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“Talent is a compliment by definition.”
“It wasn’t one.”
“Let’s consult Merriam-Webster then.” Before she protests, I type into my phone’s search engine and the answer pulls my cheeks into a much larger grin.
“Richard,” she warns, hating that she mistakenly complimented me. I love it, only because it angers her this much.
“‘A special ability that allows someone to do something well,’” I read the definition. “That was a compliment.”
Her eyes flame.
I stare at my screen with more humor in my features. “Also, ‘people who are sexually attractive.’”
She scoffs. “It doesn’t say that.”
I flash her my phone, and she snatches it out of my hands, her eyes like lasers, scorching the screen as she reads.
“Rose Calloway Cobalt finds me sexually attractive,” I say. “If only you’d called me talented when you were fourteen.”
She stiffens but keeps her gaze on the phone that she cups between two hands. “And what would you have done if I had?”
I wait for her to look up at me. When she does, I see our history laid flat like an ancient world map. “I would’ve called you talented right back.”
Her collarbones jut out as she inhales, deeply.
My grin spreads, the one that she calls conceited. It instantaneously makes her aware of how infatuated she looks. She ices over and chucks a nearby pillow at me, narrowly missing the chessboard.
I laugh and she pelts me with another beaded one.
“That better not be the truth you owe me.”
“What was wrong with that one?” I ask.
“It wasn’t real.”
“It was real,” I say.
“You told me that you didn’t find me attractive until you were seventeen.”
My smile fades. The real truth: I found Rose fascinating from our very first encounter, but if I admit that, then I’m admitting to the concept of love at first sight. The whole notion is ridiculous, fallible—one-hundred percent unbelievable. So I had to have been seventeen when I was first drawn to Rose. Anything else is just fantasy.
“Tell me something real,” Rose prods. “And it better be fucking good.”
I don’t necessarily know what she wants. Something from the heart. I hear her voice as I think it. My heart may be anatomically the same as hers, but it’s different. I will always be different.
“I love your eyes,” I tell her.
She glowers. “I already know your strange obsession with my eyes. That’s nothing new. You’re cheating.” She emphasizes the word, believing it’ll rile me the way that it does her.
I stay complacent and pass an ivory pawn between my fingers, one that I’d collected fifteen minutes ago. And I think about a truth. Something from the heart. “The first time I had sex,” I begin, “I lasted much longer than ten-seconds. I was good at it.”
“Calling yourself a sex god is a personal evaluation, not a truth, and you’ve already told me some of this before.”
“How about the part where I hated it?”
She goes rigid, her hands flat on her thighs.
“I hated my first time,” I say again, just as calmly. “There are monumental stages in life that most people eventually take. We talk. We walk. We feel. We cry.” I pause. “We love. We fuck. And sooner or later, we die.” I lick my lips and let out a soft laugh. “Sex was a stage. It was practical. It was what I was supposed to do, but it held no meaning. It wasn’t exciting. Physically, I felt pleasure. Mentally, it was lackluster. I couldn’t figure out how to make it better than it was. I couldn’t figure out what to do differently to turn something ordinary into something that would blind me. Not at fifteen. And so, I hated it.”
Her mind reels. I can see it spinning in her distant gaze. “You left out emotionally,” she whispers.
“Sex was never emotional for me, at least not until I had sex with you.”
Rose scrutinizes me, as though wondering if I’m speaking honestly or telling her what she wants to hear. But that’s without a doubt, the honest truth.
“What else?” she asks, wanting me to spill more feelings, not just facts. I understand that now.
“My turn.” I shut down her question and return to the chessboard.
She crosses her arms, her hot gaze directed on my actions. I shift a pawn to align my pieces, rejecting a more obvious route. Rose plays chess aggressively, more than most. Two moves later and I capture her rook. She sighs in frustration, brows knotted as she traces the board, as if she can rewind time and alter her last move.
“Your robe, darling.” I gesture to her clothing that I desperately want removed.
She lets out another heavy sigh. It took years for her to be comfortable around me. She’s conquered those insecurities, so anytime she huffs, it’s because she’s stubborn, prideful, and therefore struggles submitting to me, even if it fills her with pleasure.
Rose, rather indignantly, pulls at the straps of her silk robe. Maybe she’s purposefully being rough and less sensual and slow, so I won’t get off. Having an erection would be another bonus for me. She shoves the fabric off her shoulder, and her hostility throbs my cock, much more than anything else would.
The robe falls to the mattress, pooling at her thighs. I almost have to readjust my bent knee, my muscles constricting at the sight of her white lingerie, one-piece like an indecent bathing suit. The lace forms delicate roses along her hipbones, the wire bodice architecting her hourglass frame. A tiny white bow sits between her full breasts, pushed up in two cups, see-through, her nipples already hardened.
Her chest falls heavier than before, the diamond droplet necklace needing to be replaced with leather. My arms ache to pull her into my chest, hard and rough and so quick that every movement afterwards will belong to me.
She clears her throat, scolding me for looking this long.
Rose is so many layers of beautiful that even I’d have trouble touching each one.
“You have me in my underwear. Congratulations.” She bends to the chess set, her cleavage nearly spilling out towards me.
My fingers tighten on my kneecap. I attempt to control the urge to shove the board aside and split her legs open, just taking her rough without another pause.
“Your pawn is dead,” she announces. “Give me a truth.”
I frown and pry my gaze off her breasts. She pinches my pawn, her red polish stirring my cock again. Patience.
I extend my leg out more, my muscles cramped. “I was good at sex because I watched porn. I found it useful.”
“You and every other teenager,” she snaps. “That’s not a truth, it’s a fact.” Her focus quickly returns to the board, too quickly. She’s avoiding a topic we both often skirt around. Porn. The sex tapes.
My conversation with Frederick shoots to the front of my brain, about how much those tapes have affected Rose. About my inability to claim them as a failure. Scott may have the sex tapes, but I have a multi-billion-dollar business and a new diamond franchise.
In my point of view, I won.
In Rose’s, I’m beginning to realize she feels like it’s a loss.
“Make your move,” she tells me.
“What about my truth?”
Her eyes flit to mine and back to the board. “I don’t care anymore.”
I care. I care if she’s hurt. I care if she’s sad or if she’s in pain. I care more about Rose than I ever thought I’d care about another human being.
She motions to the board. “Continue on so I can crush you.”
I latch onto her gaze. “About the sex tapes—”
“Move your piece,” she cuts me off abruptly, “or you forfeit your turn.”
“That’s not how this game works,” I reply. “I tell you a truth.” Maybe if I give her something bigger, she’ll be more open about those tapes with me. “I started experimenting when I was nineteen, bondage and handcuffs. I pushed it too far, for my own personal taste, just to see what I lik
ed sometimes. I never had a person instruct me. I just deduced what got me off more than anything else.”
“What about the other person?” she asks.
“They enjoyed it. I wouldn’t try anything on someone who didn’t. I’m in the game of pleasing people, even when I’m dissatisfied, remember?”
She rolls her eyes.
I smile. “I don’t like when women call me sir. I won’t ever call you a slut. What I love most is the control, especially over someone who’s headstrong.”
“Funny,” she says icily, but she clears her throat again, this time in arousal.
“How was that?” I ask her, wondering if my truth was up to par.
