Pulse - Part Three (The Pulse Series) (3 page)

I don't move. I can't. Why aren't my feet listening to my brain?

"Do you know what I think about most of all, Jessica?" His fingers jump to my thigh. "I think about when I'm sucking on your sweet little, swollen clit and you come hard all over my face."

"No." I swat his hand away. Please, no.

"No?"

"Don't." I swallow past a hard lump in my throat so I can find my voice again. "Don't say that."

"It's all true." He leans in and his breath skirts over my neck. "I need you, Jessica. Tell me what to do. I'll do anything."

"Leave." I step back and look down at the floor. "Just go."

"I'm not going anywhere." His tone is measured and calm. "I've given you almost two weeks to come and talk to me and you haven't. You think I'm going to sit and wait forever?"

He was waiting for me? "You shouldn't have waited." I want to sound genuine. I want to sound as though I don't give a fuck if I ever talk to him again.

"What else am I supposed to do?" He reaches to touch me again and I take another step back. I'm running out of room to avoid him.

"You have a phone full of women lining up to sleep with you." The words startle me as they leave my own lips. I've tried so hard not to think about that phone and all those numbers. "Call up one of them if you need to get off."

He sighs heavily before pulling his hand across his mouth. "I threw that phone away. I don't have it anymore."

My heart leaps at the announcement but any joy is quickly replaced by the realization that my number never made it into his actual phone. He filed me in with all the other hundreds of women he fucked. "Why was my number in there?"

"It's complicated." He runs his hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. "Your number is in here too." He pulls a smartphone from the pocket of his jeans. "You can check." He holds out the phone for me.

I don’t reach for it. I can't. I can't start investing myself in this again. "It doesn't matter." I shake my head slightly trying to ward off any thought that this could actually work. "You should leave."

"Jessica." He leans forwards until his lips are hovering close to mine. "Let me make this right."

"You can't. I take in a deep breath. I have to calm down. "I can't do this anymore."

"Why not?" He reaches out and scoops my hand in his.

I feel weak from the contact. I can't want him still. Why does my body still react like this? "I saw that phone. I saw all those names." I'm instantly assaulted by the wave of pain I felt when I was scrolling through his contact list. "I was just one of the Jessicas." I hold up my index finger. "Just one. Jessica R. That's who I was to you."

"That's not who you are." His hand squeezes mine. "Christ, please."

"I'm nothing." The words sound pathetic and pitiful. I don't want them to. I don't want to be that girl who cries because the guy didn't give her all the attention. We were just fuck buddies. That's how it started. That's all it ever was to him.

His gaze darts over my face. "You're everything. Don't you know that? You're fucking everything to me."

"I'm not." The words leave my lips before I have time to temper the emotion that is coursing through them. They're true though, I'm not. I'm not everything to him.

"Jessica." His body stiffens as he scans my face. "You know how I feel."

I raise both brows in response. I know how he feels? Him? What about how I feel? "I know that you enjoy the company of a lot of different women. Everything on that phone just proved that to me."

"Fuck that phone." His soft tone tears into me. I'm raging inside. Everything that I'd held in for the past two weeks is rushing to the surface and he's standing here acting so calm and collected. I want to reach out and slap him across his unshaven face.

"How can you say that?" I bite past all of the emotions. "Do you know what it felt like? Looking at all those women's names? All of those messages?"

"It kills me that you saw that." His eyes pierce through me. "I keep thinking about how I'd feel if I found a phone filled with guy's numbers and messages talking about how they want to fuck you."

I rally some inner strength before I speak. "You'd never find that. That's not who I am." The words are meant to sting. That's why I shot them at him.

"I'm not that person anymore." He shields his mouth with his hand as if he's warding off something. Maybe a grimace or a wince? Maybe he's still proud of all his conquests and he's aching to crack a smile.

"When did you last sleep with a woman?" I don't want to keep beating this issue into the ground. I want him to finally admit that what he said in the bed that night when he told me I was different was just a litany of bullshit meant to convince me not to fuck anyone else.

"Right before I left for Boston." His tone is steady, and his gaze is unwavering. "When I fucked you slowly and you came all over my cock."

I resist the urge to moan right there on the spot. God, that was amazing. I had thought about that moment every day since I walked out of his hotel room two weeks ago.

"Before that? When?" I push. I want him to just admit that he's been seeing other women this entire time.

"It was the day before that when you sucked me off and I shot my load all over your beautiful breasts and then you rode my dick until you screamed my name."

I'm so aroused. My body is aching for his. Even knowing that he's been with that many women, I still want him. What the fuck is wrong with me?

"The time before that," he begins before he steps closer to me, "was on the kitchen table in my apartment. I bent you over and rammed my cock balls deep into that tight, sweet little body of yours. You couldn't even hold on. You came almost instantly."

I had. I remember. I'd gone to get a glass of water and he was right behind me, pushing me down, pulling up my dress and just taking me.

"When's the last time you fucked someone else?" I look up from the floor and directly into his eyes. "Don't bullshit me. Tell me when."

I see a flash of panic wash over him and my heart drops. Please don't say since you said all those beautiful things to me in your bed. Please don't let it be since then.

"When, Nathan." I push. I just want to know. I just want it to be over with.

"Cassie." He closes his eyes briefly before pulling them back up to lock on mine. "It was with Cassie."

It's a lie. It's a goddamn, straight-in-my face, unbelievable lie.

