Read episode 8 here: http://bit.ly/allureserial
“Does it change where we stand though?” she asked me sadly. “You’re entitled to your past. But your lover wants to destroy what we have by airing those details to me. To everyone. She clearly doesn’t care if I, or anyone, knows you were out there having threesome—”
“Sometimes more than that.” Her hand tensed in mine. “And . . .”
“And what, Dorian?”
I braced for the impact my next words were going to have. “There are some . . . videos.”
“Are you fucking kidding?” Her words were an exhaled whisper, more air than actual sounds. As if she were punched in the solar plexus.
I was pretty sure that was exactly what it felt like for her. It was what it would be like for me if the tables were turned.
She slid her hand from mine and just sat there, staring at the table, lost in the reality of our situation.
No. My situation. The one I was bringing to her door, when it was the least she deserved.
Expression contemplative, she finished her third drink.
Silent, I did the same, and wished that the beginnings of the buzz I was feeling would actually numb my anxiety.
The fourth round came. Demi never looked up and I took the opportunity to signal the waitress for the check.
Didn’t like that look on my girl’s face. I was going to have to get her out of there soon.
If she didn’t run from me, that was.
She took longer to drink the fourth round, which gave me some hope, but eventually the quiet between us became too much.
“Talk to me, Demi. Say something.”
“What do you want me to say?” she asked the alcohol in her glass, refusing to stare at me.
“That you love me.”
“You already know that.”
“That we’ll find a way through this.”
“It’s one thing to be told about it. Another to imagine it . . . now you’re telling me there’s a chance I’ll have to see it?”
“I’ll use everything at my disposal to make sure it doesn’t happen,” I hurried to add. “I’ve already begun setting a plan in motion.” That meeting with Howell couldn’t happen fast enough.
“I—I’ve never even been in a relationship before.”
“Me neither.”
“How do you expect me to handle this? How . . .”
The desperate agony oozing off her gutted another part of my soul. I didn’t think I’d ever empathized with someone’s pain to this extent, but I experienced every bit of what she was going through on a visceral level. “Can you just take it one day at a time with me? One step at a time?” Just don’t run. Not like this, I pleaded mentally.
In the time it took her to answer, her own buzz must’ve started kicking in. Her cheeks turned pink and her eyes glazed over in a way I remembered well.
Too well.
Especially when those same eyes moved over my body, and her expression melted as she got lost in a memory.
Which one? I didn’t know. But I could guess what it entailed.
Every inch of my body did.
“This would be so much easier if you weren’t so fucking irresistible,” she complained in a petulant tone.
My hand snapped around her knee under the table; my leg bounced from my impatient arousal. There was one way to prove to this woman who I belonged to, and I was revved and ready to go. “You can hate-fuck me until it’s out of your system. I’m okay with that.”
“Dorian . . .” Resigned, sad eyes raised to meet with mine, a look that added another layer of heartache to my arousal. “This is going to destroy me. I don’t need to be an expert at this relationship thing to know that what’s coming will probably stay with me forever.”
“I’ll do everything in my power to protect you. And, if that somehow fails, I’ll love you through every second of it. I’ll love you until it’s all you can feel and then nothing will touch you.”
She leaned over and cupped my cheek—the first touch she’d initiated tonight. “How is it that you’re being the naive one right now?”