Melody felt her own excitement building. “How do you inform the winner?”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “We usually contact their parents or guardian, arrange a Zoom call. Octavia appears on the screen and tells them college is paid for. It’s . . .” He trailed off, nodding. “It’s something.”
“And you make it happen.”
“They make it happen. I just do the research.”
A bigger picture began clicking into place. “Did your mother create the scholarship program, Beat? Or was it you?”
“I don’t know.” He stared off over her shoulder a moment, eyes narrowing slightly. “It has been so long, I can’t remember.”
That was the truth. He honestly didn’t recall. “I’m betting on you.”
“Why?” They did nothing but communicate through a long, silent look. “You think I do this to balance out the wealth I’ve been born into,” he said slowly.
“I think maybe that’s part of it. The rest is just being a good person who wants to help.”
“I don’t know about that. It’s like . . . I can’t believe all this talent is out there and so much of it will go undiscovered. They have all the aptitude and none of the advantages. Meanwhile, I’m the opposite. None of the talent, all of the—”
“No. You have to stop that.”
He laughed without humor. “It’s not that easy.”
“Oh. Believe me, I know. We have these tremendous, unrealistic expectations on us, because of who our mothers are.” She thought back to her many hours of therapy, the conclusions they’d drawn over and over. Ones she’d only started believing recently. “But, Beat, we get to be people. We get to just be people.”
This time, when his gaze fastened on her mouth, there was no pretending she’d imagined it. “Privately, maybe, we get to just be people.” He leaned in. Or maybe she did. “Around everyone else, though . . . friends, colleagues, the press, it’s always been about keeping relationships superficial, distracting people from looking at anything too deep. Too personal.” She heard him swallow. “Maybe I take that a step too far, you know?”
Their foreheads met, eyes searching.
No. She wasn’t imagining the weight of importance between them. This conversation.
She wasn’t imagining it at all.
“It’s really hard to be around you,” she said without thinking. “It’s also really easy to be around you. Does that make any sense?”
“I’ve never understood you more.”
“I wish I could say the same.” He looked a little wounded by that, but she didn’t take it back. “You say you keep relationships superficial. That you take it a step too far. Tell me what you mean.”
His chest lifted and fell. He opened his mouth to speak twice, before finally proceeding. “Like I told you, when I was younger, it got too hard for me to accept . . . being indulged all the fucking time. I wasn’t doing anything to earn comfort. Relief. That guilt started to creep in everywhere. I needed an outlet. And when I was sixteen, I asked a girl I was seeing to keep me right on the edge. Tease and torture me, but not let me finish. She did it, but she didn’t want to see me again after that. Neither did the next girl.” His shoulder rolled back jerkily. “I learned not to share this part of myself with people I care about. I learned to keep it private and somewhere along the line, it stopped being about guilt and more about enjoyment. But most importantly, not having to confide in anyone. There are places a person can go . . .” He closed his eyes and gave his head a brief shake. “Jesus, I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
Melody hadn’t breathed in a full minute. “It’s okay.”
When he looked at her again, his gaze was a combination of heated and apologetic. “There are places a person can go, Mel. Clubs, sometimes private residences. I find women willing to be discreet and . . .” He raised an eyebrow, as if to say, You get the picture. “It’s a transaction, not a relationship, and that clear line is comfortable to me.”
“Oh,” she whispered, regrouping her thoughts.
Beat interrupted the process when he pressed their foreheads together again. “Look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
“I haven’t been to any of those places since I saw you again. I haven’t wanted to.”
Boneless, she nodded. Beat liked to be brought to the edge without being allowed to finish. Maybe she should have been shocked, but her brain only seemed capable of projecting images of Beat in the highest highs of hunger, his body keyed up and straining, teeth bared, eyes glassy. Who wouldn’t want to be with him, feeding him what he wanted, in those moments?
“So . . . you like to be edged. Orgasm denial.”
He huffed a pained laugh. “You use more technical terms than I do.”
“I restored a copy of a classic sex help book once. I might have picked up a few things.”
“Mel, you don’t seem scandalized by this at all.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“No. But knowing you’re comfortable with this . . .” His lips trailed slowly across her cheek toward her mouth and settled there, breathing heavily enough to leave hot condensation. “I’m worried what I’ll want to do.”
“Why are you worried?”
He winced, almost like he was in pain. “Because this is my way of getting what I want without having to be vulnerable. It’s satisfaction with none of the . . . emotion. None of the bond.” His mouth was flush with hers when he spoke, muffling his words slightly. “I like fucking until I’m ready to explode, Mel. Then I stop. I can’t . . . I don’t know how to let anyone in at the end. I leave.” He shifted his hips beneath her and made a low, tight-lipped sound. “I’d hurt your feelings, like I did last night. I don’t think you realize how much that gutted me.”
“My feelings were hurt, because I didn’t understand. Now I do.” She rushed to wet her dry lips. “And I think . . . if anything, your need for . . . hardship is proof that you have a soul. You recognize your good fortune. So many people in your position don’t.”
“Hmm.” Her hand lifted on its own, her fingers spearing slowly into his hair, his eyelids falling more the farther they went. His hand on her thigh tightened and she couldn’t stop, couldn’t keep herself from sipping a kiss from his lips. “I just had a thought.”
“Okay,” he said, not moving. Holding his breath? “I’d really like to know what it is.”
Instinct had her twisting her hips, rolling her spine, and adding pressure to the paperwork still lodged between them until he sucked in a breath. “Maybe we can try again. Now that I know what’s coming—or in this case, not coming—” Briefly, she touched her tongue to the seam of his lips. “Maybe I would enjoy . . . not letting you.”
A shudder ran through him. “Mel.”
It surprised her, the little surge of power that sparked in her fingertips. But the glimmer of something new and unique didn’t scare her. No, it beckoned her closer. Using Beat’s shoulder for leverage, she lifted her weight off his lap, closed her hand around the stack of papers, and moved them to the adjacent seat, before settling back down, inhaling roughly over the thick protrusion that greeted her.