Myrtle - You were right about the credit card but I like to think Harry had other things on her mind at the time and the receptionist had them sussed anyway :-D
Myrtle and Mini Metro - You couldn't have been more spot on with your 'getting him out of her system' comments. In fact, MM, you've been right pretty much every step of the way LOL
Apologies for the lateness of this chapter go out in particular to Amanda B. and *Amanda K. #DemandingAmandas :-D
*It must be 3:30!
Chapter 6 – Crossed Lines
"May twelfth was the day I thought it was all gonna change for us. An' I guess it did only I didn't realise it wouldn't be for the better. Feels like I lost you. I still got my partner and I got an enthusiastic…" he hesitated, tempted to sting her but instead continued with, "bed mate." He gave a ruefully sardonic grin, "a very enthusiastic bed mate… but I lost a friend."
She blinked rapidly and he got the impression it was the last part that had stung - how he'd chosen to frame the structure of their relationship was of no importance.
"I need for you to be honest with me, Harry," he carried on. "What's goin' on with us? 'cause if this is the way it's gonna be, I don't want it. I want the whole package or nothin'."
That appeared to wrong-foot her. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. She couldn't speak it seemed, until she had played the words over again in her mind.
"The… the whole package?" she stumbled at last.
"I want more from you than casual sex in a hotel room, Harry!" he told her with exasperation.
"You might think you do but really, you're quite happy with the situation the way it is."
"You ain't got the first, baby," he said bitterly.
"Oh, I think I have. You're a player of women. It's what you do. You get off on manipulating the doe-eyed and the smitten and anything else is a challenge."
That actually made him angry, not for the fact that her caustic critique was damningly accurate but more that she couldn't see how, over the last few weeks, he'd changed. All he could think about now was her and how he was going to alter the way things were between them. At first that emotional coolness had been exciting and intriguing, making the physical side flare and burn hotly in contrast. It was energising, this clandestine behaviour, it was raw and sexy and they both kind of lost themselves in the sheer wild exhilaration. But now Dempsey knew he needed more than that hot, lustful sex – he needed tenderness. More than anything, he wanted to make love with her. He wanted a thousand years to appreciate the warmth and the feel of her soft, silky skin and a thousand more to tell her with velvet declarations what she had come to mean to him. But Harry wouldn't let that happen. He had tried. This evening he had encouraged her to bring things down a notch, pinning her beneath him like a beautiful captured butterfly, nuzzling into her neck and whispering pretty words whilst he loved her. Only, she hadn't let him get away with that, writhing with horny intent and insisting with demanding hands and dirty mouth that she be satisfied in ways Dempsey had only fantasised about.
Now these liaisons had become a regular feature, he was able to take a step back and wonder at their tenability. He was scared to death of losing her. If they carried on like this there was a real danger that what they had would burn itself out.
And now here she was painting him black as night the minute he tried to tell her how he really felt about her.
He shook his head despondently. "I've always enjoyed a challenge, Harry but you're the challenge that just keeps on challenging."
She fixed him with a furious, frustrated glare before turning away angrily.
She was going. She was leaving him alone in the hotel room again only this time, he had determined, it would be for the last time because he couldn't live like this any longer.
"What if I've changed?" he blurted, causing her to faulter at the door.
He had to try, conscious that this was probably his last shot at… at what? Hanging onto her? But 'hanging on' implied a tenuous connection, a certain desperation in a dying relationship. He didn't want to hang on; he wanted them, all or nothing.
"If you walk out now, Harry, that's the end of everything. You realise that, don't you?" he asked with stern calm. "Don't you think I at least deserve a chance? I've followed your lead. You said I'm a player, well these last few weeks I've been playin' your game by your rules. What did you expect me to do when you were makin' all the moves?"
She had her hand on the door handle and a trapped and anxious expression passed fleetingly across her face.
"It's called playing you at your own game, Dempsey."
He knew that smugness was pure bravado.
"Okay you win. No question about it." He held his hands up in resignation. "Now can we move on?"
"That's what I'm doing. It was fun I suppose but let's not pretend it was ever going to be anything more."
He wasn't buying this casual, sour attitude. There was no flint in those soft, blue eyes.
"I wanna know what's goin' on with you. I know you… least, I thought I did. You ain't the kinda girl who goes to the rodeo with any guy who asks her. It has to mean somethin'."
"The rodeo?"
That brought the faintest of reluctant smiles but he latched onto it, grinning. "Yeah, the rodeo." he confirmed, hoping that humour might draw her back.
"What if I've changed too?" Harry asked quietly.
"Then we can meet someplace in the middle, how 'bout that?"
She shook her head stiffly. "It wouldn't work."
"Why not?"
"Because we obviously entered into this… thing, for different reasons."
"I don't think so."
He refused to move his eyes from hers, forcing her to speak again.
