He shrugged. “She blamed me—rightfully—for killing her husband and son. I didn’t blame her. I blamed myself.”
He rolled his shoulders, the conclusion to his story coming out in a rush. “I knew where her brother lived and went to beg for her forgiveness. They all turned their backs on me and told me I was a ghost. I had died in that fire too, and that was all there was to it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t pity me.” He held up his hand. “Never pity me. I take full responsibility, just like I take full responsibility for what I’ve done to you.” He threw me a broken smile. “That’s why I can’t let myself relax when I’m around you. Why when I say it’s not your body I’m after, I’m telling the goddamn truth. I need to master you, Pim. I need to study, control, and manipulate you until you give me every tiny scrap. And I refuse to fucking do that.”
I held his stare. “That doesn’t explain why you won’t kiss me. Why you said you could only have me once.”
“I can’t believe this.” He looked at the ceiling then back at me. “Are you asking why I won’t sleep with you? I thought you’d be glad about that after everything you’ve been through.”
I broke eye contact. I couldn’t lie after he’d been so honest, but I couldn’t hide the truth either. “Part of me will be forever thankful that you don’t want me that way. That the other night was a slip and I’ll never have to have sex again.”
He spoke with thick loathing. “And the other part?”
“That part is curious. It wants to know how different it could be with someone I trust. I like when you kiss me. I like the way it makes me feel.”
He pressed his lips together as if I’d shocked him silent.
I breathed in, embarrassment pinking my cheeks. “I-I could’ve refrained from saying that, but after everything you just told me, I had to tell the truth. For you and for me.”
He moved closer.
I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. I’d dropped to my knees out of support, but now I hated the power exchange. I didn’t flinch as he stopped in front of me or pull back when he tilted my chin up with his finger.
When our eyes met, he smiled sadly. “I won’t have sex with you again because I could lose myself in you. I would become utterly, terribly addicted. Once I’d had you—fully had you where you wanted me as much as I wanted you—I’d never be able to stop. I’d fuck you every hour of every day. I’d forget to eat, sleep, breathe. All I would need is you. All I would want is you. And that sort of obsession is not healthy—for either of us.”
Letting me go, he strode to the deck where the doors remained open, letting the muggy night air mingle with the heavy confessions we’d bestowed. “That’s the main reason I want to set you free, Pim. Not for you but for me. I need you gone before I do something I can’t undo. Before I destroy both of us.”
Chapter Fifteen
______________________________
Elder
“FUCKING HARDER. WHAT are you? Turning pussy on me?”
Selix grunted as he swung the katakana swords directly at my head. “Giving you a break. Your mind isn’t fully in the game.”
“It’s not a game.” I ducked and struck him in the back with the training nunchucks that didn’t break bones but definitely bruised.
He grunted as I parried backward, sweat rivering down my naked torso and soaking into my sweatpants. “It’s a fight, Selix, so be a fucking man and fight.”
“Oh, yeah?” He roundhoused me, taking me by surprise, using his foot as his weapon and not the swords in his hands. “Fine, I’ll fight.”
I grunted as my lungs forgot how to work. “That’s how you want to play, huh? Cheap shots?” Tossing the nunchucks to the side, I attacked him with my fists. “You got it.”
Thanks to my obsession with all things fighting, I knew how to kill with a single strike, how to protect my knuckles, and how my cartilage and joints reacted to a sucker-punch versus an upper cut. I also knew how it would feel to the other person. I’d studied sketches and medical journals that showed which muscles contracted to absorb the blow, how blood gushed to an injury, how the nervous system highlighted pain.
I knew all that. I thought about all that. Even as my mind locked onto the only thing I could.
Fight.
Fight.
Fight.
Parry, swing, punch, duck.
Selix wasn’t like me. He didn’t need to know every minute detail about something to be good at it. He was a street survivor. He’d been the victor and victim.
We fought each other, delivering punishment while taking others. The cushioned mat in the bottom level of the yacht became slick with sweat as we painted each other in bruises.
I’d woken him up at daybreak and ordered him to join me in the gym. After talking to Pim, I couldn’t sleep. I’d stepped onto the deck and hadn’t returned to my quarters in case she was still there, asleep on my bed, innocent and open. I didn’t go back because I wouldn’t forgive myself if I took her up on the offer in her gaze and fucked her.
I wouldn’t fuck her.
Not when she offered it up as a gift—a painkiller to every screwed up thing I’d told her.
What was I thinking telling her that shit?
Christ, I couldn’t get rid of the shame.
So I took it out on Selix. Attacking him with more power, rage, and coldbloodedness than before.
I hadn’t been this close to slipping in years. Normally, my cello, fighting, and business kept my compulsive tendencies at bay.
That was before Pim.
Before she ruined me with her hopeless suicide eyes at Alrik’s.
The buzzer sounded, telling us as we circled and kicked that we’d been fighting for over two hours. We were both exhausted, both bleeding from cut lips and swollen noses, both weary with wounds.
Selix charged forward, landing a solid strike to my chest with his shoulder.
In repayment, I gave him three quick jabs to his ribcage. We separated and held up our hands, assessing the other and if it was time to quit or if we would fight until we couldn’t stand.
It was my decision. Selix wouldn’t back down.
I had to get a grip and accept that this was enough. That the obsession didn’t control me. I controlled the obsession.
Stepping backward, I bowed with deep respect. Honouring the discipline and honourable rules such fighting expected. “Thank you.”
Selix sighed, matching my bow with cupped fists. “Welcome.”
Touching knuckles, we rolled our shoulders, smirking in pain. “Well, I feel better.”
Selix chuckled. “You feel beaten up you mean.”
I laughed. “I think it was you who was beaten.”
“You think wrong.” Grabbing a towel from the rack in the corner, the mirrored walls showed him wiping his face and scrubbing his arms before tossing it into the hamper by the water cooler. Weight machines and treadmills glittered in the bright lights, coaxing unwilling bodies to do cardio.