Possession: Explicitly Yours, #1

Her name and a kiss. And again, her name, clearer, a kiss, firmer. Their bedroom was colder than usual, but it made the bed a haven of warmth. It was dead-of-night quiet. She was being squeezed from behind with a strength and intensity she wasn’t used to. All at once she remembered where she was and opened her eyes .

“Lola,” Beau whispered. He moved her hair from her forehead. “It’s time.”

The room was dark except for the boxed, green numbers on the digital clock. Through the large window, black was seeping from the sky, leaving rich sapphire in its place.

“I need to shower,” she said. Beau was present everywhere on her body.

He stroked her jaw. She raised her chin to kiss him. She was exhausted and made no effort to hide the fact that she wanted that kiss. He rolled on top of her in one motion and her legs opened for him. He didn’t enter her right away, but kissed everywhere above her neck his lips could reach. He pressed himself against her thigh, close enough she could almost feel him inside her.

“I’m ready,” she whispered.

He thrust into her and groaned as if he’d been waiting to do it all night. They got slow and quiet, waking up together.

It was good. Too good. She felt him—him, not fast and hard and mind-blowing, but satisfying and warm. This slow, sleepy fuck was no less passionate than it’d been against the window. His groans came from somewhere deep inside. It was good—but it was dangerous. When she caught herself clutching him, digging her nails into his back, she stopped and squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t,” she said.

“Okay.” He kissed her cheek, her nose. “It’s okay.”

He held her head. It was too dark to see his expression. It meant she could imagine he was Johnny and remove some of the guilt she struggled with. She didn’t. Even this way, in the pre-dawn, with his lovemaking, Beau demanded all of her.

As he came, he dropped his face into the crook of her shoulder and gripped her scalp. Then he exhaled what sounded like everything in his lungs. His body loosened on top of her. She stared up at the ceiling. Her limbs, depressed in the mattress, tingled. “I can’t feel anything.”

“I’m crushing you,” he said but didn’t move.

“It’s not that,” she said. Dread had seeped through her in seconds, numbing everything it touched. Her body was in survival mode. Facing Johnny would be as impossible as pretending the night had never happened. Neither thing could be avoided, though. She had to face him. Then they’d have to move on with their lives.

Beau raised his head and opened his mouth. If he asked her not to leave, she didn’t know what she’d say. Of course she’d say no. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t ready to go, or that she was leaving with more questions than she came with. Aside from the confusing fact that she’d actually enjoyed her time with Beau, she realized she’d never see him again after this. She had no reason to. Even if she admitted she wanted to, she couldn’t.

He spoke. “We should go. You can’t be late.”

There was an important detail she’d forgotten for a moment, but when it returned, it overpowered everything else. “I need to shower.”

He pulled out of her and pushed the covers back as he got out of the bed. “There’s no time.”

Her body coiled. She could not walk into Johnny’s home this way. “I have to shower,” she repeated.

“You can’t.” He put on his boxer briefs and disappeared into the walk-in closet. “I’m already worried about traffic,” he called. “If we don’t leave now—”

“Johnny will understand if we’re a few minutes late if it means I get to shower.”

“No,” Beau said firmly. He tossed a shopping bag onto the bed. “This isn’t up for discussion. I’ve never broken the terms of a contract in my life.”

Lola sat up, grasping the sheet to her chest. Any numbness dissipated in her panic. “You can’t be serious.” She dumped out the contents of the bag—the jeans, T-shirt and underwear she’d left her apartment in. “But I’m—I can’t go home like this. I’m disgusting.”

“Then you should’ve thought of that earlier. I’m not kidding, Lola. Get up. Now.”

He was already dressed in a hoodie and jeans, standing with his back straight and his hands on his hips. His hair was messy from sleep, something she would’ve found cute if anger wasn’t rising up her chest. She choked on her words. “C-can’t I at least—”

“What aren’t you understanding? The sky is already light. Get dressed, or I’ll do it for you.”

She clamped her mouth shut. What a fool she’d been to want to stay. Beau had been fire and ice all night, his moods swinging higher and further apart each time. “Then turn around,” she snapped. “I don’t want you to watch.”

He shook his head. “Time’s almost up, but not quite. You still belong to me.”

She swallowed thickly and let the sheet drop. She hooked herself into her bra and tugged her shirt over her head. He looked at his watch. She got out of the bed.

“I have to say,” he said thoughtfully as she pulled on her underwear, “this went even better than I imagined.”

There was something in Beau’s voice Lola didn’t recognize. The hair on the back of her neck bristled. “What did?”

“Buying a person.”

She stopped moving and looked at him. The shift from who he’d been in bed to the stranger standing in front of her had required less effort than a deep breath. “You didn’t buy ‘a person.’ You bought a body.” She didn’t want to be either to him, a person or a body. She wanted to be Lola—the girl he’d seduced over darts, the image that would soothe him on his deathbed. “There’s a difference.”

“I’m not debating this with you again. There’s no difference.”

He was so smug, without any trace of the Beau she’d gotten to know. He should’ve used her like he’d said he would. No talk of family, of possibility. Of her in his life. Anything more than using her body was a kind of cruel that went beyond the boundaries of normalcy. “I hate you,” she said. It had come out slippery and unintentional, but she didn’t take it back. In that moment, it was true.

