Wild Child (17 page)

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Monica pull on the Green Day concert shirt he’d taken off her … Christ, two minutes ago?

Go
, he thought, his brain fizzing and popping.
Don’t look. Don’t ask. Just go
.

Ridiculously, he still had his shirt and tie on. He pulled on his pants, shoved his naked feet into his shoes, and didn’t worry about his socks or underwear. They were a sacrifice to getting out the door to where he could take a breath that didn’t taste like her, where he could form a thought that wasn’t about her stunning, full ivory breasts, the beautiful brown nipples—

“I’m going to … go,” he said, looking at her for just a moment. Her long legs were tucked up underneath her, her black hair a wild mess around her shoulders. Her lips were red and puffy and delicious, and it was a sucker punch remembering their taste, their unbelievable softness.

He shook his head; he had to leave before he made a mess in his pants.

Unflinching, her eyes met his and he couldn’t read a single thing there, not one thing. Was she disappointed? Was he supposed to stay? Was this some kind of sex game that he didn’t understand because he was a celibate monk from a nowhere small town and she’d had rock-star orgies?

Good God, he’d play, he’d play any game she wanted, but she had to let him in on it. She had to give him the rules.

He waited for her to say something. A hint, anything.

Force me. Convince me. Make me beg
.

But she was silent. Her eyes a purple, bottomless mystery—all the way through.

His erection vanished as if it had never existed.

Grateful for small favors, he turned and left, shutting the door behind him with a hard click.

At the end of the hallway was an east-facing window and it was filled with light; white-hot and bright, it lit the whole corridor. He walked toward it, trying not to be angry. Trying not to feel like a fool. Or used.

He stopped. Turned and looked back toward her closed door.

No
. The thought taking root in his head didn’t make sense. He didn’t want it to make sense. He didn’t want it to be true.

He shook his head, walking toward that light.
You’re not thinking clearly
, he told himself.
You want there to be a reason she acted that way. Some reason that had nothing to do with you
.

But at the top of the stairs he stopped again. This thought wasn’t new; that night outside The Pour House, at the beginning of their kiss, she’d nearly pushed him away and he’d had this thought then.

Angry and terrified on her behalf, he turned around, running back the way he came.

Back to Monica.

Chapter 11

Monica stood with one hand pressed to the door, the other pressed to her heart.

You don’t owe him an explanation
, she told herself, the voice coming from that island she liked to believe she lived on.
You aren’t friends, and you clearly aren’t lovers. He’s a mistake you can’t stop making
.

But his face when he left, it was … pained and resigned. Angry a little. But … worried, too.

Just tell him that you’re one of the millions of women who don’t actually enjoy sex. Tell him he was right—you can’t turn off your brain long enough to enjoy someone’s touch
.

“Frigid” was a ridiculous, dated term and it didn’t really apply to her. She saw stars when she touched herself. She had epic masturbatory skills.

Just stay on the island
, she told herself, pressing her forehead to the door.
You’re better off there
.

Even as she thought it, she shook her head. She was only thirty, too young to give up. Too young to push aside everyone and everything.

The answer was obvious. A scream just waiting to be heard.

She lifted her head and put her hand on the doorknob just as someone hammered on the other side of her door.

Jackson
, her body cried in hope and fear.

The door flew open under her hand and there he was, his tie skewed, his jaw set.

She opened her mouth to apologize but he lifted his hand.

“You … you don’t owe me any explanation,” he said. “I’m not here for that. And there’s a good chance that I’m getting this all wrong. That you decided no because I’m shit in bed, or not what you want—”

“No, Jackson, that’s …”
so wrong, terribly wrong
. “Please don’t think that.” It killed her that he doubted himself because of her problems. But of course what else could he think? “You’re wonderful. Exciting. Gorgeous, really.”
It was just bad luck that you fell into my bed
.

“That’s a relief.” His smile was brief. Hard. The skin under his collar was red. And she wanted to touch him so intensely, to ease some of this pain she could sense in him. But she’d sent him enough mixed signals. “I have a question, and you … you don’t have to answer it. But considering what we were doing just a few minutes ago and the kind of pain I might have caused even unintentionally, I would … appreciate an answer.”

