Don’t Deny Me: Part Three by Megan Hart

than a week without her. There was no drawing this out, no holding off. When Alice sank her teeth into his shoulder, Mick lost himself. Her body tensed around him, and he gave up trying to hold off. He was looking at her when he came, but Alice’s eyes were closed.
    He rolled off her, still breathing hard. Beside him, Alice was silent. She didn’t roll to cuddle against him, so he turned his head.
    “Why?” Alice asked so softly he barely had to wake to mumble an answer.
    “Why what?”
    “Why couldn’t you wait until tomorrow to see me?”
    Mick smiled, half dreaming, and reached with one clumsy hand to pull her closer. When her warmth had pressed against him, he kissed her hair. “Because I wanted you.”
    “That’s all?” Alice murmured. “You wanted me?”
    Mick smiled again, nuzzling into her. Warm and sated and filled with her taste and scent and the general glory of being with her. “What more is there, other than wanting you?”
    * * *
    Let me paint my name upon your skin with my lips and teeth and hands and tongue, you won’t regret the song we sing when we both come undone.
    —Mick to Alice, unsent
    * * *
    For once, Alice was up and about before Mick, who still snored lightly when she slipped out of bed. She had too much to do today to laze around. She had a week’s worth of salty, sandy laundry to do. She had her cat to pay attention to, because Cleo would shit in Alice’s shoes if she didn’t. She had mail to sort through.
    Yet here she sat at the kitchen table, doing none of it. She’d made coffee, but it wasn’t quite right. Not as good as Mick would make it. She didn’t have any food in the fridge to cook for breakfast, and no motivation to run out and get some. All she could manage to do was drink some now-tepid tea and try to think of how she was going to break up with him.
    “Morning.” Sleepy-eyed but with a wet head and fully dressed, looking too fucking scrumptious to stand, Mick bent to kiss her. “You’re up early.”
    “Mick.”
    He paused in looking through her cupboards to glance over his shoulder. “Yeah, babe?”
    The words rose up, choking her. Bitter. Sharp as glass. She coughed, but couldn’t force herself to say them.
    He was staring at her. “You okay?”
    She was not okay. Anything but, as a matter of fact. But all she could do was nod.
    “Hey, you wanna go out to a diner or something? You don’t have anything to eat.”
    A diner. Oh, God. He wanted to take her to a diner, where they’d order eggs and hash browns and toast and coffee and maybe a pancake or maybe a whole stack, and he would hold her hand while they waited for their food and he’d hand her the cream and sugar without her having to ask because he knew how she liked her coffee, and he would give her the syrup first. He would tell her jokes and make her laugh and shake his leg up and down, rattling the silverware on the table, until she gave him a look that would make him stop. They would play tic-tac-toe on the backs of the menus.
    And she would love him, Alice thought bleakly while Mick gave her a curious, confused stare. She would love him and want him and let him take her home and make love to her, any time he wanted. And she would miss him when they were not together, even if he never did.
    She loved him, and there was no helping it or stopping it. She’d fallen into it deep. There was no climbing out.
    * * *
    You’ve known for a long time how I felt about you, and you just kept letting me. Just like I knew for a long time how you didn’t feel about me, and I just kept letting you. So which one of us is to blame, in the end? I guess we both are, or we both are not, but either way, all I know is that I am totally and completely in love with you. I can’t imagine the rest of my life without you in it. And yet all I see for us is good-bye.
    —Alice to Mick, unsent
    * * *
    “Hey,” Mick said, sliding into the chair across from her to take her hand. His thumb stroked the back of it.