All the Things We Need Page 25

  We didn’t wrestle. Nothing that obvious. But he did give his head one small shake as he urged me onto my back. I ended up propped on my elbows, one knee bent so that my dress showed off my bare thighs. Niall at the foot of the bed, one hand on my calf. His eyes gleamed as I trailed a fingertip up my leg and along the lace of my panties.

  “I want to watch you make yourself come,” he said.

  It wasn’t what I was expecting. “You do?”

  He nodded. A small smile tilted the corner of his mouth and faded so fast I almost missed it. “Yeah. I do.”

  I scooted back on the bed to arrange the pillows in a pile high enough to prop me up. I let my thighs fall open, my dress still shadowing my panties. “Like this?”

  “Yes.” He’d gone solemn and grim-mouthed. “I want to see your pussy.”

  I drew in a breath. I ran my hands up the insides of my thighs, pushing my dress up and out of the way. In the summer’s last gasp of late September, the heat had been too much for stockings and garters. He didn’t seem to miss them. I watched his face, his eyes going dark. His hand went to the bulge in his jeans, rubbing. When I stroked a finger over the lace of my panties, his fingers curled.

  “Niall.”

  He looked at me.

  I slid my fingers into the front of my panties. He licked his bottom lip then caught it in his teeth. His gaze speared and held me. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to, and part of me did. Part of me wanted to close my eyes, to be made blind. To be made a little helpless.

  I lifted my ass from the bed to push my panties down my thighs. Over my knees. It’s hard to be graceful when you’re on your back, but I managed to somehow wriggle out of the lace and lie back again. Legs closed, coy though not shy. The hem of my dress had fallen down again, shielding me from his hungry gaze.

  We’d already been naked together. He’d already made me come. But this was different, the way he commanded me. I liked it the way I’d liked the restaurant he’d chosen and where he’d taken me to dance. Because he knew what I wanted without my having to tell him.

  When I again slowly tugged my dress up to expose my nakedness to him, Niall unbuckled his belt. Then his button and zipper. I focused greedily on the bulge in his briefs and oh, God, oh, fuck yes, the head of his cock peeking out. He pushed his jeans down low enough to free himself and took himself in his fist.

  “Make yourself come,” Niall ordered.

  I was happy to oblige. I was already wet and slick, my cunt tight around my first and middle fingers as I dipped them inside. I circled the tight, hard knot of my clit with slippery fingertips and let my knees fall apart to give him a clear view.

  His guttural groan was the best response. Niall stroked himself, keeping his fist curled around the shaft. His hips pumped forward.

  “I want you inside me,” I said.

  He smiled. “Not yet.”

  I laughed hoarsely, but I didn’t argue. This felt too fucking good. My back arched a little as I stroked faster. I fucked my fingers inside again for a few seconds then back to my clit. I was already shaking. Breathing hard.

  Sometimes, the best way to keep control is deciding to give it up to someone else.

  “You gonna come for me?” Niall murmured. “C’mon, girl. I want to see you.”

  I was getting closer. Words more difficult to say, catching on a moan. I said his name, I think, or maybe just groaned. The muscles in my belly and thighs were tight. I couldn’t stop my hips from rolling, or my free hand from fisting in the sheets. He wanted me to come; I wanted to make him lose his mind.

  “I’m close,” I managed to say. The first waves of orgasm were building, building. Just a little more, and I would be swept away.

  Niall muttered something I couldn’t hear. I shifted, teasing myself a little to draw out the pleasure. I wanted us to finish together.

  “So close,” I said, looking into his eyes. Wanting to urge him toward me, wanting him inside me, but giving him this, what he’d asked for. To see me. “Jerk that cock for me, baby. Make yourself come for me.”

  His stroking hand slowed then stopped. His mouth twisted. He shook his head.

  Thinking he needed a little encouragement, wanting to give him time to catch up, I slowed my fingers. “I want you to fucking make yourself come for me. C’mon, I’m so close, baby, I want you with me. Come all over me. Cover me with it.”