“Okay.”

“Were you raped?”

Oh
. Of course he would think that.

Her breath blew out of her in a gust, leaving her limp. In an effort to shore herself up, she crossed her arms under her breasts. “No.”

He jerked back at her answer. “Oh …” He seemed to run out of steam, as if he’d been putting all his money on the rape card. He rubbed a hand through his hair, making it stand up, rumpled in that way that was so human. So endearing.

“Come in,” she said. “This isn’t a conversation I want to have in the hallway.”

He eyed her room as if it were a torture chamber he wasn’t entirely keen on reentering.
I don’t blame you,
she thought, remembering the days when any room with her in it felt like a torture chamber to her. But then he was in the room, the door shut behind him, and she had to tell him what she’d never told anyone. Ever.

“I wasn’t raped,” she said to his back, strong and wide under his white shirt. “But I was used.” He started to turn and she put her hand on his shoulder, keeping him there, facing away from her. Cowardly, yes, but this was hard enough. She dropped her hand but didn’t like how that felt so she put it back on his shoulder, where the muscles were tense under her touch.

“And I can’t blame the men who used me. I was a willing partner—”

“Monica,” he sighed as if to contradict her, but she stopped him. If she couldn’t give him herself in that rumpled bed, she could give him the truth. Unvarnished.

“No, listen. I wasn’t … I wasn’t …”
It was outrageous to say it, to lay claim to such a lack. Such an absence, but there were no other words that fit
. “Loved. Or made to feel special. By my mom, my dad. By the time I was back in school after the murder I was so far behind kids my age that I felt … stupid. Useless. And then my mom became a superstar and signed us up for that stupid show and I felt compared, every minute, to her and to the kid people perceived me to be, and to the kid I could have been if my life were in any way normal. And in every comparison, who I was … wasn’t good enough. So when I discovered sex, or maybe I should say when the boys discovered me, I decided to be good at that. It became my identity. The girl who loved sex, who would do anything, who never said no. Sometimes it was a commodity, and trust me,” she laughed, “I know what that makes me.”

He whirled around and grabbed her hand, his eyes fierce. “Don’t.”

“It’s the truth, Jackson—”

“It’s the
result
, Monica. Of an unimaginable childhood. Don’t label it because it’s easier than seeing the whole picture.”

She blinked, knocked sideways by his words. Knocked off her righteous position of truth teller. And she suddenly realized that she’d had this expectation of disgusting him. She’d tell him this and he’d turn, unable to hide his revulsion, despite his southern manners. He’d say something polite and stumble out the door, grateful that he’d dodged sex with that particular bullet and she’d be left alone in her hotel room, convincing herself that it was all for the best.

But he held her hands and looked at her with fierce tenderness, as if he would grab a sword and hack to pieces the people who hurt her.

No one, not once in her life, had looked at her that way. Ready to rise up on her behalf.

Was this what other women got?
she wondered.
Because this shit is good
.

“Anyway, I convinced myself that it was enough to be wanted by them. That their desire for me was more important than my actually feeling desire. And the great irony is that the girl who worked so hard to convince the men she had sex with that she loved it never felt a thing. It was all a show. All faked.”

He blinked. “You never had an orgasm … with those men?”

“After about four years, my body was dead and my brain was so aware of how awful it was that I could barely feel it when someone touched me. You were right that night outside the bar—my brain always got in the way. And even after I’d grown up and stopped behaving that way, I’d date nice men, men whom I liked and who liked me, and I’d finally get in bed with them and … 
nothing. So, I would tone down some version of the big sex show and fake my way through it.”

“Every time?”

She nodded.

“Why? Why me, then?”

With a smile, she reached up and brushed back the flop of golden hair over his forehead and then she lingered there, at the soft spot of skin near his ear. “Because when you kissed me, I felt it. I really felt it and when you touched me, I felt it. Because you made me wet and hot and so excited and I thought … maybe I could do it this time. Maybe it would happen to me like it seems to happen to every other woman on the planet. And I want … I want so badly to be—”

“Don’t say ‘normal.’ ” He shook his head.

