Page 50 of His Property


Font Size:  

“Wanting to know more about the man fucking my brains out isn’t what I’d call being up to something. It really is possible that I want to know more about you.”

“I don’t think I like that tone, young lady.”

Normally, that steel in his voice and him calling me something like that would have had me on my knees before him begging for more, but I wasn’t fooled. He was serious this time. I’d either hit a nerve, or there was something else going on here that I didn’t yet understand.

“Why do you make it so hard for me? You… it just seems like you won’t let anyone in.”

He slid off the bed so quickly, my mouth dropped open. He yanked on a pair of warm-ups, and even as my anger was growing I couldn’t help but admire the play of the thick muscles of his chest and shoulders.

Drooling over his body is about the last thing you need to be doing right now, dummy.

“Why I do things isn’t your concern, Lola. Doing as I tell you is. I thought we were both clear on that.”

I sat up. “We are. But… I can’t help how I’m feeling here. The same questions keep ringing in my head. Is it a warning? Am I just being stupid to worry about this?”

He said nothing though, standing there with his hands on his hips.

“Why don’t you want more?”

I knew it was very likely to anger him, me pushing him on this, but I desperately wanted to know. Ihadto know. At that moment, I realized it was perhaps the most important question of all.

The why.

But I was bitterly disappointed.

“That question isn’t one I’m inclined to discuss with you, Lola. It’s not part of our deal, and never was. It’s not your concern about why I do what I do. I just want the physical part, the lust, the pleasure. I’m honest about this. How many men are? I’m not trying to fool anyone here. I’m not deceiving anyone here, either.”

“Then whatareyou doing?” I brought my knees up, tucking them under my chin as I stared at the mess of the bedsheets.

He crossed his arms. “What I’m doing is delineating boundaries. There’s a difference between defining the extent of a relationship and hiding, or being deceptive. I thought you were someone who understood that.”

“Fuckyou, Ellis.”

His eyes blinked quickly, then he inclined his chin, glaring at me. “Anything else you want to accuse me of while we’re at it?”

I turned away from him, dropping my feet to the cold carpet. My pulse was pounding wildly, a rushing in my ears. “No. But I think now I see what I didn’t want to see, what I rationalized away even though it was staring me right in the face.”

“And what’s that?” His voice had grown softer, but I detected zero inclination to be conciliatory, or even any sign of an attempt on his part to understand where I was coming from. This reminded me a lot more of a parent mollifying a child just coming down from her tantrum.

Placating. Patronizing.

It only made me angrier.

“Actually, I do want to say one more thing, Mr. Winters.” I met his gaze over my shoulder, staring daggers at him even as my heart ached. “I quit.”

Lola! What the fuck are you doing?

CHAPTER24

Lola

The glass was so cold and wet against my hand. the rain outside streaming down the window. It had been three weeks since I had left him, and in many ways it seemed like three years.

The night we’d had our fight, and I’d left, I’d called Michelle to come get me. I’d stayed on their couch for the first time in a long time, crying and sleeping, and crying and sleeping some more. I didn’t know why I was so upset; it wasn’t as if I was the one who had been dumped. Maybe it was the fact that I realized deep down that it really was the end.

Acknowledging that a relationship had run its course, for better or worse, was never an easy thing, but it hit me surprisingly hard when it came to saying goodbye to Ellis Winters.

The morning after I left him, the money hit my account, just as he said it would, and I knew I’d never forget sitting there stunned on the couch that morning seeing that number in my account. It was more money than I’d ever had at one time in my life, by a good margin. That money was how I got the crappy apartment I was standing in at this moment. I had enough to pay for first and last, a nice healthy deposit too. I even got my car back.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com