Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 59

“You can celebrate them,” I offer with a shrug. “Every one of you. If this is what the family does now, then do it. Buy them a card. Go to the wedding. Put it in the church bulletin. That’s your business and I’m not going to waste my life worrying about it.”

Vivian’s mouth opens.

“But I’m not going to be your punching bag anymore. I won’t compete for your love. If you choose them, so be it. It’s a bad choice, because those are two people who lied to me for years and made jokes about my body in writing while they did it, in my bed, on the day we buried my dad. You can call it fate and dress it up with pretty words however you want, but I was there. I’ve read the receipts. I’m not going to stand here and say a nicer version of it out loud so that dinner goes smoother.”

The room is completely silent.

“That’s it,” I say. “I don’t have any more breath to waste on the topic. Congratulations on the ring, Viv. It’s very shiny.”

I sit down.

My mother stands there holding the back of Vivian’s chair. She’s paler than the mashed potatoes.

Vivian recovers first. She puts on a simpering voice. “Dee, sweetie, it’s okay to be upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“You are, though. And that’s fine!” She smiles. “I just hate to see you doing all this. Bringing a—” She flicks her eyes at Kane, up and down. “—I mean, God. Whatever this is. Renting a scary man off the internet to sit next to you at dinner so you don’t feel so lonely. You don’t have to prove anything to us. Nobody’s keeping score.”

Kane hasn’t moved. The longer he goes without budging an inch, the more afraid I am for what’s going to happen when he eventually does.

I understand what’s happening. Viv’s victory isn’t complete without a loser on the other end. If I don’t play along, the ring doesn’t count. The engagement doesn’t count. She could marry him on the courthouse steps in a white dress and it would be nothing at all if I don’t stand there and watch her do it.

She needs an audience of one.

Too bad I’ve resigned from the position.

I turn to Kane and tell him, “I want five minutes.”

“Here?”

“Not here. Alone. With you.”

He’s up before I finish the sentence. He pulls my chair out and offers me his hand. I take it without either one of us saying anything to the table. He puts his palm flat between my shoulder blades and walks me out of the dining room past my mother, past the sterling silver platter on the sideboard that I was supposed to fill, past the wall of photographs where I am half-hidden behind Uncle Bub’s shoulder.

We leave my family behind and slip down the hall.

The hall is dark because my mother keeps the hall light off to save on the bill, even with twenty-four people in the house.

I don’t stop at the powder room off the kitchen. Aunt Sherry’s purse is sitting outside the door and I can hear the fan going, and she’d probably try to join if she knew what I was about to do with Kane.

(To Kane? For Kane? That’s TBD.)

So I go up the stairs instead.

Kane follows me without speaking a word.

The upstairs bathroom is the one nobody’s allowed to use. A basket of seashell soaps sits on the back of the toilet. It’s been there since I was in high school, solid as rocks, still smelling faintly of cucumber. There’s a hand towel folded into a triangle that has never touched a hand.

I flip the light on. Kane steps in behind me and shuts the door.

Then he turns the lock.

The noise from downstairs still drifts up through the floor. Somebody laughing. A chair leg dragging. My mother raising her voice at the end of a sentence.

Kane stands with his back against the door and looks at me. “You did well down there,” he says.

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Alright. Then what do you want?”

I turn around. He’s still against the door with his hands at his sides. Big and dark in my mother’s tiny beige bathroom. The man I shouldn’t touch next to the towel that nobody’s allowed to touch.

“I want you to kiss me,” I say.

Kane doesn’t move, blink, or otherwise respond in any way, shape, or form. It’s like he didn’t hear me. Or he did, and he’s choosing—for the sake of sparing me some really nasty embarrassment—to pretend that I hadn’t spoken.

I feel the burn come up my neck. “Okay, actually, on second thought, forget it.”

“Not a f*****g chance.” He bends close. “I want you to say it again.”

I refuse to look at him, even though his warmth and scent are blanketing me in this teeny little room. “I’m good, thanks. One humiliation is enough. This was a stupid idea anyway.”

Kane touches my chin and forces me to raise my eyes. “Why do you think that?”

“Because,” I say with a swallow, “I obviously massively misinterpreted everything that’s going on between us and stepped way over the line.”

“Hm.”

My blush deepens. “I think ‘Hm’ is the only sound you could’ve made that is worse than silence.”

Kane laughs.

“Actually,” I say, “laughing is also worse than silence.”

He turns the laugh into a low hum in his chest. “Sladkaya… Just a few short weeks ago, I had you against a wall in my kitchen,” he reminds me. “And I stopped.”

“I remember. I was there, actually.”

“Do you know why I stopped?”

“Uh… physical disgust? s****l repulsion? You couldn’t remember if you left the oven on or not?”

His thumb strokes across my cheek. “I stopped because I couldn’t tell whether you wanted me or whether you thought this was part of our deal.”

“Kane—”

“Hush. It’s my turn to speak, and I’m not finished.” He pushes off the door to press against me.

“I’ve wanted you since you stepped into that f*****g pantry, Lilah. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve jerked off thinking about you. The squeak you made when I dragged you onto my lap? Your filthy whimpers when I put my hand under your dress?”

Oh. Good. So we’re having this conversation ten feet above my family’s heads.

He takes my wrist. “You want proof I’m not disgusted? I’m so f*****g hard for you I can barely think right now. Feel what you do to me.”

He guides my hand down and presses my palm over the front of his trousers.

There is no mistaking that he means what he’s saying. He is brutally hard and thick beneath the wool. My entire nervous system flashes the blue screen of death.

His jaw locks when my fingers curl on instinct.

“That’s for you, sladkaya,” he growls. “It’s been for you since I walked into this house tonight. We’ve already spent three of the five minutes you asked for debating whether or not it’s real. So tell me: Does it feel real to you?”

Heat pours through me so fast I’m surprised the decorative towels don’t ignite. I stroke him once through his pants before I realize what I’m doing. Kane’s breath punches out against my cheek, hot and gratifyingly ragged.

His teeth graze my ear. The seashell soaps witness it all silently. Judgmental little cucumber fossils.

Then, to my horror, he peels my hand away.

“Good. So you’ll understand then how hard it is for me to say that I can’t do this.” He lets go of my wrist and straightens up. “I will not take something from you that you’re only handing over because of that debt. I’d rather want you for another fifty years than have you once like that.”

I gasp. “You think that’s why I brought you here? To this house? To this bathroom? Kane… I asked you here because I wanted you beside me.”

He frowns. For once, I’m the one surprising him.

“And I brought you up here because I want this. Not to get even with anybody or to work off a single nickel of the four million I owe you.” My throat tightens up. “I just want something that’s only for me. Something that’s only mine.”

Kane closes his eyes for a second. I wait, breathless, hopeful, terrified, wondering what the hell is going to happen next.

But when his eyes open again, I get my answer.

Because they’re on fire.

“Well, f**k,” he snarls. “You should’ve said that sooner.”

Then he proceeds to absolutely ravage the f**k out of my mouth.

He shoves me back against the cold marble sink and forces my lips apart with his tongue. His fingers grab my hips and tug me into him. He’s taking whole handfuls of me like he’s been dying all night to find out what it feels like.

The porcelain against my spine is borderline painful, but my brain files that away under Do Not Give a s**t.

I’ve got other things to focus on.

His teeth catch my bottom lip and pull. When he lets go, I chase him. He lets me whimper for about two seconds before he takes over again.

We accidentally bump into the toilet and the seashell soaps go over. Three of them roll off the tank and hit the tile, and one goes skidding under the radiator.

“Whoops,” I breathe.