Sick Like Me (Sick Like #1)

Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

The air felt awkward as we sat opposite one another in a café on the outskirts of town, hidden away on a side street where we both suspected no one would see or notice us.

I knew at least both my best friends lived far away from where we sat. And I was sure Owen lived in the opposite direction—not that he would be allowed a right to get upset at seeing me with another man. I wasn’t his, unlike what Stefan liked to believe.

We had driven around for some time, trying to find the perfect place that didn’t look too ‘date like’, but we also wanted a place that would grant us some peaceful solace, if not for just a few minutes.

I picked up my latte and sipped it slowly, my eyes on the table, not once daring to shoot him a glance. He was intimidating, and the fact he had invited me out for a fucking coffee when he said we were never going to go on dates, etc. only added to the intimidation factor.

Why had he invited me out?

My mind was overthinking every possible scenario.

I heard the clink of china, then Kota cleared his throat before he spoke in that Goddamned addicting sounding voice. “Aren’t you going to at least look at me?” He asked, sounding more humoured by my lack of eye contact rather than irritated.

I didn’t want to, but I managed to tare my eyes away from the clean white table top to look into his eyes, green and bright and inviting.

But it was all a ruse. I knew deep behind the beautiful splashes of colour lay a monster clawing to get out, clawing to get to me and destroy every piece of me. And that thought thrilled me more than I cared to admit.

I chewed on my bottom lip as I placed my glass cup back down, my hands coming to surrounding it to warm them. “Why did you bring me here?” I asked, my voice so quiet I wasn’t even sure he had heard me at first.

But then he spoke smoothly, his voice unashamed and unwavering. The confidence he exuded made me jealous. I wished I could have been as carefree about his presence as he was about mine.

But then again, even over texts, his presence always meant more to me than mine did to him. He could go days without texting me, and the second my phone dinged with his notification, I came running like a lost puppy in search of their owner.

“You said we could be friends too, right? Friends go for coffee sometimes,” He replied, but there was something hidden behind his words, something I wanted to dig further into.

“I did, but we aren’t really friends,” I replied, picking up my glass with both hands to take another sip. I was worried my words would offend him, but he said nothing as he turned to look out of the window beside us, and that made me sure that my words had no affect on him regardless of what I said.

“Okay, fine. So maybe I do have a reason for meeting you like this,” He stated coolly, his eyes flickering from the window, to give me a brief look before they went back to the setting sun once again .

“What is it?” I asked, embracing myself for him to tell me we had to end… whatever the fuck we were. I was sure he was going to ask us to stop our sexting, and that we were never going to happen in any capacity, even as friends with benefits.

But instead, I stared at him with surprise as I blinked. I blinked once, twice, three times. Then I registered that he had spoken but my brain hadn’t retained the information. “Sorry, can you repeat that?” I asked, trying to sound as posh as he did. Guaranteed his accent was natural, but it made me feel like some small town country hick when I heard my own accent compared to his.

He sighed softly, taking a small sip of his coffee smoothly. His eyes never once looked away from the setting sun, and I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful he looked. He was perfect in every sense of the word. Or at least he was to me. “When are you going to invite me to stay the night?” He repeated his words.

I was stunned into silence by shock. I hadn’t expected that. I wasn’t sure what I was preparing for, but it wasn’t for him to demand to spend the night in my bed.

“I’m just saying that I think we should arrange a schedule for us to meet up around our work commitments. Now we’re basically always going to be in the same area, we may as well as finally go ahead with it all, right?” He cocked an eyebrow, talking about us as if he where discussing buying some unimportant art pieces to furnish his home.

My lips parted as I sucked in a breath, but then they closed as words failed me. My eyes went back to the table as I thought deeply. He didn’t want to end us before we even had a chance to begin—he wanted us to begin. He wanted us to fuck on the regular, sure, but that was better than the inevitable ending I was sat waiting for.

“You want us to meet up on the regular?” I finally asked, disbelief lacing my voice .

He finally tore his eyes away from the setting sun and stared right into my own, as if he was trying to see through me to the darkest depths of my soul. “Yes, if you still want to go along with our…” He paused, as if trying to find the right words. As he did so, his eyes flickered to the silver pendant hanging on my chest, meeting right where the top button of my shirt hid my cleavage from prying eyes—like his. “Arrangement.”

I let out a laugh, but it was brief and barely lasted a few seconds. I pushed my coffee away, no longer wanting to drink something he had bought. “You want us to start fucking is what you’re saying.” I stated, more so than questioned.

He threw one shoulder up in a shrug, picking his drink up to sip the contents. He seemed so unaffected at all times, and it was fucking infuriating. But the way he stared at me, right into my eyes, felt as if he was silently begging me to agree. As if his hands would rather fall off than risk never touching me.

