“I’m actually impressed you made it more than a day before you let this bother you.”
And I was impressed that I thought for a minute he wouldn’t be a dick about this.
“I am not predictable,” I grumbled. Though admittedly, I might have given him grief about sex at times in the past.
But that wasn’t this. This was different.
He chuckled. “I never implied that you were.”
“You’re implying that you knew I’d eventually complain about it,” I huffed.
“Are you complaining?”
The low rumble of his question made me shiver. Add to that the memory of his hands on my thighs, his eyes pinned on mine, his mouth buried in my pussy…
“No.” Except it never should have happened. “Yes. It won’t fix things.”
“But did you enjoy it?” Of course he wouldn’t let me get away without the exact truth.
I closed my eyes as if that would make it easier to give this to him. “You know I did,” I whispered.
“I just wasn’t sure you remembered.”
I bit back a groan of frustration. Donovan was not an easy person to interact with, but I wasn’t a cakewalk either. I had my own issues. I was too proud. Too serious. And I had a borderline unhealthy comfort level with the kind of sex I liked.
We were both works in progress. I needed to be better about remembering that.
I set my drink down and pulled my knees to my chest. “I do remember,” I said, softer now. “Which is why it took so long to make myself do the right thing and call. I want you, Donovan. I always want you. But we have to sort things out before anything like that can happen again. It can’t be what we use to make this better.”
“Okay.” There was that damn two-syllable response again.
“I’m serious,” I said, solemnly.
“All right. Got it.” Without missing a beat he moved on to a new subject. “Where’s your sister?”
“In bed. In the other room.” I still wasn’t sure if we were on the same page or not.
“Good. Now.” There was a rustle like he was shifting the phone to his other ear. “What was your favorite part of riding my face?”
“Oh my God.” Against my will, blood rushed to my lower regions. “Did you hear me, Donovan? We can’t do this.”
“I heard you.” Unconcerned. As though he hadn’t just been talking about eating me out.
The calmer he was, the more worked up I got. “You’re not taking me seriously!”
“What did I do?” he asked innocently. “I just want to hear you tell me what you liked most about having your cunt pressed up against my face. Then I can tell you what I liked most. Would you rather I go first?”
“So basically you want to have phone sex.” I pressed my thighs together, wishing I didn’t want that as well.
I could hear the shrug in his voice. “I might pull out my cock later. Depends on how good you make the details.”
“Donovan!” I rubbed my hand across my forehead, trying to convince myself I wasn’t tempted. But I was tempted. And was it really that big of a deal? If we just talked about how good it felt to come with his fingers inside me pressing at just the right spot?
My resistance was waning.
But this relationship—whatever this relationship was turning out to be—was important to me. So I made another attempt at keeping my ground. “This can’t be anything real if sex is the only thing you want from me,” I told him pointedly.
“Think about it and tell me if I’m the only one who seems to want just sex from this relationship,” he said just as pointedly.
I wrinkled my face, about to protest. Then I did think about it. Thought about the fact that I’d been involved with him in a pretty much sex-only relationship for less than two months. Even when I’d known him back in college, every thought I’d had about him, every instinct that had drawn me toward him had been sexual.
Donovan on the other hand, had noticed me before I’d ever really noticed him. He’d stayed involved with me for over ten years. He’d been there. Watching. Interfering. Manipulating. But he hadn’t even tried to take advantage of me when I’d been most vulnerable—when he’d rescued me from being raped by Theo Sheridan.
Donovan was right. I was the one who appeared to be only interested in him physically. It was a blow to the gut to realize that so much I’d perceived about us was a misconception.
And it made me feel terrible.
It wasn’t quite that simple, though. “To be fair,” I said, trying to make myself feel better, “since I’ve been in New York, you haven’t made anything else seem like an option.”
“That is fair,” he agreed. His breath came so clearly through the phone. I wished it were his thoughts, that I could hear what was in his head.
Then he told me. “I thought that somehow if I just fucked you it would be enough.”
“Me too.” That was exactly it. It wasn’t that sex had been all I’d wanted from Donovan—it was that I’d thought that if I at least had that, I could live without the rest. “I thought that it would be enough if I, uh, did that too.”
“Say it.”
“Say what?” But I knew what he wanted to hear.
“No games, Sabrina,” he said, impatiently.
“If I fucked you. Are you happy?”
“I’m hard.” And so fucking smug.
“God, you’re so…” I trailed off, too infuriated to find the words I wanted.
But as always, he wouldn’t let that stand. “I’m so…what? You act like you’re mad, but you also act like you like it, so tell me what it is that I am?”
“I don’t know what you are!” That was the problem. I had no fucking idea.
I took a deep breath, and then more calmly repeated, “I don’t know. Whatever it is, I can’t stop coming back to look. I can’t stop coming back, wanting you to tell me what it is that I am too.”
I didn’t know why I said it. Maybe because it was dark and we were on the phone, or because I was lonely, or because I really wanted him to know everything inside me.
Whatever the reason, I’d said it. It was out there. I couldn’t take it back.
He was quiet a minute, and I imagined him stretched out in that leather armchair, I’d decided—his legs propped up on an ottoman in an office I’d never seen. He had to have a place like that in his apartment. A place where he was completely comfortable. Just one of many Donovan rooms I’d never seen.
He let a beat pass, and it didn’t feel awkward because it was so full.
Then he asked, “Remember when you applied for that internship at BellCorp the final year of your graduate program?”
Of course I remembered, but how did he know about it?
Oh, yeah. He knew everything about me.
It was irksome, mostly because I didn’t know what he knew and what he didn’t, not because I minded that he knew things. I didn’t really have anything to hide. It was also irritating because sometimes he’d made my only options seem silly and insignificant.
“You mean the graduate program at the little school that I attended after leaving Harvard? That internship?” I asked, bluntly.