It’s the next night that I come awake to the muted clink of pots and pans. West spent most of the day at the Grand. All three of us ate an awkward, chaste dinner last night and went to our respective beds. Now it’s four o’clock in the morning, and I smell butter and bacon.

Blue is more of an early riser than I am, religious about his morning runs, but right now he is fast asleep, expression soft, mouth slightly open. There’s only one person who could be cooking now, and I find him in the kitchen.

West is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, standing in front of the stove. I’m not fully awake yet, my mind a fog, but I know this is strange.

“Nightmare?” I ask softly.

He doesn’t turn around. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Six months ago I would have only been going to sleep at this time, exhausted and sore after working the pole all night.

I eye the stack of pancakes. “You were going to eat those by yourself?”

“I was going to wait until you woke up. Couldn’t sit still though.”

His words filter through my sleepy brain, and I understand that cooking has been something to keep his hands busy, that he’d really gotten up and dressed for some other purpose. Then I see the duffel bag by the door. My heart drops. “You’re leaving.”

He flicks off the stove and turns around, expression somehow both hard and soft, determined and pained. “It’s time.”

“It couldn’t have been time in three hours?”

“Might change my mind in three hours.”

I sink into a chair at the kitchen table and fold my hands. I’m suddenly aware of how naked I am in the slinky, short nightgown. He’s seen even more of me, but now he’s fully dressed—and he’s leaving.

“It’s that important that you go?”

He nods. “I stayed too long already.”

I swallow hard, because I recognize regret. And resolve. “Because of what we did?”

The chair creaks as he sits across from me, his long body folding into place, a temporary respite. “Because I want to do it again. And I shouldn’t want that. Not as much as I do.”

My heart squeezes. “Blue was telling you the truth. I wanted what we did.”

Something flickers behind his eyes. Longing. Anger. “How many times, Hannah? How many times will you have to suck my dick before I stop having nightmares?”

I manage not to flinch. “We could find out.”

That makes him laugh softly. “You are too generous.”

It’s not generosity that makes me this way. I want him to feel better, but I also know this is the only way I can help. Other people have kind words and homemade soup. I have tits and ass. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. This is the only way I’m useful.

“Blue would want you to stay.”

“He’ll understand.” Then he’s standing up, moving to leave.

I move too, matching his steps, blocking him. “Wait.”

I’m not sure why it bothers me that he’s going. I like him, but that’s not really why. It feels like he’s taking something with him. Maybe because if he leaves, if my body isn’t enough comfort, then I’m useless. Or maybe because he knows what it feels like to be useless in this world, to have skills you can’t use and nightmares you can’t share.

“Maybe it’s not a blowjob I need,” he says softly.

He stands as if to be judged, proud and forlorn. He’s strong in every way that counts, in every way I envy, but he’s afraid too. Afraid of what waits for him outside this door. Afraid of what’s inside the door too, wary as he watches me.

Does he think I’ll refuse?

I turn my face up to meet him, letting him capture me in a kiss. He’s gentle with me, one hand cupping my jaw, cradling me, the other at my waist. His tongue runs along the seam of my lips, and I open to him.

He’s softer than any man before him. Softer even than Blue.

When he flicks his tongue against mine, a gentle question.

I pull away. The answer is no.

“You don’t want to wait and say goodbye?” I whisper.

“This is goodbye,” he says, eyes searching mine. I know what he’ll see. The wistful salute to some future girl, one who’s made just for him. She’ll love every soft touch, every sweet word. I can enjoy them in the moment, but I’m made for something else. Someone else.

I was forged in fire, melted and re-formed. I need a man who knows I won’t break. A man who will test me just to prove the point. I need Blue, even if I’m not completely sure he needs me back.

Chapter Twelve

I lock the door behind West and make my way through the living room. Except I’m not alone.

Blue’s body is a large and silent shadow. He’s sitting in the armchair, watching. You can’t see the kitchen or the door from here, but I don’t know how much he heard. Does he know I let West kiss me? Just the night before, he pushed my mouth toward his friend’s cock, but that was sex. The kiss was something else.

Panic tightens my throat. Panic that he won’t understand. Or that he will.

“You’re awake,” I say, my voice small.

He doesn’t say anything.

“West left.”

Blue just watches me.

It makes my heart pound. I feel myself slipping, sliding into that familiar skin. I don’t have heels and lipstick, but that’s okay. I knew about sex long before I learned its trappings, and I show that to him now, fingering the hem of my silk nightgown. I let it catch the faint moonlight from the window, let him pant for the pussy he already knows so well.

He’s a monolith. I can’t see if he’s turned on, if his dick is hard. I can only feel my way around him, moving my body as I pull the silk over my head. Then I’m naked, and I drop to my knees.

It’s safer here.

I crawl to him, shoulders high, ass tilted up. I find his legs bare, coarse hair over hard muscle. I find his cock hard, straining against the fabric of his briefs. The material catches underneath his weight, and for a second I think he’s not going to help me. He’s not going to let me take his cock out. Not going to let me do the only thing I know how to do.

Then he shifts, and I pull his briefs to his thighs. His cock springs up, hard and damp at the top. I grasp him in my hands, sliding both fists up and down before kissing the tip. I’m determined to please him, as determined as West was to leave. I’m not even sure why I’m so desperate for this. What battle am I fighting? It’s like I’m apologizing for his friend leaving.

Like I’m begging Blue not to do the same.

“So much guilt,” he murmurs, voice low and expansive in the dark. “So much shame.”

Heat rises to my cheeks, because he’s right. Guilt and shame and a deep, unrelenting dread. I don’t know how to keep a man. I’m almost afraid to try. The only thing I had going for me was the sex, and now that I’m no longer a stripper, it feels like I’m losing that too.

“I don’t know what to be,” I whisper.

If he could just tell me, if I could just follow his orders, it would be okay. He tells me what to do in the bedroom, but not anywhere else. And I’m floundering. I’m failing, everywhere else.

“I never asked you to change,” he says, stroking my cheek, trailing after a tear.

That’s true. He never did. But how could he want me? I have nothing to offer him. Nothing but a striptease and a hard fuck. Maybe it’s not a blowjob I need.

God, even West knows I’m not enough.

He pushes his hand into my hair and tightens his fist. “You still think I’m going to let you go?” he asks, his voice ominous. “You still think you’ll…what? Do something wrong and I’ll throw you out? Is that what you think?”

It’s what happened at every foster home. They’d use me for the small monthly support payments—or use me for something worse. And when they got tired of me, they’d kick me out again. Why wouldn’t that happen again? “No,” I whisper.

His cock stands hard and proud in front of me. I can almost feel it throbbing. I could make it so good, but he holds me still, my mouth an inch away. I lick my lips, and he groans.