“You know I have a… thing with Owen,” I replied, letting out a sigh. He said nothing, but the way his eyes closed slowly then opened again revealed he was giving me his full attention. “It’s not serious with him though. I don’t have sex with him so you don’t have to worry about me… spreading anything. I just go on dates with him and have fun, that’s all,” I stated, defending why I wanted to keep both him and Owen in my life.

Kota shrugged, finishing his coffee in one fluid gulp before he placed his cup back down. “Ashton, quite frankly I don’t give two shits about who you do or don’t fuck,” He replied, to which I felt a knife dig into my heart. I knew he didn’t care about me, but I wanted to at least pretend he did for just a few seconds.

“As long as you’re smart about it and don’t go around getting pregnant or spreading stuff, I don’t care. I’m too busy for more than one fuck buddy at a time, and you’re the closest option currently,” He said, turning his head to look back out of the window.

I watched him as his eyes followed a couple walking their dog together, their arms entwined as they seemed to be laughing about something. I watched as something flashed through his eyes, but it was gone as quick as it appeared.

“I’m not having sex with anyone else,” I stated as I stood and grabbed my bag from the back of my chair. “So your dick isn’t going to grow warts or anything, you’re safe.” My voice sounded bitter, much more so than I intended.

His eyes found me again, and he cocked an eyebrow. “What are you doing?” He asked, watching as I pulled my purse from my bag before slipping the strap of the bag over my shoulder.

“I’m going to call a taxi to take me back to my car so I can go home,” I stated, shooting him a pointed look. “Just because you can survive sleeping on four hours every night doesn’t mean everyone else can.”

He gave a short laugh, mostly silent save for the sound of rushed air from his nose. “Don’t be a dickhead, let me drive you back,” He stated as he stood, the action fluid and powerful. He could command a room without much effort.

It was strange hearing swearing come from his accent, but it was also a breath of fresh air to hear. It made him more human, less of the image of the man he wanted the world to see. A man made of power and control.

I wanted to see more of the real him.

I looked at him, about to argue my case, but then I remembered he wouldn’t care if I got home safe or not, he was just asking out of basic courtesy. I didn’t half doubt he would expect me to say no, and then he would leave without so much as a second thought about me until he next got his cock hard and wished he had someone to fuck.

So I nodded my head. “Fine, drive me back.” I tried to keep a strong aura, trying to sound powerful and demanding. But the narrowed look he shot me caused me to bite my lip momentarily. “Please,” I whispered barely audible.

He smirked at the word, then walked around the table before he wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me close to his side. “I knew I would love how that word sounded past your lips.”

I took in a small breath through parted lips as I craned my neck to look up at him from beside me, my body allowing him to manoeuvre me freely through the mostly empty café and back outside to where his car sat waiting for us.

Once the cool air hit our bodies, Kota pulled away from me and rushed down the small steps to his car. He pulled his keys from his trousers pocket and clicked the button to unlock it before he got in the driver’s seat without so much as a second glance in my direction.

I followed after him, my hands a mix between clammy yet cold. I had survived the drive here with him mostly because I felt like it was all a dream, but being in the confined space with him once again…

I felt like all the air in my lungs had been stolen just at the thought.

But I let my feet navigate me to the passenger side of his car without allowing my brain much room to think. I pulled open the handle then got in, closing the door behind me with a soft thud. I pulled on the seatbelt, chewing on the inside of my bottom lip as I waited for him to start the drive back to my car.

“You know,” Kota began, rushing to type something on his phone before he threw it into a small cubby space between us by the cup holders. “You looked stunning that night, at the work thing. It’s a shame I couldn’t squeeze in a dance with you.”

A part of me felt cold and numb at his words, as if they weren’t genuine and were more of a taunt. I cleared the anxious lump in my throat and then spoke in a small, barely there voice. “Thank you, I guess.”

Kota raised an eyebrow as he turned the key in the ignition. He said nothing further, though, as he began the car and pulled out of the space in the blink of an eye .

The radio came to life a little slower than anticipated, so for a few seconds we sat in awkward silence. But then the media screen turned on and his music flowed through the radio quietly.

It seemed he knew I wasn’t in the talking mood, so he moved his fingers along the steering wheel before the music became louder through the cabin. I raised my eyebrows in surprise, turning in my seat slightly to get a better look at him.

“I never took you as someone who enjoyed Arctic Monkeys,” I stated, my eyes glancing over his attire. His smart and shiny black shoes, his clean cut suit with the custom silver cufflinks, his sparkling and rather expensive looking silver watch.

I watched as he moved his hand closest to me to run through the barely there brown strands of his hair. He sucked in a breath, letting out a breathy laugh in response. “Why is that?”

