Carmen Jenner - Welcome to Sugartown

But this?

This is the sort of betrayal I can never forgive him for, because no matter what the excuse, he knows how I feel about him. He also knows how I feel about her and he knew there was a chance I would find the two of them like this, and the fact that he’s willing to hurt me for the sake of a quick fuck makes me hate him just a little.

I’m not an idiot, though. It’s obvious he’s enjoying himself, too. That’s evident by what he says next as he hammers into her, “God, you feel so fucking good.”

Nicole lets out this ridiculously high-pitched giggle and opens her eyes. They widen in shock and then narrow down as she registers that I’m standing there, watching. A smile spreads across her face, wide and victorious. And then she grabs his arse with her long taloned hands and drives him into her faster.

It isn’t long before he’s finishing hard and fast, exactly the way he never could with me. And that cuts deeper than anything I’ve seen so far in this disgusting bathroom. He leans against her, spent. He doesn’t kiss her; there’s none of the tenderness of our post orgasmic moments, but that hardly matters. The truth is, he still fucked a girl up against the bathroom wall knowing I was in the very next room.

Nicole bends down to whisper into his ear. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves an audience.”

Elijah freezes and then he turns his upper body to face me. Only his upper body, because I’m assuming the lower half is still buried in that whore. “Ah, fuck.”

I don’t say a single thing in return, though there are many, many words on the tip of my tongue. I simply convey all of the hurt I’m feeling with one look before calmly stepping through the door.

Once I’m in the hallway with that mind-fuck of a mess behind me, I take a deep breath and bolt outside. My plan is to run all the way home. It’s just a few short blocks, and the bathroom incident has sobered me enough to ensure I won’t wind up stumbling and passing out in someone’s front yard. That’s the plan, but life hardly ever goes according to one.

“Ana!” I hear his footsteps pounding the pavement behind me, but I don’t bother to turn around, I just run faster and pray he doesn’t catch up. Apparently I’m not that lucky though. Elijah reaches out and yanks me back into the curve of his chest. “Baby girl, would you just stop and talk to me.”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” I kick and try to lurch away from him but he holds my arms down by my sides, rendering me completely useless. “You just had your dick buried in another girl and, no less than five seconds later, you’re calling me baby girl? Fuck you, Cade!”

He spins me around so my back is pressed into an alcove created by an empty storefront. “What do you want me to say, Ana? You broke this shit off, not me. So why do you give two fucks about who I’m buried inside?”

“I don’t.”

“Bullshit. You jealous? That it? ”

“Oh completely,” I sneer, “because I’ve always wanted to be nailed to the wall of some dingy toilet that hasn’t been cleaned in over a century.”

“I forgot you were such a purist.”

“Fuck you!”

“Wish you would’ve.” He leans forward, pinning me against the glass with his massive frame, his eyes all molten chocolate, his voice pitched low and gravely. “It’d be the fuck of your life, darlin’.”

“This is sick.” I attempt to move past him, but he places a meaty paw in the middle of my chest and gently pushes me back against the glass. “Let me go.”

It’s only then that I realise just how drunk he is. He smells like whiskey and need and sex, and knowing the latter is because of someone other than me makes me want to throw up.

He begins pressing sloppy kisses into my neck and, god help me, it’s been so long since he touched me that I find myself revelling in the feel of his hot mouth on my skin. So much so, that a small moan escapes my mouth before I can rein it in.

“God, I miss that. I miss the sounds you make when you come. I miss the way you come alive beneath my hands.” He runs his hand up my dress, slides my knickers aside until his warm hand is cupping me. His finger glides into my wetness while his thumb strokes circles around my clit. Despite my better judgement, I feel myself leaning into his touch, and the more his fingers work against me, the more my thoughts flee and my body takes over until I’m panting and aching for more. “Yeah, just like that, baby girl. Fuck, I miss you.”

That revelation brings my orgasm to a crashing halt and I press my hands into his chest and plead, “Stop.”

He doesn’t. Instead, he doubles his efforts and acts as though he hasn’t heard me. Warmth travels up from my toes and floods the centre of my belly. I rock my hips into his hand.

“Come for me, Ana,” he whispers.