  “I don’t want to do that.”

  Caught up in my own pleasure, I was sure I’d misheard him. Or misunderstood. “I want you to—”

  “I said no.” Niall shook his head again and, incredibly, pulled his pants up.

  Once, when I was fifteen, I’d been riding in a car driven by one of my good friends. She hadn’t been paying attention and had rear-ended a car that had suddenly come to a stop in front of us. I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt, stupid of course, and though I’d tried to shield myself from the impact, I’d hit the dashboard with my neck and shoulder. It wasn’t the windshield, I could count myself lucky for that, but the feeling of moving and all at once hitting something hard enough to make stars dance in my vision…I’d never forgotten it.

  We’d been moving, but suddenly we had stopped.

  I sat up. “What?”

  “I don’t want to do that.” Niall said. He zipped up, buttoned up, buckled his belt. Stepped back from the bed.

  Everything inside me turned cold, and I became very small.

  I let my dress cover me. Being naked is being vulnerable, and I was glad I’d only pulled it up, not taken it off. I tucked my knees to the side.

  Pushing his hand up my thigh, having him pull away. Telling him to keep his mouth on me and him moving to use his hand, instead. A dozen little things here or there that he’d fought me on and I’d let pass because it hadn’t mattered so much at the time. But now, this.

  And it mattered to me very, very much.

  We stared at each other, saying nothing. I couldn’t tell my own expression, though I was trying desperately for casually neutral so I could keep myself from bursting into startled, embarrassed tears. Niall looked distant before he wouldn’t look at me at all. He took the remote from the dresser and clicked on the TV then sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I guess we’re…finished?” I asked around the lump in my throat.

  “Yeah. Sure. I’m tired anyway. Drank too much, too.”

  I didn’t know what to say. How to move, where to go. If I should touch him, or even if I wanted to. I breathed in, counting slowly, and then got up and went into the bathroom. I ran the water in the sink and put my hands on it, bracing myself physically against the countertop.

  Breathe, breathe, breathe, I told myself. Breathe, Elise.

  I’d been with men I did not allow to come. Tease and denial had been part of our play, mutually agreed upon and enjoyed. I’d been with men who’d had trouble reaching orgasm—Esteban sometimes did not finish, and I’d learned early on not to take it personally but to trust him when he told me his climax was not the only end point to our play. But I’d never been with a man who flat-out refused to come, especially not when he’d been urging me on to come myself, while he jacked off.

  I’d never had a man refuse me anything, really, when it came to sex.

  Ever efficient, I’d unpacked my bag shortly after we’d checked in. I had my toiletries bag in the bathroom already, along with the pajamas I hadn’t intended to need. Splashing my face with cold water, I tried to convince myself that whatever had happened in the bedroom wasn’t personal. He was tired, a little drunk, we’d veered off course in the way you sometimes do when you’re not on the same page. It wasn’t meant to hurt me. But it sure felt like shit, no matter how I played it out, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t rinse the sour, bitter taste of dismay from my mouth. I took a shower, and couldn’t wash away the feeling of so
mehow being dirty, either.

  I wanted to face him again with my full face on, painted like a warrior, but instead I came out of the bathroom freshly scrubbed, my hair towel-dried and still damp. My pajamas were cute, a tank top and silky boxers, but I went without a word to my suitcase to pull out an oversize T-shirt to put on top. Niall hadn’t changed, but he’d pushed himself back onto the pillows, on top of the covers, to watch TV.

  Face impassive, he didn’t say anything when I took up my book, which, like my pajamas I hadn’t intended to need. I got into bed on the wrong side, but didn’t ask him if we could switch. I tried to concentrate on the book, but the words swam, blurring. After a few minutes, Niall got up and went into the bathroom. He was in there longer than I had been.

