“Hey.” Suddenly Sergio was in front of me. “You’re still angry.”
“Yeah.” I gripped the comforter with my fist and twisted, afraid that if I used my words, said all the horrible things I was thinking, he would hate me. I felt bad enough for even thinking them, let alone speaking them out loud.
“It’s a new bed.” He pointed down at my hand. “So you don’t need to take out your aggression on the pillows and down.” He gently grabbed my hand releasing my fingers from the comforter. “Do you really think I’m that much of an ass? That I’d bring you into my room, strip you naked… on the very same bed? With the very same scents?”
I didn’t trust myself to speak and not scream. “I wasn’t sure.”
“Val.” Sergio frowned. “I’m trying here, but you have to meet me halfway. Normally, you speak what’s on your mind, normally you’re only quiet because you’re pissed at me, and I can fix that. But I can’t fix this unless you tell me what’s going on inside your head.”
I sighed.
“Fine.” He grabbed my hand and tugged me off the bed. Once my feet hit the bathroom tile, they immediately warmed, heated tile? A giant old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub waited in the corner. “I’ll go first.”
“Go?” I frowned.
“I’m angry,” he whispered, “that she didn’t tell you who she was.”
“Me too.” My voice shook.
“I’m angry…” His mouth met my ear in a wet whisper as he unhooked my bra and slowly pulled it free from my body. “That I’m torn between missing her and being pissed at her for making you sad.”
That made two of us.
His hands moved down my hips, fingers hooking into my underwear as he slid them down to my ankles, his lips met the back of my thigh. “I’m angry that for the first time in weeks, I have you naked, and you aren’t blushing.”
I blushed, basically, on cue as it dawned on me that I was completely without clothes in front of him, with every single bathroom light shining on my body.
“That’s better.” He stood and pulled me back against him. “Anger isn’t bad, Val. It’s normal to feel anger. Anger turns deadly when you allow it to control other emotions, because then you go from having a natural response to a supernatural reaction that manifests and eats its way through every positive area of your life.”
Tears welled in my eyes, I held them back, because they weren’t the sad kind, they were the angry kind, and I knew if I let them fall, I’d do something stupid, like yell, or say all the things I shouldn’t say.
“In the tub.” Sergio sighed heavily and turned off the water. “Unless you’d rather I take advantage of your nakedness.”
I hurried into the tub and sat, only to be immediately joined by him.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” His deadly smile deepened as the water swished around our bodies. Slowly, with cat like precision, he moved until he was kneeling over me, almost chest to chest. “I’m seducing you so you’ll tell me all your secrets.”
“Oh,” I squeaked, unable to escape. “Isn’t that cheating?”
“So is that one of your things, Val? You like people to play fair?”
“Good looking people, people like you… they should always play fair.”
“Why?”
“Because you already have all the advantage!” I pushed back against the tub, water sloshing into my hair as he looked down at my breasts and breathed out a curse.
“I have all the advantage?” He raised his hand to one as it overflowed his hand and cursed again. “Yeah, I’m going to have to disagree.”
His other hand danced along my collarbone and then slid down my stomach until he reached the apex of my thighs.
I squirmed beneath the pressure of his touch.
“Talk to me,” he demanded, one deadly hand was massaging my breast while the other skillfully wreaked havoc on the lower half of my body. “Now.”
“No,” I moaned, nearly rising out of the water as he toyed with me over and over again. The bath water felt too hot, sweat started pouring down my face, and just when I felt like I was ready to lose my mind, he stopped touching me and leaned back. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, were you expecting more?” He tilted his head. “Relationships don’t work like that Val. You can’t just take. You have to give too.”
“Is this your way of asking for a sexual favor?”
“I don’t want sex.”
“Right.”
“I want you to talk to me.”
“And I want to forget about today.”
“And when you’re done using me, using us, what then?” Sergio asked, his tone was scary calm. “You’ll go back to being angry and sad and eventually you’re going to resent me, resent us, resent the whole situation. No, we deal with this now.”
“In the tub?” I threw up my hands and splashed the water, angry that he was making me talk when all I wanted to do was go curl up in the corner and rock back and forth.
“In the tub.”
“Now?”
“Now would be good.”