Chapter 93 Praise.

Chapter 93: 93 Praise.

"This is you sleeping in my bed tonight. Sleeping. Not fucking. I know that’s probably confusing given..." She waved a hand vaguely at the air.

"The fact that we’ve already fucked before and I recently started sucking you off and especially sitting on your face pretty regularly—"

"Praise the Lord—"

"—But that was different. That was me being horny and competitive and not wanting to lose to Slutty Arwen. This is something else."

I leaned my elbows on my knees. "I’m impressed you know the names of two female elves from Lord of the Rings, so I’m listening."

She exhaled through her nose and her ears wiggled atop her head. She picked at the comforter thread again, harder this time, like she was trying to do damage now. "I want to talk. And I want to be held. By you. And I want you to start thinking of yourself as my boyfriend. And—and that means not just facesitting and cocksucking and letting you creampie—"

"—Praise the Lord."

"—me. It means I want us to actually work on our... bond or whatever like normal people." She looked at the photo on the nightstand, then back at me. "Also I might want to make out a little. But no sex."

"How about hand stuff?" I asked softly.

She sighed. "Sure, some hand stuff. But nothing in my butthole."

"I have the same rule."

She shook her head. "It’s not like that. I’m saving anal for marriage. It looks like you’re my only option, but I’m not really ready to let go of that."

I blinked at that a few times. "Can I ask why anal?"

"Because I already gave you my mouth virginity and pussy virginity, dumbass, so I have to save something."

I nodded sagely. "Fair. Also, I didn’t realize you were a virgin."

She shrugged. "I didn’t bleed because I used to use a remote control to get off when I was a teenager."

My head cocked on its own. "Very well," I replied in a hushed tone, reverent for some reason. "Can I ask why you feel compelled to take things slow now all of a sudden, though?"

The question landed and she immediately looked at her hands in her lap. She pulled her knees up to her chest, tail still wrapped around herself, and curled in on herself like she was trying to take up less space.

Clementine was not tall, but she definitely had a tall personality, so seeing her fold up like that put a knot in my stomach.

"Because you ghosted me, Grey. Just like my fucking dad. And I want to punish you for reminding me of him—and for being a total dick in your own right, frankly."

There it was. Just the bare truth. And she was right, too. I did ghost her. I did rock her world and then leave her on read for weeks after that.

In my defense, I was going through my own drama at the time, but then I shouldn’t have roped her into my life for a one weekend stand if I wasn’t going to be decent enough to let her down gently.

"After that weekend," she continued, still looking at the comforter, "I waited for you to call. Like an idiot. For two weeks I checked my phone every time it buzzed, and it was never you. I even—God, I even texted you myself like a needy slut. And I know it sounds pathetic, and I know it was just a hookup, and I should be over it by now because things changed and here I am, but I’m not fucking over it, Grey! You could have just said something! Anything! I fell in love with you over the course of that stupid, magical fucking weekend, and then you just... you fucked off like the fuckface you are."

The room was very quiet, so quiet I could hear my ears ringing as I tried to think of what to say. I owed her an honest answer, so I gave her one.

"I almost did call," I said. I was looking at my hands when I said it, but I made myself look at her instead. "I had a really good time with you, to be honest."

She looked up.

"I picked up the phone probably six or seven times in the week after." I leaned back against the headboard and stared at the ceiling. "You were funny, you were hot, you smelled like pizza all the time, which is fucking awesome, and that weekend was the best time I’d had in months. I kept thinking about calling you."

"So why didn’t you?"

"Portal bullshit started up soon after." I rubbed my face with both hands. "That was a big part of the reason. Every night, something came through, and every night I had to kill it by myself. I didn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to rope a random hookup into it."

I stopped for a second, because I’d never actually said any of this out loud before. "I thought reaching out to you, I might be tempted to actually let you in, and maybe you’d end up getting hurt, or maybe I’d find out I was just crazy and imagining all this. A part of me wanted to tell you and show you everything because, well... It’d be really nice to have someone in my world. I’m already an outlier, what with winning the lawsuit and everything, so I was lonely. But I knew—or at least I believed—it would have been too dangerous to bring you in for so many reasons."

Clementine stared at me. Her ears had come forward, and her tail had loosened from around her waist. "I would have done anything for you, Grey. I wouldn’t have told anyone about your secret, or tried to make you do anything you didn’t want to do. I could have been here for you if you let me."