  The room had gone chilly from the air-conditioning, and I shivered from it. Anxious that my stomach was going to get upset enough to make me truly ill, I swallowed hard. Then again. I turned off the light, put my book on the bedside stand and curled into myself so I could count backward from a hundred. But my tried-and-true method of putting myself to sleep didn’t work. I was still awake when he came out.

  He turned off the light first. I heard shuffling near his suitcase. The bed dipped when he got into it. I waited for him to touch me…but he did not.

  “Are you upset?” Niall asked finally, his voice quiet as the shadows.

  I didn’t turn to face him. “Yes. I am.”

  “Why?”

  Blinking rapidly, I tried to find an answer that would come out calm and in control. What I managed, instead, was a low rasp. “Why? What do you mean, why?”

  “Just what I said. Why?”

  I was glad now that he hadn’t curled up behind me. I couldn’t have borne his touch now. I punched my pillow and eased to the edge of the bed, as far from him as possible. “That was pretty much the ultimate rejection, wasn’t it?”

  He laughed.

  The motherfucker laughed.

  It wasn’t an easy laugh, and it lacked humor, and I could tell he’d forced it, but even so it was not the response I wanted. Niall sat up. I could see his shadow and from the corner of my eye, the outline of him, but fortunately for him, he kept his hands to himself.

  “Don’t be like that,” he told me.

  The only thing that kept me from leaping from the bed in a white-hot rage at that point was that I was genuinely too stunned to move. I couldn’t even speak. Behind me, Niall lay back down, close enough that his shoulder would’ve brushed mine if I turned onto my back. I didn’t. I didn’t move, didn’t say a word, because to do anything in that moment would’ve made me lose it. All of it, everything, I’d have screamed and raged and possibly thrown things; I would’ve wept for sure, great gushing buckets of the tears trying to stab me in the throat and eyes even now. I would’ve lost control, and I refused to give him that.

  “Good night,” Niall said.

  I did not answer him.

  CHAPTER 34

  I did not sleep.

  Beside me, the soft in-out huff of Niall’s breathing told me he did, or at least did a good job of pretending. Morning light started peeking around the blackout curtain in only a few hours, but I’d never been so glad for a reason to get out of bed. Though I’d showered so recently that my hair was still wet, I took another, this time forcing myself to endure a lukewarm spray to keep myself from dissolving into dismay.

  I blew my hair dry, not caring if it woke him. I did my makeup. And finally, I dressed in the clothes I’d brought along to travel in.

  He was up when I came back into the bedroom, the TV on but the volume so low there was no way he could really hear it. He’d propped himself on the pillows, an arm beneath his head. He looked rumpled and gorgeous, and I kind of hated him for making me want to slip back beneath the covers with him and be naked all day long.

  “You’re up early,” he said.

  I tucked my toiletries into my suitcase and made sure my dirty laundry was separated from the clothes I hadn’t yet worn. I slipped on a pair of flats and settled my fuck-me pumps alongside my cosmetics bag. When I turned to get my book from the bedside stand, Niall was watching me.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to head home early.” My chin went up. I heard the steel in my voice. I knew the look on my face.

  Other men would’ve known better than to try and charm me in that moment, but I’d already figured out that Niall wasn’t other men. “Don’t be like that. C’mere.”

  He sat up and crooked a finger at me. Actually gestured to me like I was some woebegone, delicate little flower who needed to somehow be comforted. Or wooed. Fuck that. Fuck being soft. What had that gotten me but rejection, humiliation and pain?

  I didn’t move. I put my book away and closed my suitcase. I visually checked the room for anything I might have left behind then found my purse on the chair and put it over my shoulder.

  “Elise,” Niall said like a warning. “Don’t do this.”

  “I think it’s best if I leave.”

  Niall got out of bed to stand in front of me. I could’ve pushed past him, but that would’ve meant touching him. And frankly, I didn’t need to be that aggressive to get what I wanted. I knew that well enough. I didn’t move.

  “C’mon,” he said with another of those half laughs that sounded nothing like his usual good humor. “What’s going on? I thought we were going to have a great weekend together.”