"I wanted sex with you – just sex because…" she couldn't keep the eye contact going and transferred her gaze to his right shoulder, "because I wanted to get it over with. Because I wanted to get you out of my system."
"Hey, we've done this six times already - nine if we're counting when we went again! You ain't managed to purge me yet?" She didn't reply and he could see she was working on her composure. "So you thought you'd jump my bones an' prove to yourself that I ain't worth your time."
"That's about the size of it I suppose."
She might as well have slapped him across the face again.
"Gotta tell ya, Harry, that's cold."
He had slunk back to the bed and now sat on the edge, his forearms resting heavily on his thighs.
"Why should it matter to you? I didn't disappoint, did I?"
"Quit with the ice-bitch routine, it don't suit you, Princess," he ground darkly. "An' you know somethin', I ain't buyin' it anyway."
"I really don't care whether you do or you don't to be honest so…"
"You care, Harry," he interrupted, "I know you do otherwise you wouldn't of had me comin' back to this place with you time after time."
"Or maybe, Dempsey," she said snidely, "you really are that good. Give yourself a gold star."
"We're good together. And we'd be even better if you didn't act like I was a stranger to you afterwards. I can't hold you… I don't kiss you afterward because you won't let me. You think I don't wanna do those things? You put up such a frickin' high wall between us! It's like you don't want to feel anything for me."
She looked down at him, her expression impossible to decipher. "And what would be the point in that?"
Suddenly, Dempsey couldn't stand it any more; something snapped and he leapt up, lurching forwards to grab her upper arms.
"I told you to quit this. You don't see what you're doin'? I'm dyin' here. I don't know where I stand with you no more!"
He was right up in her face, made hostile by his wounds but he couldn't stop himself. Dempsey was in torment.
"I won't let you use me." The words crackled from her mouth like ice breaking across a pond and her blanched complexion was highlighted by the suffusion of redness about her eyes as her emotions overpowered her.
And there it was.
"USE YOU!" He let his hands fall from her arms. "Use you?" he repeated as though hearing it again might clarify the meaning. "Jesus Christ, Harry! What do you think I am?"
"That's just it, Dempsey, I don't think I know," she told him hoarsely.
"What does that mean? Talk to me. Let me in. 'cause from where I'm standin', it's you who's been doin' the using, sweetheart."
"I know what'll happen... what would've happened," she corrected herself, "if we'd gone on the way we were, before all this..." She cast a hand out with an air of misery. "I'd have let myself be sweet-talked into bed... and I wouldn't have been enough. You'd have got bored just like you always do." Harry swallowed down her distress with a gulp.
His mouth had gone dry. Everything was shattering around him in slow motion as the shards of explanation embedded themselves and he shook his head in an attempt to dismiss the realisation growing within him. "You don't trust me? You don't think I'm capable of a monogamous, grown-up relationship, is that it? Is that what this has all been about?"
He watched her eyes grow wet until the first tear split out and rolled down her cheek.
"I've seen very little evidence to date," she said stiffly, dignity holding her immobile.
"So what the hell is goin' on here, huh? If I'm such a piece of shit, why put yourself through the mental torture of fucking me?" He was still angry but the single tear had found a chink and he heard himself sigh with exasperation.
Harry closed her eyes as she steadied her nerve. "Because I…" she blinked away another tear, "because I'm…"
"… secretly in love with me," Dempsey finished for her with a bitter laugh. "Gee, all this time an' I never knew."
His mocking tone died on the air as he saw her face begin to crumble just before she turned on her heel to wrench the door of the room open and bolt out into the corridor.
Without a second thought, Dempsey caught the door before it swung shut and followed her out, making another grab for her.
"Hey! Hey, Harry! Come on, where you goin'? Talk to me."
She shook him off violently. "Just forget it," she cried, fury and tears marring her beautiful features like a mask. "Forget everything. I fell right into your trap so now you can laugh yourself silly at my expense can't you."
"D'you mean it? You're serious?" he beamed, completely ignoring what she'd just said. "You're in love with me?" It came out a gurgled, delighted laugh.
Harry dashed a tear from her eye and stood defiant. "Bloody hilarious, isn't it? How could I be so stupid? But don't worry, I'm sure I'll get over it, after all, it's a fine line between love and hate, so they say."
Reaching out, Dempsey gently took her by the wrists before sliding his arms around her, feeling his chest tighten and expand with the sheer exhilaration of the moment they were in.
"We've already done the hate part, Princess, way back. Once you've crossed over that line, there ain't no goin' back again."
He leaned in to kiss tenderly at that area of her neck just below her ear and both heard and felt a tiny intake of breath. "Is that what this has all been about, keeping me -w your feelings for me at arms' length? Because you thought that me hurting you was a foregone conclusion? Kill or be killed, was that it?"
Harry didn't try to break away from his embrace but neither did she show any sign of wanting to be there.