“Well, you look a little…” I began, moving my hands from his head, to his feet and back again as if trying to make my point. “A little posh. I half expected you to be a fan of Ludovico in your down time.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate a good piano piece in the right circumstances, but I’m not all that image of a ‘rich posh boy’ that you seem to have conjured up in that pretty little head of yours,” He placed his hand back on the steering wheel.

My lips parted slightly. “I never meant to offend—” I began, but he cut me off with a laugh.

“No, you didn’t, don’t worry. I was just saying, if I was the little rich posh boy you think me to be, then I wouldn’t be so turned on by the idea of ruining the fuck out of you at any given chance. In that tight little white shirt, God,” He closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds, and I had to resist the urge to grab the steering wheel from him to ensure our safety. “You look so fucking corruptible right now.”

“I look… what?” I asked, confused for a moment by how br azen and unashamed he was to speak with such vulgar words at our first official meeting.

“What, you’re that much of a perfect little virgin girl that you don’t even know what that means?” He seemed to taunt me, and I felt my cheeks heat. I wasn’t sure if he was saying it as a joke, or to humiliate me—which I had grown accustomed to when it came to him. It was a Kota special.

I stayed silent, longer than he seemed to expect I would. So he cleared his throat and then rushed out as if trying to defend himself, “I was kidding, by the way.”

“I’m not,” I rushed out in a needy mess. He stayed silent, but the cock of his eyebrow seemed to confirm he was wondering what I was claiming. “A virgin, I mean. I was when we first talked years ago but after that I had sex. Once, and it fucking sucked. But I’m not a virgin… anymore…” I mumbled, the words coming to a decrescendo towards the end.

I saw his lips turn up into the fainted of smiles once I finished speaking, and I felt my own twitch in the need to smile in return. I sighed softly to try to calm them down, looking down at my hands as my nails picked at my fingers sat atop my lap.

I felt sudden warmth invade my space, and fingers danced along my thigh. I looked up at the source, surprised he would be so brazen to touch me after the comments he made in the café. But as I looked at his face, his expression was unreadable and his eyes were locked in on the road ahead.

I stared at him, for a few seconds, trying to engrave his face to memory. God, he was fucking beautiful. He would hate me if I ever said such a word, he would probably be like those wannabe macho men who would claim I have to call them handsome as beautiful was a feminine compliment. But at that moment my brain was becoming a foggy cloud and I wasn’t thinking straight.

My lips parted, as if that would help burn his image behind my eyelids so when I closed my eyes at night I would sleep to images of him. He seemed to sense my staring as he shot me a sideways glance, his eyebrow raising once again. He looked straight again, but he spoke directly to me with words deeper than previous.

“If you keep looking at me with those eyes, I’m going to pull you over and fuck you in my back seat. So I suggest you stop.”

I took a sharp breath in and pushed my lips together, folding them between my teeth. I felt the urge to smile come over me, and decided why not to play into his little dirty word game.

“And what if that’s exactly what my goal is?” I dared to ask. I watched as he shuffled slightly in his seat to sit straighter, and I felt his hand move higher from my knee to my mid thigh before his hand squeezed gently.

“Ashton,” He spoke my name, a silent warning.

Ha, two can play that game!

“Dakota,” I dared to use his full name, the one he swore he fucking hated with a passion. I cleared my throat, trying my best to not let out a mischievous giggle. The way his jaw hardened revealed all I needed to know. I had an effect on him.

All of a sudden, the car made a sharp turn and I had been too distracted to notice he had stopped driving us towards work when I looked around and found us parked up in an abandoned looking car park, no other vehicles in sight.

I looked from the windscreen back to him. He turned the ignition off but kept the key inside the barrel so the lights inside the cabin remained illuminating the space. He turned to face me, his face hard but his eyes oddly soft.

“I dare you to try that little attitude now, while staring into my eyes,” His eyes flickered from my own, down to my lips and back, ever so slightly hardening but I could sense behind them was a promise—a promise that if I asked to stop and go back to my car, he would do so without a second thought or request.

I felt like the air around me was held in the soft yet firm hands of the man before me, and with one clench of his first I would be doomed .

I dared to sit up straighter, trying to call to every strength within me to call his bluff. He wouldn’t dare do anything to me, not like this, not in his precious recently bought ‘family’ car.

“My friends in work all think you’re a drug dealer,” I tried to steer the conversation in another direction, the nerves bubbling inside my stomach begging for me to keep his attention for as long as possible.

“You talk about me?” He asked, his eyes seeming surprised for a second before he caught himself and regained his composure.

I smiled slightly, and had to resist the urge to reach out and touch his cheek, to trace my fingers along his barely-there freckles. He looked so cute when he was caught off guard, a difference to the usual hard and professional look I was used to him showing off.

