But still . . . scabbed wounds get scraped open and start bleeding, so you handle the body with care. Same goes for emotional wounds, and my instinct was to tread delicately with her.
Sela felt differently though, and I’ll admit, her position made sense. She didn’t want me stroking her with kid gloves. She wanted to feel alive and normal.
She wanted to feel.
So I felt her up nicely. Fucked her three times last night, feeling her up in between. It reminded me of the night she sucked my dick in the limo, swallowing me down and searching for more. That night we were rabid for one another.
Last night was the same.
I want more of the same today, and the next day, and the day after that.
“Got up around six,” I tell her as I push away from the laptop and walk over to the stove. I grab the kettle, turn to the sink, and fill it with enough water to make her a cup of tea. Once it’s heating, I turn back toward Sela. She’s watching me with a soft smile as she sits on one of the barstools on the opposite side of the island.
While her water heats, I move back to the counter and lean forward on it, the bottoms of my forearms pressed against the cold granite. “Do you have a passport?”
She blinks at me slowly, but nods. “I did a semester in London my junior year of college.”
“You did?” I ask, slightly amazed she’d do something so far out of her comfort zone. I’ve come to find out in just a few short days just how fucked up Sela’s existence was for a very long time because of what was done to her. “That was pretty brave.”
Sela gives me an impish smile and says, “I did come out of my shell as time went on, you know. I tried new things.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Yeah, well . . . it’s not like I backpacked through the wilds of Kenya or anything,” she says in a self-deprecating way, and that causes me to laugh.
“Okay . . . so let’s pack up and catch a flight out of here tonight. We can go wherever you want. Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Prague.”
“Are you serious?” she asks with her eyebrows practically touching the ceiling.
“Dead fucking serious. We can go for a few weeks, just bum around Europe if you want. Get away from all this craziness and regroup. Or we can go tropical if you want to, because if you only want to wear nothing but a little bikini, I’m down with that too.”
“I can’t just take off and leave like that.”
“You sure as hell can.”
“I have school, Beck. Classes I have to attend, work I have to do,” she says with an eye roll.
“Drop the classes. Take a semester off,” I tell her simply. I mean . . . why the fuck not?
“Just drop my classes? Take a semester off?” Her tone is one of astonishment and exasperation with me.
“Okay, two weeks. I’ll pay for it,” I say smoothly. “You won’t be out any money.”
I expect that to piss her off—the not-so-subtle reminder that I paid for her education in return for her giving herself to me—but I’ll make her see that I’d buy the world for her right now if I could and wouldn’t expect a damn thing in return.
Instead, she narrows her eyes at me. “You are the least impulsive person I know. Beck North doesn’t just wake up one morning and decide to jet off to Europe. What’s really going on here?”
Taking a deep breath, I push off from the counter and walk around the island until I come up to her stool. She swivels it toward me, her eyes filled with concern.
Blowing out the breath, I take her hands and pull them onto my chest, where I hold them tight. “I need to get away, Sela. I can’t go into the office because I can’t risk a run-in with JT. I just won’t be able to hold it together because all of this is so fresh and raw. I’m afraid of what I might do to him, to our business . . . all of it . . . if I lose control around him. So I want to just leave for a bit, collect ourselves. Take the pack off. Relax and get to know each other better. I don’t know what the future has in store, but if JT is going to pay for this,