“Orion—”
“I don’t do that, ever, but I couldn’t help it with you. I never felt that way before. To feel that way for the first time and have it just…thrown back at me like trash?” He hung his head, hugging himself. “That’s how you made me feel. You made me feel like trash.”
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say. Do you think we can…get past this?”
“Sure. It’s done.”
I could see in his stubborn stance that by ‘it’s done’ he in no way meant ‘I forgive you now let’s make out’ or anything like that. “Are we done?” I asked. “You and me?”
“Told you we were done that night on the beach.”
My heart plummeted. “Is that really what you want? Because I don’t think it is. You let me in to talk tonight. You didn’t have to.”
“Fine.” He stormed over to his desk, gathered up the cash, and threw it at me. Bills fluttered onto my lap, slipping onto the floor. “Take your money back.”
I stood, anger rising. “I don’t want the fucking money!”
“You want a hand job for it then?”
He tugged at the buttons on my jeans and I pushed his hands away. “Stop. Just stop it, Orion!”
“Fine, I’ll dance for you first.” He removed his shirt. “Want me to show you what I did for money that shocks you so much?” He kicked off his slippers, then took his pants down, leaving him in just a pair of red briefs. “Should I get my grass skirt? Got a nice thong I wear underneath it, but for an extra ten I’ll go commando so you can see my ass when I bend over and shake it.”
“You’re just trying to punish me more because you’re hurt. But you’re not gonna drive me away with this shit. And you can’t possibly make me feel worse than I already do.”
He stepped in close, giving me that stubborn upturned chin. “I can jerk you off dry or for an extra twenty I’ll use lube.”
I grabbed his shoulders. “Stop it. Now.” He inhaled sharply as I pushed him against the wardrobe. “Just stop it. Kiss me.”
“You don’t get to kiss me. You didn’t pay for that.”
“I need you.”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“I need you, Orion.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m crazy about you. And you know it. That’s why you don’t want me to kiss you, you know you’ll feel the truth and have to stop being a brat.”
He didn’t push me off, but kept his eyes closed.
“Please, Orion. I need you.”
“You don’t,” he rasped.
“Let me kiss you, then tell me I don’t.”
His eyes opened. “How can you say you need me when you thought the worst of me?”
I risked allowing my fingers to slide up his cheeks, gently cradling his face. “Because even when I suspected the worst, I couldn’t stop wanting you.”
His stiff expression crumbled as he broke down, taking in three sharp breaths. “I wasn’t faking it with you, Kurt! I wasn’t faking it.”
“I know, I know that now.”
“I gave you everything inside me, in the moment, and you still couldn’t feel it. You thought it was fake, so how can I ever risk opening up to you again? You’re impenetrable.”
“I’m not impenetrable. Not with you.”
“You are.”
“Listen to me. You want to know my inside parts? I was willing to call it a win either way and regret nothing, because I got to be with you. How pathetic am I if I still felt lucky you picked me to fake it with?”
He blinked tears away. “Pretty pathetic.”
“Right?” I nodded. “I’m not impenetrable. You got through, believe me. You got in deep and shook everything up inside.”
“That really how you feel about me?”
“Yes. For fuck’s sake, yes.”
He removed my hands from his face, but hung onto them, linking our fingers. “So, is this you crawling back to me? Is that what’s happening here?”
“I’m trying.”
“Most people are smart enough to stay away from me when I’m mad.”
“According to my father, I’m not that smart.”
He snorted, then laughed fully, and I was never so happy to see his wide smile. “I should make you crawl.”
“I’ll do anything you want, Orion.” I pressed my body against him. “But you gotta kiss me first.”
Finally, blessedly, he did. When his mouth opened to mine, I put everything into it, letting him feel how much I needed him. He broke the kiss and stroked my chin, then pinched my jaw tight. “Gah, you been making me fucking nuts, you asshole. I haven’t slept because of you.”
“So let’s go to bed.” I grinned, twitching my eyebrows, and he laughed. “Not sure I’ll let you sleep right away though.”
He chuckled, stroking my jaw with both hands now, like he couldn’t stop touching me. “It’s a pretty small bed for just me, the two of us will probably break it.”
“So let’s break the fucking thing.”
He bit his lip, grinning. “You gonna buy me a new one?”
I dragged him to the bed and threw him down. The springs creaked as I crawled on top of him, and he wrapped his legs around me. “Anything you want.”
“Promise?”
I kissed him hungrily before pulling back. “Promise.”
“Good. Because this time I’m gonna hold you to that.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I actually thought we were going to break the bed at one point. In the past, I’d never really understood all the hoopla about ‘makeup sex’ but having Orion naked in my arms again after thinking I’d lost him forever made me nuts, and tomorrow he was going to have bruises and bitemarks all over.
But he was just as ravenous and needy, and seemed desperate to push limits, like he wanted to assure himself I was willing to get closer. Maybe as a test or a rite of passage, or maybe he was eager to open up more to me about his sexual desires. Either way, I was fully onboard.
Even so, it took him a while to properly communicate what he wanted, and for me to understand him clearly, him seeming almost shy to voice it. He kept hinting at something, saying “People always want me on top because of the way I move.”
“I can’t blame them,” I huffed. “The way you move could get a dead man hard.” I flipped him onto his stomach, gripping handfuls of his hair and devouring the back of his neck. “But what do you want, Beautiful?”
“I want to do something that involves me on my back and you on top.”
I was in a sexual frenzy, trying to respond to his needs while simultaneously trying to get my mouth everywhere on his body at once. After tossing him around six ways to Sunday, I tried to give him head but he stopped me after just a minute. “Wait,” he cried hoarsely. “I want to feel your weight on me while you make me come a different way. You said…you said I could have anything I wanted.”
“You tell me then,” I said. “Tell me just what you want and I’ll give it to you.”