“Fine,” he said. “But I bought you fair and square. Say it.”

“You did not,” she said. “I am not my body. I am feelings, a brain, a heart. There’s so much more to me than what you got.”

Beau was gripping his hips so hard, his knuckles were white. She looked away and buttoned her jeans, trying to hide the fact that he’d hurt her.

“You can’t just change the terms of an agreement, Lola. Business doesn’t work that way.”

“This isn’t business,” she said. “I’m a human being. I didn’t sign over my heart to you. You have no right to say you owned anything other than my body.”

“Are you saying none of it was real? That your heart wasn’t in it?”

“It was real for me, Beau. But it takes a lot goddamn more to earn someone’s heart. You can’t expect that in one night, and you damn well can’t demand it.”

“Enough,” he snapped. “Now would be a good time to shut your mouth.”

She didn’t. It fell wide open. “Beau—”

“Just—” He held up both his hands. “Stop. Stop talking.”

She grabbed her purse from the bed. “I’m ready,” she said, flipping him off as she stormed by him.

They rode the elevator down in silence. When the doors opened, she practically ran outside. It didn’t matter. Beau and his long strides were never far behind. She went straight to where Warner waited against a town car.

“I can go alone,” she said over her shoulder, knowing Beau would be there.

“I’m coming.”

“I don’t see why you have to.”

He ignored her. “Warner,” he said. “Don’t waste any time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lola opened the car door herself even though Beau reached for it. She ducked inside and slid as far away as she could get from him.

“Lola.”

“Don’t talk to me.” Her voice threatened to quiver, but she forced it steady. “You’re a fucking bastard.”

He sighed. “You’re right. I’m a bastard and an asshole. Such an asshole. I didn’t mean what I said up there. I’m sorry.”

She jerked her head to him. The words, in their apologetic, defeated tone, sounded wrong coming out of his mouth.

His eyebrows were drawn. “I mean it. I don’t know what came over me.” He made a face when he swallowed that made him look as if he was in pain. “Lola, you have to understand. This isn’t easy for me. We shouldn’t have to say goodbye like this. We shouldn’t have to say goodbye at all.”

Lola’s fists uncurled a little. It was all so confusing, except for the fact that she wasn’t ready to say goodbye either. Not even when he was an asshole. “I think I understand. Walking away is easier if we’re both angry.”

“I don’t want to end things this way.”

“You were pushing me away.”

“If you were smart,” he said quietly, “you’d let me.”

She looked back out the window. “It doesn’t matter. This is the end, anyway.”

“Not yet. Come back to me, even just for our last few minutes.”

It truly was the end. The horizon was orange. She could be what Beau so obviously needed for a few more minutes. At least she had someone waiting at home for her. She turned back and moved across the seat as he angled to face her. “I never expected it to be this good.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb, cupping her jaw. “For you to be so beautiful. For this to feel so right.” He paused. “For it to be so hard to say goodbye.”

Her breath hitched. She took his wrist with both her hands, overcome with need to give him the truth. “If we’d met earlier, Beau, or if our circumstances were different, I know I could’ve—”

“Stay another night.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Don’t go.”

“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head. She removed her hands and held them to her chest. Fantasizing that he’d ask her to stay and experiencing it were two different things. Even if she wanted to with every fiber of her being, which she didn’t, because she loved Johnny—she couldn’t. It was ridiculous. “You’re not serious. No. I can’t.”

“Would you do it if I didn’t pay you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then I’ll pay. He gets his money, and I get you. One more night.”

“Absolutely not.” She turned forward in the seat and looked away. “I need my phone back.”

Fabric rustled. The car slowed. She made the mistake of glancing back at him. His hair, still in disarray, alerted her to a new fracture in her heart, because it became a little deeper in that moment.

He held out the phone for her. “Thank you. Even though it wasn’t, it still felt like luck having you at all.”

She scanned his face, still incredibly handsome despite his lack of sleep, and took her phone. Out the tinted window, the familiar gates of her apartment complex came into view. When the car stopped, she gripped the door handle painfully hard.

“Lola.”

Don’t look back. Don’t look back. She looked back.

“Come here,” he said.

She hesitated, then leaned and met him halfway. He put a hand on her cheek to hold her there. “I have my flaws. I don’t deserve a yes from you,” he said. “There’s more to you than one night, though, and there’s more to me. He can have the money. We can have the rest of each other.” He kissed her. “I won’t change my mind. You know how to reach me.” He let her go and turned back to his window.

She stepped out onto the sidewalk. The car pulled away from the curb. Her feet had walked this path thousands of times—they knew the way home on their own. She willed them to move. Going home was the right thing to do. She and Johnny were forever altered, but he was waiting for her.

The car braked at a stop sign a second too long, and her breath caught.

The price of a million dollars was not her body. It was glimpsing what could’ve been and wondering for the rest of her life if she should’ve been in that car. It was the seed of doubt planted in her mind that could potentially grow many different branches.

The car turned and drove away. She glanced over her shoulder. She was out of time. The sun was just beginning to rise over the city.