“I never said your name, I just talked about you in passing as one of my many ‘dating app boys’,” I used air quotes. My eyes remained locked in on his face, waiting for a spark of jealousy. But his face remained stoic, unmoving.

He really couldn’t care less about sharing me, I was just another fuck to him.

And I had to learn to be okay with that.

But the thought still hurt, and I had to resist the urge from storming out of his car and walking my way back to the car despite having no clue where the fuck we were. I pulled away, leaning against the door to try to gain as much space between us as possible.

“Are we going then?” I asked, to which I felt the fingers on my thigh gently dance their way higher.

“What’s suddenly got you in a mood?” He asked, sounding humorous even. “Is it because I don’t tell anyone in my life about you?”

“I couldn’t care less if you talked about me or not,” I snapped, a little harsher than I intended. And with that, I gave myself up to him and revealed that it was most certainly one of the potential reasons I was getting myself worked up.

He let out a small laugh between closed lips, his lips turning up into a fucking obnoxious smile that I wanted to slap off of his fucking perfect face. Fuck you Dakota Vernon, and not in the good way, I cursed silently.

“I do talk about you, you know,” He stated quietly, turning away from me to pick up his phone.

But I wanted his full attention.

I was unsure where the sudden courage came from, but I grabbed his phone from his hands and placed it back where it sat previously before I grabbed the back of his neck and leant across the car to him.

I got close to him, close enough our hot breaths were mixing and fanning over our faces. “What do you say about me to other people?” I tries my best to sound as demanding as possible.

For a brief second, I had all the power in my hands. But just as quick as my courage came, my power was taken away when Kota grabbed my wrist and pinned it between us with my other wrist, both tight in his one hand.

Just as I had done, his other hand grabbed the back of my neck. He dared to bring his face closer to mine, his lips barely ghosting over my own. “I tell them how fucking perfect and obedient you can be.”

I felt my stomach drop again, but before I could attempt to push the man off of me or tell him to piss off, his lips gently brushed against my own in a barely-there kiss.

I felt my lips heat, as if they were on fire. He pulled his head back slightly, and I even dared to chase after him in an attempt to beg for more. That seemed to play right into his game as he smirked, his eyes flickering down to my lips before he finally pressed his lips firm against mine while his hand migrated from the back of my neck to the front, holding me gently in place while his thumb came to rub along my jaw .

The kiss was rough, rougher than the very few kisses I had before. His lips were relentless, the force against my own feeling almost bruising. I wanted to pull back for air, but he seemed to only want more when I pulled away from him for just a few seconds.

I was drunk off his lips, even more so when they dared to press into my own and part my lips so his tongue could very softly and briefly dare to brush against my own. I wanted to feel more.

I twisted my hands in his grip, but he didn’t let up. Whatever we were going to do, it seemed he wanted to have control over me and that consisted of me not touching him for a single second.

Just as I felt his hand from around my neck dare to inch lower, touching the top button of my shirt where my silver pendant sat, a loud ringing filled the cabin and I jumped back in surprise at the sudden intrusion.

I looked around, as if expecting to find some alarm. But instead I watched as Kota picked up his phone.

He sighed and pressed to accept a call, then pulled the device to his ear. “Yes Olivia,” He spoke in place of a greeting. He hummed a few times, nodding his head. He then closed his eyes and let out a breath between pursed lips before he pulled his phone from his ear and ended the call.

“I have to get back home,” He stated as he threw his phone back in its cubby a little more aggressive than I was expecting him to. I flinched at the loud clatter, and tried to cover it up as I turned to face forward with my hands firm on my lap.

“I’m sorry,” He said softly into the empty space before he began the silent drive back to the car park where my car sat abandoned.

“You should be nicer to her,” I muttered, my eyes flickering to his phone to find the screen locked. I wondered what kind of wallpaper a man like him would have on his phone .

“Pardon?” He asked, blinking in surprise.

“Olivia. I don’t know who she is but you didn’t even greet her, wish her a good day or say goodbye. You should be nicer to her,” I felt mild jealousy that the woman I was talking about likely knew him more than I ever could, but I also felt the need to defend her.

The air between us was silent for a second as the smooth acoustics of Cigarettes After Sex filled the car, but then a laugh filled the space. “Trust me, she is my most prized assistant and she knows I mean well. We don’t have time for chit chat in our line of work, and she understands that.”

At the reminder she knew him more than I, that she understood him, my stomach felt as if it dropped to the floor. I turned in my seat, my elbow resting on the door as I turned to face the window beside me. I rest my cheek on my raised hand and watched as the stars began to sparkle the darker the night got.

I had no idea when I was going to talk to him again, but I was thankful he at least gave me some of his time, even though it was barely enough to satiate my addiction to him.