“No.” But even as I say it, I’m breathless with need. My legs are trembling beneath my weight and I’m shaking from head to toe, and it’s sure as hell not from fear. One more circle of his thumb and then I completely come apart in his hands, clawing and scratching and pulling him closer as wave after delicious wave of my orgasm sluices through me, even though I’m appalled and repelled by what he just did.

He leans in and whispers, “I love you, baby.”

I freeze against him. Finally hearing those words should make my heart soar. Instead, it shatters that last fragile shard of dignity I have left and I completely lose it. I shove him back with my hands against his chest and punch him right in the jaw with the fist of my fractured arm. I cry out, because it stings like a bitch. Clearly, I’ve just ruined whatever good progress I’d made with it these last few weeks because it hurts just as much as it did the night I first injured it.

Elijah rubs his jaw and then turns angry dark eyes on me. “Fuck!”

“Yeah, I can see that you love me, Elijah. What with the way you were fucking Nicole up against the wall. I can see you missed me real bad.”

“Jesus Christ, Ana, she’s filler!” he roars, getting all up in my face again. “Fuck! That girl in there has nothing on you! And yeah, I fucked her. I fucked the shit outta her because I thought for one minute, just one single fucking minute, I might be able to bury myself in someone else and forget about you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? That you have to screw other women to forget about me?”

“Honestly, darlin’, I don’t care how it makes you feel. It’s the truth.”

“Like you’re an expert on the truth.”

“God, you’re so fucking self-righteous! You didn’t seem to give a shit about the truth when I was getting you off with my hand just now.”

“I told you to stop!”

“And I would have, if I thought for even one second that you really wanted me to.”

I don’t have any response for that because it’s true, I didn’t want him to stop, not really. When it comes to the way Elijah touches me, I never want him to stop. But that was the kind of thinking that had led me into this cluster-fuck in the first place, so I simply shake my head and close my eyes, wishing I could walk away. Wishing I didn’t let him get to me. Wishing I didn’t still love him so much.

“This shit between you and me isn’t over, Ana. No matter what you and I do it’s never gonna be over, you got that?”

“You’re wrong. This shit between us was over the minute you decided to start lying about your past.”

I wrench myself out of his grasp and walk away, and this time he lets me. I’m maybe fifteen feet away when he says, “Ask yourself why you care so much, Ana. When you lay your head down tonight, ask yourself why you’re so mad at me for fucking another girl, when you’re the one that let me go. Ask yourself if you still love me.”

“Of course I still love you, arsehole.” I stomp back toward him and shove him again. This time he stumbles a little, but manages to trap my hand to his chest so I can feel the harried beating of his heart.

“Then stop fucking torturing me, baby girl. Please … Just stop torturing me.”

Tears roll down my cheeks. He lifts his hand to wipe them away but I wrench out of his grasp and start running toward the house. He doesn’t follow me, and I’m both thankful and torn up about it. It doesn’t matter whether or not I still love him. Nothing matters but forgetting this whole mess ever happened, including hearing those three little words I’d waited so long to hear from him.

I pull up outside her house. It’s near dark on a Sunday so I know exactly where to find her, though as I stare at the light coming from the back door of the shop it occurs to me that she might not be alone. I never thought to ask if she’d needed help baking her pies when her arm ended up in a cast—I think I just took it for granted that she was doing fine. Our argument last night proved that I don’t know shit.

I think back again through the alcohol haze of last night and, to be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing here, other than that I miss her like I’d miss the fucking air to breathe if it was taken from me. I fucked up. Bad. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, doing Nicole. Sometimes you just need to fuck a woman, you know. To forget? To remember? Hell, if I knew, but there’s a base instinct to burrow yourself inside a woman when both your heart and head can’t take any more fucking misery. It’s a stupid as fuck excuse, but there it is.

I walk over to the open door and lean against the jamb. Holly and Ana are inside, some hugely popular R&B band is blasting from the stereo, Mackerel More something or other, and Holly’s talking animatedly about getting lucky on the bar at the Sugartown Hotel after hours. I’m not darkening the door for long before Ana turns and sees me standing there. Her good mood falters, she frowns and she lets out a sigh. I shove down the hurt I feel, and smile, even though it’s the last thing I feel like doing.