He scrutinized me with one eye. Both had heavy bags under them. He hadn’t been sleeping. “That’s a catty thing to say, Cat.”
“Don’t call me Cat,” I said.
He shrugged, toweling off his shoulders.
I squeezed my arms against my breasts and shifted my weight. Without giving any sign, he grabbed me by the arms and kissed me roughly on the mouth. I screamed – I actually screamed – and pulled away from him; I thought I’d have to slap him. He went back to toweling his back as if it was all one motion.
“Does that make you feel better?” he said.
“Why did you do that?”
“Is that what you wanted?”
“Fuck you!” I said.
“You weren’t standing there waiting for a kiss?”
“Fuck you,” I said again.
“Well if you weren’t waiting for that I don’t know what you’re waiting for.”
“Did you know she slept with Bobby?”
He stopped toweling himself. He sighed and then wrapped the towel over his arm. He threw it over the rack. “That’s not my business,” he said.
I jabbed a finger into his chest (it hurt) and came as close to him as I could. “Answer me!”
He grabbed my hands, grabbed my arms, and pulled me to him. I felt his penis slap against my leg. “Let go,” I said.
“I don’t care about Bobby,” he said.
“Let go of me.”
“I don’t care about Sara, I don’t care about any of that.”
I laughed in his face. “Are you going to say you care about me?”
He studied me. I didn’t wait for him to say anything. “Fuck you,” I said. “Answer me.”
He still held me against him. I could have fought him but it would have been stupid, not because I couldn’t get away (I could have kneed his balls, and did feel like doing it) but because where would I go? He sighed. “It occurred to me that that might have been the case.”
“When? When you were fucking her?”
“About then, yeah.”
I pulled away from him and this time he let me go.
“Cat, I don’t want to get in the middle of this-”
“Just in the middle of the two of us.”
“I should go.”
“Go!”
I just couldn’t figure out what that look meant. Was he upset that I was losing it? Was he mad at me? Was he sad? When he came forward I was prepared to kick him (after three years of kickboxing, it would have hurt), but he wrapped me up in his arms again and kissed me. And I hated it. I pushed back. He held me tight.
“I only care about buying your time,” he said.
“I know that,” I hissed. “It’s because I’m ‘perfect.'”
“Yes,” he said. I squirmed against his grasp. I felt sick. I wanted him to leave.
“Get the fuck away from me.” He held me tighter.
“I only care about buying your time,” he said again, pushing his mouth against my ear. I was going to scream, I really was. But he kept talking. “I don’t care who your friends are,” he said. “I don’t care what they did to you, I don’t care who your boyfriends are, I don’t care if you hate them. I don’t care. Catherine, the only thing I care about is buying your time-”
“To fuck me!”
“To fuck you. To touch you. To hold you. To smell you. To be with you.”
“Stop,” I said.
“I don’t care about the rest. I don’t have the time. I can buy yours, not theirs.”
“This isn’t about money,” I said.
He pulled back and stared into my eyes. “What is it about, Cat?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was going to cry, just like Sara, and I did not want him here. “Please go away,” I said.
He surprised me. “What if I don’t?”
“Then pay me,” I spat. “Pay me, if you want more time. Do you want to fuck me like you fucked her?”
“No.”
“Then why-”
“I’m not going to answer that,” he said.
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
He nodded.
It was getting colder in the bathroom. We were both still naked, still wrapped up in each other.
“And then you just disappear?” I said.
“Yes.”
My eyes burned and I felt defiant. “There is one more thing I want to do,” I said. “Next time.”
He took a deep breath. “What?”
“I want to call Bobby when we do it.”
He shook his head. “No way.”
“I want to suck you off while I call him.”
Tom swallowed. It was easy for me to see the contradictory desires warring behind his eyes. “You shouldn’t,” he said.
“You want me to.”
He didn’t answer, he just looked down at me.
“I’ll let you cum in my mouth.”
“Catherine…”
I smirked. “I can feel you getting hard. Pay me five hundred dollars, in two weeks. And we’ll do it.”
He stepped back and reached for his jeans on the sink. I watched him pull them on, then watched him unball his socks and straighten them out.
“You know,” he said, “in agreements like ours it’s detrimental for me to say whether I care one way or the other. The ambiguity of my personal feelings should not be construed, however, for consent – no matter how badly I may want you.”
“You want my mouth and what I can do with it.”
He grinned at me but there was no joy in it. “Alright, Cat, be that way.”
“Tell me you love me.”
He pulled his shirt over his head and worked it down his wet stomach. “Don’t,” he said.
“Tell me,” I dared him.
“When you say no, I listen. Listen to me now. No.”
I pushed him back against the wall. I won’t say Tom ever misjudged my athleticism, but he was surprised by how easy it was for me. I pressed my naked vagina against his cock. I could already feel it growing under his pants. I squashed my breasts into his chest. “Tell me you love me.”
“I love you,” he said.
I shook my head. “No you don’t.”
He gently pushed me off of him and unlocked the bathroom door. He swung it open and pulled his keys off the counter. “Don’t I?” he said. Then he tromped heavily down the stairs, heard the splatter of Sara in the shower and quickly left through the front door.