Page 42 of Somebody To Love

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

Even though I could barely see his face in the darkness, I could still hear the smile in his voice.

“But back to your grandparents…”

“Oh yeah, they were great. Very hands-off and provided no guidance, but they loved me unconditionally.” He laughed and stroked my hair as he reminisced on his childhood. “They were really permissive. I had ice cream for dinner quite often. They were both university professors. They both worked until their eighties. I had babysitters from the neighborhood who practically raised me since my grandparents were gone so often.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, they were workaholics, but loving, compassionate people.”

“So you model your relationships after them?”

“What? No way. Those two argued all the time, I think that’s why they stayed at work so much, to get away from each other.”

“That must have been tough.”

“Not at all, but it’s probably the reason I started studying psychology. I didn’t understand why my grandparents stayed with each other when they disagreed over EVERYTHING. I mean, they would be contrary just because. If granny said the sky was blue, grandad would contradict her and say it was green.”

I laughed. He laughed too and tucked me even closer, resting his chin on my hair. “I guess in retrospect, they are the reason I got a PhD in psychology. I didn’t understand their motivations at all. I didn’t understand why they stayed together for so long but my parents couldn’t even make their relationship work for ten seconds. So, in school, I studied relationships—”

“Hold on, so you have a PhD. So you’re Dr. Rylan? Did you teach? Were you a professor?”

“I was, but then I opened a private practice and gave up academia.”

“And now you’re a consultant. And how’s that going? Do you like it?”

“Better than I could have expected. I like it a lot.”

“Plenty of people have relationship problems… you’ll never run out of clients.” I tried not to think about if I fell into that category or not. Did I have relationship problems? I had dated guys who had no interest in committing. I’d chosen loser after loser. Yeah, I had relationship problems. But I definitely wasn’t going to tell Ty that.

“But enough about me,” he said nuzzling my neck. I instantly felt myself getting turned on again.

He slid down me, planting kisses across my collar bone, on the space between my breasts. Then he was kissing my belly button. I sighed.

He kissed below my belly button and then brought his hands up and spread my thighs. I couldn’t think anymore as he settled between them and started to make magic with his tongue.

Chapter Seven

“This goddamn computer is so slow,” I said, slamming my hand down on the desk.

“Woah take it easy,” Becca said. She looked at me curiously with her big blue eyes and I avoided her gaze. She had asked to come over just to hang out but I wasn’t exactly the best company right now.

“What’s wrong with you today?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me except that this computer is way too slow.”

She said nothing and then turned away from me. “You’ve been a little cranky all day.”

“I’m not cranky. Not at all.” Each word was punctuated by me hitting the keyboard as I practically growled at Becca. I was cranky. Yep. But I didn’t want to tell Becca why. I was too embarrassed to tell her anything. I felt like crap and I didn’t want to tell any of my friends the reason I was so pissed was because of a man. I hadn’t heard from Ty all week. After the night I showed up at his condo, he had pretty much disappeared from my life. I hadn’t received a text, a phone call, just silence. Painful silence. And so I hadn’t reached out to him either. I had too much pride to grovel.

The first day I had been fine. By the second day, I had been staring at my phone willing it to vibrate or ring. But nothing. He had manipulated me. Teased me into sleeping with him. He didn’t take intimacy lightly, he had said. What a joke. He was exactly who I thought he had been: a playboy, a womanizer. And he had gotten me exactly where he wanted. He had known what he was doing when he had left me wanting him that night on my front porch. He had known that his decision to not sleep with me that night had whet my appetite for him. And then he had had his way with me as soon as the opportunity arose. I had made things so easy for him.

I felt like a fool. I was so stupid. I had made another bad choice. I wanted to cry, but I wasn’t going to. I would be strong and just move on. After all, isn’t that what I always did? My love life was like a broken record: stuck on repeat. I was tired of feeling this way, but I didn’t know what to do about it.