"Your track record speaks for itself. Your girlfriends never tend to feature for very long on your social calendar, do they? I can't think of one who you've dated longer than a few weeks, and they're just the ones who've even warranted a mention. As soon as you get them into bed, the novelty wears off and you're on to the next one."
"An' how would you know that?" He found himself deliberately lowering the pitch of his voice, keeping it light for fear of this tentative conversation degenerating into a verbal war. "I've discussed my sex life with you? Anything I might of told you has been non-specific, no details. I don't kiss an' tell. You choose to flesh it out with assumptions, that's up to you. Hey, not sayin' I'm a saint but maybe I ain't the womanising lowlife you make me out to be either. Don't let it stymie whatever chance we got of makin' this work."
Yeah, so he was definitely no saint but it was true he'd never talked about his 'romances' in any depth with Harry. On occasion, she'd bumped into a few of his female 'acquaintances' and he might have been guilty of pouring it on thick to check out her reaction, just out of curiosity. Anything else she knew she had probably gleaned from conversation amongst the boys at SI-10 where in truth, Dempsey wasn't particularly averse to having a reputation for being a ladies' man. And of course there was a possibility she was reading between the lines just a little too. It wasn't like she had hard facts and figures to be using as ammunition.
She bit at her lower lip and he could see her mind was raking over the information. "This?" she asked.
"Us," he clarified. "Clearly 'this'," he indicated the room behind them, "works great. But maybe we could try the dating thing too, you know, just for convention's sake. The hotel reception think I'm some kind of gigolo," he smiled into her ear in a confidential tone.
But Harry didn't seem convinced of anything.
"Are you making fun of me?" she asked warily.
"A little, maybe. 'cause you deserve it for treating me like a piece of meat." He stroked her cheek, looking lovingly into her eyes and he felt her relax just a fraction.
"That wasn't my intention… I just… I knew it was the only way I could… be with you. I didn't want to feel vulnerable, I just couldn't bear that."
He could tell she had chosen that word carefully and she was waiting now for his response.
"I'm sorry I made you feel that way. I didn't see it. The way you've been these past few weeks, 'vulnerability' was the furthest thing from my mind."
She blushed and that endeared her to him all the more, the things they'd done together and yet she still got all red faced over a throwaway comment.
"And I'm guilty of keepin' everything I got goin' on for you under wraps too. Shoulda said somethin' sooner. You've always meant a whole lot more to me than a notch on the bedpost."
Now this was the hard part for him. It had been so easy to let Harry do the running, unexpected and exciting, so much so that at the start, he'd pretended it would all fall into place naturally, that the love expressed between the sheets would translate into words sooner or later. That they both struggled with their feelings for each other was apparent and he got the impression that Harry struggled, period. Not a natural-born sharer.
Harry suddenly drew herself up in his arms and turned herself in a slight ducking motion towards the wall.
"You might want to go back into the room," she murmured.
It was only then that Dempsey was drawn to recalling his state of undress as carpet-cushioned footfall reached his ears.
"Shit," he swore softly but chose to brazen it out with a cavalier swivelling of his head to look the two approaching hotel guests in the eye.
"Good evening! Unseasonably warm for the time of year." He gave the couple a cheery little salute that made Harry cringe.
They both mumbled a 'good evening' in return, the woman regarding then with a frown whilst the male companion seemed to view the situation with rather more amusement.
They passed on, single file and eyes averted.
It had at least lightened the situation and they were able to unite in a humorously shame-faced grin.
Pressing his forehead against Harry's, Dempsey said, "Come on, let's go back inside. I'm puttin' on a free show out here."
"Does nobody want you for your mind!?" she asked sardonically.
Going back to their door, Dempsey was relieved to find it hadn't closed behind them. It had crossed his mind that if it had swung to and clicked shut, they would have been locked out and he would've been left standing in the corridor waiting for Harry to return with some smirking housekeeper whilst he tried to cover his further embarrassment with wisecracks. A bedroom farce, he could do without.
"Look, what you said before… you get that I'm… that the feeling is mutual, right?"
"It is?" she asked lightly.
"Most definitely. And if you're available, I'd like to tell you exactly how mutual that feeling is over dinner."
"Now?" The question was more out of earnest trepidation than a desire to confirm his plans but it came out sounding quite wrong anyway, as though she already had plans of her own which he was trying to disrupt.
"What, you don't wanna eat or you don't wanna hear about my interpretation of 'mutual'?"
Why did she have to make it so hard for him?
She was perched on the edge of the unmade bed, stiff and perfectly poised, looking up at him with wary uncertainty.
"I don't know, is your interpretation likely to put me off my food?"
What did she want – blood?
"Christ's sake, I'm tryin' to tell you that I love you!… that I want us to be together." He ran a hand through his hair with a pained expression. "I love you too," he told her softly, resigned to whatever fate might throw at them now.