  “So did I.”

  A shadow crossed his expression, but he was still pretending last night hadn’t happened. “We still could. I have dinner reservations for tonight. I thought we were going to the art museum…don’t let last night upset you so much.”

  “Don’t tell me how to feel, please.” My words were clipped, precise, but polite. Cold, though. Really fucking cold.

  He frowned. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me how you feel, then. Since I can’t figure it out.”

  “I’m upset about what happened last night,” I said carefully. “About you choosing not to finish.”

  Niall’s gaze darkened. His mouth thinned. He was pissed off, now, but I didn’t care.

  “You told me to come for you,” Niall said flatly. “My orgasm is my decision.”

  I gaped, jaw dropping. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Look, I know you’ve had bunches of guys who get off being bossed around by you, but in case you haven’t figured it out, that’s not me. It’s never going to be me.”

  My fingers curled on the strap of my bag, but I wanted to make them a fist. “I wasn’t bossing you around. I was…we were both talking. I thought it was something we were both doing with each other, Niall.”

  “It felt like you were trying to get me to do what you wanted me to do,” he said. “Not what I wanted to do.”

  I reeled at this, not sure what to say or how to say it. All I could do was shake my head, helpless to find words even to defend myself. “I thought you’d want to!”

  “I don’t get off on being ordered around!”

  “I wasn’t ordering you,” I cried, resenting his accusation even as I tried replaying the night before in my head to see if I’d come on too strong. Too dominant.

  “It sounded like you were,” Niall snapped.

  I recoiled, physically and emotionally. I shook my head again, grasping for control and finding it only by biting my tongue hard enough to make a star or two dance across my vision. I rubbed the soreness against the back of my teeth.

  “I thought we were doing something together,” I told him in the same flat tone he’d used with me earlier. “You were telling me to do things, and I was telling you to do things…and you made me feel like I was less than…porn.”

  It was his turn to take a step back. “The fuck does that mean?”

  “It means that you
made me feel like it was something you were orchestrating all for yourself, like you were watching porn or something. Except that I’m pretty sure when you do watch porn,” I added with a sneer, “you actually get off.”

  Niall’s lip curled. “You’re the one who was making it like porn, asking me to come all over your tits. Maybe that’s the sort of thing you did with all your lovers, but I’m not that guy. I don’t get off on being bossed around.”

  I went hot. I went cold. Like a fever, an illness, I started to shake. “You were the one bossing,” I whispered. “And I was letting you.”

  “I guess you don’t like it when you’re on the other side of things.”

  I’d bitten my tongue plenty of times to keep myself from saying cruel words aloud, but at this I found myself utterly speechless. I bent to lift my suitcase, focusing on that one thing, that action, to keep myself from screaming or bursting into tears or needing to sit because my legs had started to shake. I wanted to puke. Mostly, I just wanted to get out of there.

  I suddenly resented all the times I hadn’t pushed, hadn’t demanded or commanded or insisted on getting my way. All for what? For the sake of love.

  He tried again to smile. “C’mon, Elise. Don’t go.”

  I didn’t look at him. When he took a step toward me, I didn’t step back. I turned my face away, though. I could not look at him. I didn’t want to.

  When he stepped aside, I pushed past him without touching him. My suitcase bumped his leg, but I didn’t apologize. If I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure what would spill out, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. And still, now, as angry and hurt and dismayed as I was, I didn’t want to break open in front of him. I didn’t want to be hurtful.

  So instead, I swallowed everything, and I left without looking behind me.

  * * *

  No games. That’s what I had said, and if I expected Niall not to play them, I couldn’t, either. So, although I didn’t want to, I texted him as soon as I got home.

  We should talk.

  He did not answer.

  I waited an hour and texted again. Please call me. And again, Niall didn’t reply. I waited for the rest of the day, trying to lose myself in laundry and bill paying, all the things I would not have been doing if I were still in Baltimore, holding his hand while we looked at weird art. When night fell, he still had not replied.