out.”
“You flatter yourself if you think sex with you is somehow connected to working out my issues.”
“Do I?” she asked, her throat tightening. She wasn’t going to cry. Not now. Not when he was being so spectacularly unemotional and horrible.
“I already told you, sex is sex. It’s not connected to anything outside of it. It is what it is. Thank you for the orgasm.”
“Stop it, Alik,” she said.
“It’s reality, the reality of being with me, Jada, so get used to it, or find another man.”
She didn’t want another man. Not any other man, not even the one she’d loved. A shocking, jolting realization.
But she didn’t particularly want this one, either. Not this version of him.
“I’m going to bed,” she said, turning away from him.
“No thank-you for me? I made you come three times.”
She whirled around, anger coursing through her. “And? I can get my own orgasms, Alik, without having to deal with this kind of treatment after! The thing you don’t understand, is that what makes sex better than your own hand is the connection you get from it. But you don’t offer that and you don’t accept it. So there’s no point, is there?”
It wasn’t true. Sex with Alik was beyond anything in her experience. But it had also forged a bond with him she didn’t want. One that was tearing her apart from the inside out, stripping away every defense. The way he was acting hurt, but it wasn’t why she was pulling away from him. It was because of what he made her feel.
Because of who he made her.
“I suppose not, for you. Good night.”
He made no move to go. He picked his glass up from the mantel and walked over to the bar, pouring himself another drink. As if nothing had happened. Nothing that mattered. And he was dismissing her now.
“Right,” she said. “Good night.”
She stalked from the room, only realizing later that she’d left her underwear. If Alik didn’t get them, the housekeeper would. She decided it was less of a humiliation than going back for them in Alik’s presence.
So she just went up the stairs and flung her bedroom door open, and resisted the urge to slam it closed. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how hurt she was. But then, would it even mean anything to him?
“Ah, what does this mean when you slam doors, Jada? I do not understand complex human emotion.” she said to herself, imitating Alik and his accent, poorly. “It means I’m mad at you, you jackass, because you are the most insensitive and horrible human being on the planet!”
She flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling with gritty eyes. This was the time when she had to figure out if Alik was worth it, or if she should just abandon ship.
What do you want from him? Surely not love and marriage? Real marriage? You had that. This is not that. It never could be.
No. It never could be. Partly because Alik wasn’t her first husband. And partly because she didn’t think she could ever be that woman again. She was changing. But this wasn’t the same kind of change she’d made in her first marriage. She wasn’t changing to make Alik’s life easier, to make their marriage more harmonious.
She wasn’t changing to fit a mold. The change seemed endless, with no boundaries closing in. It was the kind of freedom she hadn’t wanted, the kind she didn’t truly understand.
She had always tried to please the people in her life, but Alik seemed to ask her to please only herself. And this woman that she was…this woman wouldn’t have been happy with her life three years ago. She would have wanted more from her marriage. More passion. More honesty. Less hiding.
She was afraid of what he made her want. But she didn’t want to walk away, either.
She didn’t like that Alik wasn’t simply in her present, that he hadn’t just changed her future, but that he was changing her view of the past, as well.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT HADN’T WORKED. Alik didn’t like failure. He rarely failed. In fact, his only failure to date was the condom failure he’d suffered more than a year and a half ago during Leena’s conception. If he’d failed otherwise, with the sorts of endeavors he’d engaged in, he would be dead.
But he had failed in putting things back into place inside himself. He had failed in his attempt to feel normal again after the carousel ride with Leena.
He