Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 522

SPARROW

"Scarlett, what are you doing to me?"

The words were already out of my mouth, so there was no putting them back. She went still against my arm, and for a long moment the only sound in the room was the AC humming in the dim light.

"I'm not sure I understand your question."

My thumb found the bruise on the side of her neck again, the one my own hand had put there, and traced it the way I had been tracing it for ten minutes without meaning to. "Did you use the balm I gave you?"

"Yes." She answered quickly. "And what did you mean by what you asked me earlier? What am I doing to you?"

I had asked her the question, and now I was the one with no answer, which was a position I did not enjoy occupying. I lsat there turning the question over, the way I turned over a bad hand at a card table, looking for the tell, looking for the shape of it.

The truth was that I did not want her to matter to me. I had watched men go soft around the middle for a woman, watched them start explaining themselves to their own staff, and I had sworn that no woman would ever hold that kind of handle on my life. I did not want to wake up one morning and find out that the shape of my day depended on whether she had smiled at me over breakfast.

But there it was. She was beside me and my chest was quiet. The appetite I used to have for other women had dried up on me without warning. That was the part that should have frightened me most, because variety had been the whole point, the reason I built my life the way I built it. A different face every night, a different body, no name worth remembering in the morning. Now women crossed my path and my eyes slid off them the way eyes slide off furniture. And when she had been angry with me over what I did to Tasha, I had not been able to breathe properly until I knew she was over it. I had paced with my chest tight as a fist and no explanation for it.

I still could not put a name to any of it. That was the honest answer, and it was not one I intended to hand her.

I sighed. "Well...I mean...I cannot stop thinking about you."

She furrowed her brows. "Why is that?"

I shrugged. "Because it feels good when my cock is buried in your pussy."

That was not what I had meant when I asked the question. It was also not a lie. Being inside her was the only thing I thought about with any real hunger anymore, and the other women had started to look like men to me, no matter how beautiful they were. Her breath changed beside me, and then she inched her face closer and kissed me. Soft, unhurried, her mouth warm. When she pulled back I looked at her and smiled.