Hottest Mess (S.I.N. #2)(38)

She nodded, then bit her lower lip uncertainly.

“It’s okay,” he said. “If you want to ask me questions, it’s okay.”

“Did you try to fight?”

“I tried. I couldn’t.” He sighed. “You know how you crave control now?”

She nodded. “Avoiding crowds. Taking my self-defense classes.” Her smile when she met his eyes was tremulous. “You’re the only one I let go with. The only one I really feel safe with.”

He knew that, of course, but still the words were like a knife. Safe. Safe with him was a goddamn joke. If he let himself go too far—

Stop.

He pushed the thought away. He needed to move, and so he stood, holding on to the worktable until he had his bearings again, then he started to pace. “You surrender that control to me,” he finally said. “I don’t. I don’t surrender it to anybody. Not anymore.”

“I know. I get that.”

“You don’t. Not really. I don’t think you can.”

“That’s bullshit, Dallas. But you have to tell me. You have to lay it out for me.”

“But that’s just it. I don’t know if I can. She changed me, but I’m not sure even I understand how. I mean, Christ. Why the hell can’t I f*ck a woman? What’s the correlation between what that bitch did to me and the reality I’m now living with? I thought it was you, Jane. I thought that if I ever had you in my bed, that little problem wouldn’t be a problem anymore, because she’d tied sex up so tightly with the thought of you that I figured you must be the goddamn cure. But you weren’t. You aren’t. Shit.”

He gritted his teeth and turned away. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. To cover her with all that bile.

Across the room, she climbed to her feet and came to him, then gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “What do you mean she tied sex up with me?”

A shiver cut through him—he didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to bring her down into all of that. But goddammit, they were already halfway there. “Like what I was saying earlier. She’d touch me. Do things to me. And she’d tell me to close my eyes and imagine it was you. She’d tell me you liked it. Wanted it. But then later she’d flip it around and she’d say you were a nasty girl who liked nasty things, and on another day she’d say that you were an innocent, and I was tainted now, and why the hell would you want me?”

“I do want you. Desperately.”

“She changed what I want sexually. What I need. I like it rough, baby, and that’s on her—”

“A lot of people like rough sex. Including me. Don’t tie everything you feel back to that bitch. Don’t give her the power.”

“She already has it. She’s between us every time we’re together because she planted you in the middle of every f*cked up need she created in me. So how the hell can we ever be normal, Jane? How can we ever do this right?”

“Normal?” she repeated. “Right?” She stepped back from him, and damned if the compassion hadn’t faded from her face, replaced instead by anger. “You like it rough? You like it dirty? Well, guess what, Dallas, that’s your normal. And that’s okay. I mean, seriously, what’s normal anyway? Because all I know is that you make me feel good. You make me feel better about myself than I ever have. And all I really care about is do you love me? Do I make you happy?”

“Yes,” he said, reeling a little from the force of her speech.

“Well, then what more are you looking for?”

He shook his head, not sure how to explain. He believed her words, but also knew that she didn’t really know what she was talking about. How could she when he didn’t even know how far down he wanted to drag her?

“I’m serious, Dallas. What else do you need?”

He drew in a breath. “I need her out of my head.”

“Then do it. You couldn’t fight back then—but now you can. Overpower her. End her.”

“Why do you think I founded Deliverance?”

“Not like that. Right here. Right now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Go back. In your head. In your memories. Let me be her. Fight me. Fight me, then f*ck me. She took control? Take it back.”

His blood ran cold, and he remembered the times that Adele had suggested Dallas pretend that she was Jane. That idea had horrified him. So did this one, but for a completely different reason. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking? What kind of door you could be opening?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I do.”

“You’re basically saying that I need to rape her. I need to act out my fantasy, overpower the bitch, and hurt her the way she hurt me.”

“Pretty damn politically incorrect, I know. But that about sums it up.”

“With you playing the role of the Woman. No. No f*cking way.” He couldn’t. It was a screwed up idea. But that wasn’t what scared him. No, what terrified him was how much he wanted to do exactly that. Not because she was a standin for the Woman, but because he wanted to claim Jane fully and completely. He wanted to make her his. He wanted to be that damned Neanderthal and drag her by the hair around after him.

Because how else could he be certain she wouldn’t pack up and leave the moment she finally got through her thick head just how screwed up he was?