeezes me tighter. “You need to sleep this off. Come lie in my bed.” He rises fluidly with me in his arms.

The last thing I want is sleep. Why can’t he say
I don’t want you?
“Let me go.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Let me go.”

“I can’t!” he hisses, setting me roughly down on his bed. “I can’t let you go. After Willow there’s no way in hell I’m letting you go, Rain. I don’t understand what’s going on between us, but there’s something there. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything. It’s been a dark year and then you come in and it’s still dark, but for the first time I’m starting to realize it doesn’t have to be this way.” He pounds on his chest. “I don’t have to be this way.”

His admittance is so sudden I have to look away. He’s been so adamant that we were only partners in his game. He promised I didn’t have to worry about him wanting me, that he wasn’t the right guy for me. To hear that he might have struggled with his desire the same way I did with mine shines a brand new light on this torturous want of mine.

A movement catches my eye. “Kent?”

He pauses with his hand outstretched for the door.

“Don’t leave. Stay with me?”

“I don’t sleep in my bed with women.”

“Because of Willow?”

He nods slowly. “I can’t stand the idea of sleeping with anyone else in my bed. She and I owned that bed right there.” He kicks the end of it. “We made love in it, talked in it, and promised each other things that never happened in it. I can’t sleep with you in the same place I made love to her.”

I can’t stand the way he talks about her.

I want him in this bed. I will have him in this bed.

“Kent Nicholson, you will get in this bed with me or I’ll walk out of this room and never come back. Do you want that? Because I don’t want that, Kent.”

“What do you want? You can tell me,” he promises when I balk.

“I don’t understand why. Or maybe I do. Maybe that’s why this is so hard. But I think all I want is you.” I swallow hard. “And you want me to, don’t you, Kent?” My uncertainty is thick in the air.

Please say yes.

For a few seconds Kent simply stares at me, red-eyed and torn. Then he nods once, a silent admission of his want. “The second you walked into this apartment I haven’t been able to think about anyone else. There was something about you. It was so good, so everything I wasn’t. That’s why I let you move in. Something was screaming at me to say ‘yes, I will make an exception for this girl.’ So I did. And now I’m ruining you. You really want a guy who’s going to drag you down?”

There were those words. Kent was dragging me down.

“Maybe we don’t have to do that to each other. Maybe we can try not to.”

“How?”

“Stop doing what’s hurting the other. Like don’t punish every vagina within a five mile radius.” My bitterness shines through.

He glares at me. “Okay. And how about you stop kissing me like I matter and then talking to men like Trevor and hooking up with my best friend?”

“Right there. We try to hurt each other so badly. It isn’t healthy. I want healthy. I don’t want to be reminded of my father and you’re reminding me of him. How many times do you think my parents had this conversation? My dad never changed. He still did drugs, they still fought, and he dragged her down the entire way. The next time you remind me of my father I’m packing my shit and leaving. I’ll deal with the pain if I never have to live with him again!” I am seething. I grab his pillow off his bed and launch at him. “Will you at least sleep on the floor?”

He catches it and hugs it to his chest. After a second he sighs and locks his door. He drops down onto his back and lies on the pillow.

“Happy?”

“Not yet,” I admit. “I think if you tried you could make me very happy.”

He groans and his face falls. “I want to make you happy. I want to be healthy again. Me again. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t help myself. When Willow left I promised I would never let another woman hurt me that bad again. She killed me, Rain. I wanted to punish every woman the way she punished me. So I fuck the shit out of them to make them feel as worthless as I feel. I treat them all like shit, because that’s how I feel. I don’t want to do that to you. I’m not going to be able to stop overnight. I’ve been this way since she left. People can change, but it never happens
like that.
” He snaps at the end. “It takes time. I have to want it as much as you do.”

“Do you want it?” I hold my breath and stare into his unfathomable eyes.

“If I do, you stay?”

“I will.”

“Then I want it. I want you, Rain.” He smiles a little. “You’re turning me into a pussy already.”

I want you, Rain.
“I thought you liked pussy.”

“I like your pussy. So you’ve never been with anyone but me? No one’s ever fingered you before?”

He may not be the most romantic guy around…“No one’s even seen me naked.”

“How have you accomplished that? You’re one of the sexiest women I've ever met. Everything you do tortures me. The way you look at me, the way you walk, your ass in those shorts, and those damn hazel eyes. I know I’m not the only one—Zeke, James, and Trevor—you leave men in the dust without even trying.”

I torture him? If it’s the same way he tortures me then he deserves it. “They let me.”

“So you never let one of them touch you at all?” I shake my head. “You only want me to touch you?” he clarifies, seeming pleased but still cocky.

“Only you, Kent.”

“Why?” he asks simply. “Let’s be honest here. I’m gorgeous, I know it.” He pauses to give me a sardonic smile. “I’m not bad looking. Neither is James. He’s pretty damn handsome. And Zeke’s all right if you can get over that backwards shit. Why me?”

“For the same reason you made an exception for me. There’s something about you. It’s so incredibly attractive and magnetic I can’t help it. I want you in a way I’ve never wanted anyone. I can’t explain it. It’s how I feel in here.” I touch my heart. “There has to be more there than attraction. I want to get to know you. The real you. You haven’t let me.”

“What if you don’t like what you find?”

“What if I love it?”

He shrugs, but I can tell my answer has made him uncomfortable. He’s squirming around the word
love
like it’s a snake in his bed. I won’t say that again until I absolutely have no choice. Until all other words fail me and love is the only one that describes what I’m feeling.

“I want to get to know you too,” he answers gruffly. “I want to know you without all of this bullshit in the way.”

I want to touch him but he’s all the way on the floor. “Please sleep with me.”

“Baby steps.”

“We already slept in my bed together.”

“I was drunk. That doesn’t count. And it wasn’t my bed.”

“Then let’s go sleep in my bed.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he promises, looking at Willow’s picture on the mirror.

I ignore the party still raging and open my bedroom door. There are two naked humans conjoined at the hip and twisted in my sheets. The man is pumping into her like she’s his everything and her nails are digging into his back like he’s going somewhere. I quietly close my door and go back to Kent’s room. He raises his eyebrows at me.