“Fine, I want so badly to be a woman who feels half of what she faked.” She sighed, at the end of her adrenaline, at the end of her honesty. Then she stepped away, out of his reach. Clearing the way if he wanted to leave; Lord knows
she
did. She wanted to slip right out of her skin and vanish out the door.

“Do you masturbate?”

“Jackson,” she sighed. “This isn’t something you can fix.”

“Just … just answer the question.”

“Like a fiend. I masturbate like a fiend.”

“And you come, when you touch yourself?”

“Is this a cross-examination?”

He smiled. “I was going to be a lawyer.”

That she managed to be surprised by that small bit of truth in this onslaught of utter honesty was funny, and she smiled.

“Yes, I come when I touch myself.”

She could see the wheels turning in his head, his eyes lighting up with the sparks of idea clashing and colliding with idea.

“Have you had a bath in this tub?” He pointed to the bathroom.

She shook her head, flat-footed by the question. “No. I mean, I shower.”

“Wait here.” He walked past her into her bathroom and she didn’t stop him. She didn’t have any strength, physically or emotionally. But when she heard the thunder of water running into the bath, she peered around the edge of the door only to see him inspecting the in-room toiletries provided by the Peabody. He picked the bubble bath and stood over the tub squeezing the creamy stuff into the water. Soon, a mountain of bubbles appeared under the faucet.

“What are you doing?”

“Running you a bath.”

“Why?”

“Because I think you could use one. Now,” he tossed the empty bubble bath bottle into the garbage. “I’ve never seen you drink alcohol. Are you in AA?”

“No. I just … I just don’t like to lose control.”

He shot her an ironic look. “You think?”

That she managed to laugh gave her hope. Hope for what she couldn’t say, but it made her feel good and that was enough.

“You get in the bath and I’m going to be right back.”

“Jackson,” she sighed, unsure of where he was going with this. Unsure of what he wanted. He crossed the bathroom in two steps and cupped her face in his big palms. It felt so good to be touched after all she’d told him that she gasped, and when he kissed her—close-mouthed but slow, chaste but not quite—she leaned against him.

“Trust me,” he said, and then slipped one of the room key cards she kept on the edge of the desk in his pocket. “I just want to take care of you,” he said before vanishing out the door.

She stared at the shut door and tried to remember the
last time someone took care of her. Even she’d been derelict in that department, caught up in the tragedy of Jenna, the drama of the book. She’d stopped doing all those small things that gave her pleasure. Because she so rarely felt pleasure—sexual or otherwise.

A bubble bath? Why the hell not?

Jackson sprinted down the hallway, took the stairs two at a time, and slid to a stop when he saw the front desk.

Jay, one of those kids Jackson used to invite mini-golfing when Gwen was younger, came in from the backroom door.

Jackson waved, relieved it wasn’t his sister, before heading over to the small liquor cart set up in the sitting area. He grabbed a crystal tumbler, poured a finger of bourbon in it, and quickly sucked it back.

Good. Lord
.

Despite it being morning, he poured himself another, smaller this time, and downed it too. There was a minibar in Monica’s room, but he needed a second to get his head together, away from where she was at this moment, getting naked.

He was daunted, sad, and angry on her behalf. He was turned on, just being near her. Returning to that room might be the biggest mistake of his life, but there was no way in the world he wasn’t going back up there.

He grabbed another tumbler and a sugar cube from the tea set and placed it in the bottom of the glass before pouring the bourbon over it. Using a spoon, he muddled it, making sure the sugar was dissolved. He gave himself another finger of bourbon in his glass and headed back up the stairs, slowly,
like a mayor, for crying out loud
, this time aware of Jay’s eyes on his back.

He used the key he’d swiped from Monica’s desk and
stepped into the room. It was steamy now and sweet smelling. Feminine in the extreme. Just walking into the room felt like entering a mysterious, womanly, and sexual place.