"You're a fucking liar." I push my finger into his chest and he doesn't budge. "You know that's not true."

He pulls my hand into his in one swift motion. "Don't call me a liar," he seethes. "Ever, Jessica."

"You. Are. A. Liar," I spit the words out one-by-one, letting them roll off my tongue with languid grace. "A fucked up liar."

"You don't know me," he bites back. It's harsh, the tone petulant and rage filled.

"Exactly," I snipe. "All I know about you is that you're incredibly good in bed and you've been with more women than I can count. So many women that you can't even remember them all. "It's razor sharp and meant to pierce through him.

It does. He takes a step back as if I've physically struck him. "Enough." His hand darts up to ward me off.

"Enough?" I mimic him. "Enough, what? Enough of your goddamn lies? Why the fuck can't you just leave me alone? Why can't you just call another random and fuck her brains out so you forget about me?"

I see pain wash over his expression. His hand jumps in the air as if he's about to grab hold of me, but his jaw clenches and his hand freezes. "Jessica." It's barely a whisper. I can hear something skirting the edges of it. I can't tell what it is.

"Nathan, we're so far past being done with this." I move to the door but he's on me before I have time to react.

"Jessica, please." His voice cracks and a small part of me feels sympathy for him. I can't do that. I can't let him get to me that way. It's all about actions. Everything he's ever said to me stands in the shadow of that hotel suite filled with liquor and condoms and that phone. That goddamn phone that was bursting with endless pleas begging him to crawl back into bed. All those women, all that sex.

"I'll never forget what I saw on that phone." I close my eyes as if that will shudder away all the memories of those names, of the numbers and of the painfully intimate messages.

"I can't change my past." His eyes narrow. "This is killing me. You have to let me back in."

"Back in?" I exhale sharply, my pulse racing. "Back into this?" I pull my hand over my body.

"No." His tone is icy, hard and calm. "Back into here." He pushes a finger against my chest. "You were feeling everything I was."

I can't respond. He's right. I was feeling everything he said he was. I was falling for him at breakneck speed until I crashed into that hotel room and everything changed.

A knock at the door jars us both. Drew's timing couldn’t be any worse. He's waiting for me. He's waiting to take me on a real date. He's waiting to take me to bed at the end of the night. He's going to help me get over Nathan once and for all.

"I need to…"

"You're going out with him, aren't you?" He cuts me
off; his voice is even and tempered. "It's the chef, isn't it?"

I nod. "Drew asked me… well, he asked me," I stutter unable to clearly say that I'm going out on a date with another man.

"Have you fucked him yet?" 

"No." I shouldn't have answered. This isn't his business. Anything I do with Drew tonight isn't about Nathan. Except it all is. I'm only going on this date to forget the way it feels when Nathan kisses me, when he's inside of me, and when he says things that make me believe I'm special.

"You want to?" The question is ripe with pain. Not only for him, but for me too.
I don't want to sleep with Drew
I want to say. I want Nathan to erase everything I saw in that room from my memory so I can feel like I did two weeks ago. I want to float back into his bed and his arms and feel like nothing exists but the two of us.

"Don't ask me that."

He steps towards me until his breath is skirting my forehead. "If I would have found you first, I wouldn't have fucked any of them. Don’t use his body to get back at me."

"That guy that was at your apartment is intense." Drew takes a leisurely drink from the wine glass in front of him. "He was at the club the first night I saw you. What's his deal?"

"He's a lawyer," I jeer. I don't want to talk about Nathan right now. When I'd opened the door to greet Drew, Nathan had pushed past him and didn't look back.

He surveys my face as if he's trying to read between the lines of what I'm saying and feeling. "Did you hook up?"

Of course he'd ask me that. Why does it seem as though every man in Manhattan has to know about the sex life of every other man? "A few times." I don't see any reason to lie. It's not as though it matters at this point.

"Is that still going on?"

Why the inquisition I want to say. We're out on our first date, enjoying a pre-dinner glass of wine and Nathan is already spoiling the evening for me. "That's over," I say it clearly.

"What was he doing at your place?" He tips the glass in my direction before he takes another sip.

"Just talking." I know I shouldn't be irritated by his questions but I am. We're not twenty minutes into our evening and he already knows way too much about my personal life.

"I don't share, Jess." The words are misplaced.

"You don't share?" I repeat them back hoping I misheard them. Who does he think he is? The second coming of Nathan Moore? Why do these men insist on marking their territory before I'm ever served an entrée?

"If we're going to do this." His hand waves over the table. "You can't be around a guy like that."

I'm insulted, I haven't even finished my first glass of wine and he was setting ground rules. "We're just out having dinner."

"You know I want to sleep with you." Sex. Do men in this city do anything other than live, breathe and talk about sex?

"I was hoping we could get through our dinner first," I say it half-teasingly. "Why are you being so serious?"

"My last girlfriend fucked me over pretty good." He downs the rest of his wine. "I'm not going down that road again. I don't want a woman who isn't ready to be exclusive."

Shit. He's been hurt and now I'm going to pay the price for that when all I wanted was to use him to get over my last relationship.

"I don't want anything serious." I exhale. "I'm just looking for some fun."

"Fun?"

"Just fun," I offer. What am I supposed to say to him? I want to make you come inside of me so I can chase away each and every memory I have of Nathan's cock?

"I'm looking for more than fun. I don't share." He doesn't temper his intentions at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped to his knee and pulled an engagement ring out of his pocket right now.