Page 8 of Endless Obsession
“Oh, you want me to put clothes on?” I’m one second from clawing his eyes out. “Not Valerie, though. You like her better with her clothes off. Clothes off, and bent over, and shoving a monster cock up her pussy so you can punish her later for not wanting your pathetic one, apparently!”
Nate’s eyes are almost bugging out of his head. I don’t think I’ve ever said the words cock, or pussy before. Definitely not where he can hear me. Probably not even after one too many mimosas at brunch.
“Charlotte—”
“Don’t you dare say you can explain,” I warn. “I will rip your cock off myself if you do. There. I’ve said it twice now.” I glare at him. “And it is pathetic! You don’t even make me come, you piece of shit?—”
“You’ve never complained!” He snaps back defensively. “And I thought I did?—”
“You—” I press my fingers to my temples, feeling like I’m about to lose my mind. “That’s not what we’re talking about right now, Nate! We’re talking about the fact that you’re fucking cheating on me! With—with—” I look down at the dropped phone, the picture of Valerie on her hands and knees on the bed forever burned into my mind. “We have missionary sex.” I sink down onto the edge of our bed, feeling angry tears threatening at the corners of my eyes. “Sometimes I get on top. Those are usually the only times I actually do come, by the way.”
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying not to cry. I do not want to cry in front of him. I want to be angry. Furious, even. I want to hate him. I want him to regret ruining this night forever.
But I don’t want him to see me cry.
“You’ve never asked me to do anything like that.” I point at the phone. “You’ve never asked me for anything at all in bed, actually. The few times I’ve brought up spicing things up, you’ve told me our sex life was perfect. Everything you want. That you’re just not that adventurous. Well, that was clearly a fucking lie.”
Nate runs a hand through his hair, looking at me warily. I can see his little lawyer brain going a hundred miles a minute, trying to work through how to get himself out of this. How to gaslight me into thinking I’m wrong about it somehow. That it’s all just a big misunderstanding.
That’s not going to fucking work. But before I throw him out, I want answers.
“I didn’t ask you for those things because I respect you, Charlotte.” He looks at me pleadingly, and I gape at him, unsure of what to even say to that at first.
So I guess he decided to go the route of excusing it, instead of trying to deny it. Those hot tears burn at the corners of my eyes again, and I have to fight them back. “You respect me?” I stare at him, the words sticking in my throat. “So cheating on me is somehow respecting me?”
“It means nothing! She means nothing, all of those things—they mean nothing.” Nate is using his lawyer voice now, explaining, reasoning. “She has nothing to do with you, Charlotte. I love you. I don’t feel anything for her?—”
“Except arousal, apparently,” I spit out. “She turns you on, clearly. She does all the filthy things you’re imagining for you.”
“It’s just like porn, but?—”
“But real?” I lurch up off the bed again, and Nate steps back. “I’m a person, Nate! Hell, she’s a person. And now you’re pissing me off even more, because you’re making me feel bad for the woman you’re cheating on me with, because you’re talking about her like she’s a fucking sex object?—”
“I don’t want to treat you like a sex object?—”
“And I don’t want to be fucking cheated on!” I’m shouting so loudly now that I’m pretty sure our neighbors can probably hear us, but I don’t care. “I don’t want to listen to my boyfriend explain to me how I should be grateful that he’s treating other women the way he doesn’t want to treat me. Which is just insult to injury, because I might like to be treated that way, Nate! Consensually, just in the bedroom! I might have fantasies of my own that don’t involve thirty seconds of oral and missionary sex twice a week!”
“You want that?” Nate points down at the phone, disgust in his voice, and it’s then that I understand.
He’s ashamed of himself. Not for cheating, but for what he wants. He’s disgusted by his own desires. He doesn’t want to marry a woman who wants those same things, because then he’d be disgusted with her, too.
And I have no patience for any of this.
I stalk—still naked, but I’m past caring—to the closet. I throw open the door, going up on my tiptoes to yank the ring box out of the back where I re-hid it, and I spin around, throwing it at Nate’s chest exactly like I threw the phone at him.
The box falls to the floor, next to the discarded phone.
“There,” I spit out. “I hope you got a receipt. I found it earlier. I thought you might propose tonight. Honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to marry you,” I add, every word laced with venom. I want it to hurt. And from the wounded look on his face, it does.
Good.
“But I thought you were good enough,” I continue acidly. “I thought you were all the things I wanted. But I guess we were both wrong. Neither of us is really what the other one wants. And I guess the only thing we can be grateful for is that I figured it out before we made a big fucking mistake.”
“Charlotte—” Nate holds open his hands. “Come on. We can talk about this. We’ll go to therapy, if you want. Work through whatever is going on here?—”
“What’s going on here is that you’re a cheating piece of shit who’s too ashamed of himself to man up and ask for what he wants from the woman he wants to marry. Or maybe part of what gets you off is sneaking around. Either way, I don’t want any part of it.” I point at the door, doing my best to keep my finger from shaking. “Get out.”
“Char—”