I heard his words as if at a distance, my mind suddenly recalling an appalling little detail I’d read in a tabloid, about James and Jules both coming from affluent English families who both shared a long history as avid equestrians.
“Was it her?” I asked in a whisper, my eyes narrowed.
He squeezed me more tightly against him, as if sensing a threat. He buried his face in my neck before he spoke. “Who are you referring to?”
I stiffened even more. “Jules,” I said, my voice going glacial.
I felt him sigh against me. “It was. But it didn’t mean anything. Please don’t use her to keep me at a distance.”
I tried to move off of him, but he had me at a severe disadvantage, and he wasn’t letting me go.
Instead, he clicked Demon back into a brisk walk.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He began to move inside of me again, his erection swiftly growing and hardening, as though it were a parlor trick.
I gasped, slapping at his shoulders. “You can’t use sex to subdue me,” I told him. I was hurt and angry, but also unwillingly and wildly aroused.
“You can’t withdraw from me every time you get mad or jealous. We need to talk this out. I’m not letting you go until we do.”
I pulled on his hair, hard, but my hips were already moving unbidden with his thrusts. “You call this talking?”
“I call this making love, and yes, talking.” He tried to smile at me. I yanked on his sweaty hair. He winced, but made no move to stop me.
“Why do you keep calling it that? Why do you keep calling it making love?”
He gave me a smoldering look. “You know why. You keep trying to belittle what we have, but you need to understand that it’s as new to me as it is to you. I have a past. A wildly sordid past. I can’t change it. I would if I could. You are going to run into a lot of my ex-lovers. That’s an unfortunate fact.
It will be a lot less painful for you if you can just get it into your head that none of them were anything but a fuck to me. And fucking was nothing to me before I met you. Sex was a bodily function to me before I met you. That’s why I call this making love. It means something to me.”
“I’ve never even had a girlfriend before you, never even considered the idea. I’m sure it sounds callous, but no woman has ever been anything to me beyond a fuck, a sub, or a friend, occasionally all three, though never all of them for long. They all knew the score. I was brutally honest with every single one of them, without exception. You are the one that I want, the one that I need. So getting upset about my past, or feeling jealous of women I’ve been with, is unwarranted.”
He never stopped moving as he spoke, and I felt emotionally charged.
“Unwarranted?” The word burst out of me, angry and wounded. “I’ve years worth of pictures of you going out with Jules. How can you expect me to dismiss that out of hand?” I gasped as he thrust harder, a deliberate motion, his eyes intense. “Unfair,” I muttered. “And you are hardly one to talk. I was a virgin when I met you, but you’re still jealous of every man I speak to. That’s unwarranted.”
He lifted me up and down for several long, fast strokes before he spoke. He was playing me like a drum, I knew. It was very hard to stick to my point when I was insanely turned on, and in the middle of getting thoroughly fucked. “When I was about eighteen, the paparazzi were hounding me relentlessly, printing silly stories that drove me crazy. They were hiding in the bushes when I left school. It was out of control.”
I tried my hardest to focus on his words, but he wasn’t helping, still moving inside of me tirelessly.
“You know how I need control,” he growled.
He thrust harder, clicking Demon into a hard trot. He clicked again, and the motion took us into a canter. This movement was unfamiliar to my limited riding skills, and I clutched at James’s shoulders in panic. His thrusts were more measured at this pace. I was falling apart almost instantly.
“Come,” he ordered roughly. It took me over the edge. He slowed back to a walk, but still didn’t stop.
“You know how I need control,” he repeated. “But the things they were doing were completely out of my control, and I realized one day that the press was like a garden hose,” he explained.
I blinked at him, dazed and confused. “A garden hose?” I asked.
He gave me a gentle smile, enjoying the complete loss of my composure. “A garden hose. If you turn it on too lightly, you can’t control the flow. It just drips where it will. But if you turn it to full force, you can control the flow, sending it wherever you want. So I began to court the paparazzi, rather than ducking away. I encouraged their attentions by charming them, and publicly, becoming an open book. Or rather, making it appear that way. Jules was my best friend’s sister, and occasionally, a very casual lover of mine, and we’d been friends for awhile. We were seen out and about together, since we traveled in the same circles. I quickly noticed that she loved the attention, encouraging rumors about us shamelessly, even leaking lies to the press about us.”
His eyes were solemn and serious on my face as he continued, “I see now that it was stupid to let her take it so far, but at the time I couldn’t see a problem with it. Other women thought she and I had an open relationship, so no one tried for anything more with me. It saved me from worse misunderstandings, for a time. I see that it looks bad, but I want you to trust me that that’s all it was. Jules is not someone you need to worry about.”
He began to move in earnest after that little speech, and he undid me yet again, bringing me to release at a trot. I sobbed his name, gripping his hair in tight fists. He came with me that time, his eyes going so soft that unwanted tears pricked my eyes.
He slowed Demon to a walk. He leaned me back slightly, his eyes moving down to where our bodies joined. He ran his tongue over his model perfect teeth as he studied the sight. My own gaze followed his. The sight that greeted me made my barely steadied breath catch.
I was still impaled on him, my moisture mixing with his on the thick base of his shaft as he shifted me slightly up and back.