Page 100 of Ricardo

Like… Like…

Exactly what he wanted from me. A trained puppy.

Another man touches me, and I lapse back into the version of myself Harrison taught me to be without me even realizing it.

The thought is so ugly that my eyes sting.

Ricardo shifts back onto his heels, giving me room. The kind I asked for and don’t actually want.

“Oh God,” I whisper, turning my face away. “I hate this.”

The fire snaps softly beside us. Rain hammers the windows.

“Julia.”

“No, don’t.” I shake my head quickly. “Please don’t be kind right now. I can’t handle kind.”

“Look at me.”

I close my eyes. “Ricardo—”

“Look at me.”

I press the heel of one hand to my eye, furious with myself, furious with Harrison, furious with the storm and the fire and the fact that I wanted this so much a minute ago I could barely breathe.

“I wanted you,” I say, the words scrape my throat raw on the way out. “I still want you. That’s the worst part. I want you, and the second you asked me to say it, I heard his voice in my head making me feel ashamed for it. Like I’m less for having such base emotions. I can’t get him out of my head, and I hate that I’m thinking about him right now. I hate that he gets to be here for even one second.”

Ricardo’s expression hardens.

Not at me.

I know that instantly, and somehow that makes my throat tighten more.

“There is nothing base about wanting,” he says.

“That’s easy for you to say,” I say miserably. “Ask Harrison and—”

“I won’t, then,” he says, and I can practically feel the anger radiating off him.

That makes me look at him.

He is still kneeling between my legs, but he has given me space. His hands are on his own thighs now, fingers flexed once against the fabric of his trousers, as if keeping them there requires effort.

“Desire is honest,” he says, his voice low. “People make it ugly when they use it to control someone. Shame someone. Take from someone. But wanting someone who wants you back?” His eyes hold mine. “There is nothing lesser in that.”

My breath shudders.

“Anyone who thinks so,” he continues, his voice turning colder, “has mistaken the emptiness within him for strength and discipline.”

My breath catches.

Ricardo does not look away from me.

“A man who has to make a woman ashamed of wanting does not possess restraint. He possesses nothing worth offering in return.”

The words are quiet, which makes them more vicious.

“He was not trying to make you better by teaching you to need less. He was trying to make himself feel bigger because there is so little in him to begin with.”