“Indeed,” she said breathlessly. “I know you didn’t come here today for my expertise on your mental status, so what brought you to my door?”
I looked out the window, running a hand across my jaw.
Her thoughtful gaze settled on my face. “Let me guess, you’re here because you’ve finally obtained what you’ve always wanted, and now you don’t know how to control it?”
My eyes met hers. “I can control it just fine.”
I’d never told a more ridiculous lie.
“Maybe it, sure. But not how you feel about it.”
My jaw tightened.
“This ‘addictive personality’ of yours . . . it’s merely a medical condition you’ve built up in your head to explain why you’ve always wanted it. To help you understand the reason it appeals to you, and therefore, help you control your reaction to it. But in reality, it’s a normal human emotion. Maybe stronger for you because you haven’t experienced it in a long time, or maybe you’ve never felt it.”
“You’re losing me, Sasha.”
Her lips lifted. “No, I’m not.”
She clicked her pen. Once, twice, three times. “My guess is, now that you have it, you’re afraid you’ll lose it. Maybe you don’t feel like you even deserve her, though that’s a trivial point because, in the end, you don’t care.”
I didn’t miss the her she’d slipped in there.
“I didn’t come here for relationship advice.”
“No.” She smiled sadly. “You came here for me to tell you it gets easier, that it blows over, and you’ll find a sense of control again. It doesn’t, and you won’t. Love only gets worse.”
A sardonic breath left me. “I thought you believed it was just an obsession.”
“Haven’t you heard? Love is an obsession. Some would even say . . . the maddest obsession.”
IT WAS AN INNOCENT QUESTION.
One that exploded in my face like a tripwire.
That was all it took for me to lose my grip completely. Now, I was drowning in the deep, in the blue, and it was too late to save myself.
“I made an appointment to get on the pill next week,” I told him one night while lying in bed, my heart still racing and my skin sweaty from a previous and vigorous round of sex.
I’d been slacking with getting on birth control because I was sensitive to medication and the options I’d tried when I was younger all came with an annoying side effect. The pill made me gain weight, and now at twenty-eight, with a slower metabolism, I knew that was the last thing I needed. Though it seemed I was going to have to take the contraceptive situation into my own hands by Christian’s indifferent attitude about it.
“Why?”
I sighed. “Either you have a hundred children from Russia to Seattle, or you’re being deliberately abstruse.”
He chuckled, correcting softly, “Obtuse, malyshka.”
The sound of his soft laugh made my body light up with warmth. “Well? Do you have a litter of children you haven’t told me about?”
His silence touched my skin, putting my nerve endings on edge.
“I don’t have any children,” he said eventually.
“How do you know that if you’re going around without using condoms?”
“Because I’m not going around without using condoms,” he said, tension in his voice. “You’re the only one I’m sleeping with, Gianna. I thought I’d made that pretty fucking clear.”
I should have stopped here. I should have sensed the strain in the air that stretched the oxygen thin. But I couldn’t. Because I was tired of being a coward, of toeing the edge of Christian Allister, while I let him touch me, kiss me, screw me, and own me.