Chapter 4 Seeking Dominance

ROXANNE'S P.O.V

I slowly turned to Florian, my lips parting, the salty taste of my own tears filling my eyes. He was driving slowly, his sleeves rolled up, his brows drawn as he focused on the highway in front of us.

I closed my eyes tight, swallowing hard. "Why are you not with them?"

"Where were they?"

His voice was just as I remembered it. Deep, resonant, smooth.

"The strip club. Dirty dreams." I broke into a laugh, but my tears only streamed down my face harder. "I should have known."

"It isn't your fault you didn't," he said simply.

I watched him, my eyes thin. Florian was one of my brother's closest and oldest friends. Even though his family was much richer than ours, I could remember how he was always at our place every day, especially at the time I was in high school.

Looking back now, I wasn't sure why we never got along. Maybe because I was chubby then, but he loved to poke fun at me. I hated it back then, and I couldn't lie, he had been one of the reasons I decided to improve, but in a different way.

I turned to look at him again. "Did you know they would be here?"

He raised a brow and turned to me briefly. "No. I wasn't in the country."

"They would still have told you."

"Well, they didn't. What do you want to hear? That I knew and I wouldn't tell you?"

"Yes," I said, my eyes filling again. "Maybe you thought I deserved it."

"Why would you deserve to be cheated on, and at that with prostitutes?"

"I don't know," I said, my voice shaky now as my chest started to tighten with a different emotion.

Anger. Hate. Why would he cheat? I gave him everything. I did everything.

I blinked, my chest heaving. "Maybe because I was stupid enough to let all the lies slide and..."

"Oh please, Rox. Anything but this. It isn't your fault you fell for the wrong man and..."

"Then who is the right man? He was the only one who accepted me for who I was before all of this. Who would love me the same?"

"Stop fucking lying to yourself, Roxanne. He only cared for you after you started to glow up. He never looked at you with your braids and your stupid pigtails. He never kissed you with your braces on. You have been lying to yourself, thinking the bastard didn't realize you were glowing up and immediately went for you."

I hated that he was right. I hated that I and Damien had, indeed, gone to the same high school, and I had been invisible through all those years. I had been naive to think he loved me for me, but maybe...

I turned to Florian, my hand slowly coming to my chest. The hate was spreading through me like black ink on water, and I hated how I could almost feel high on the emotions.

"I fucking hate you," I spat, knowing it wasn't as directed to Florian as it was to Damien and my bastard brother.

"You always have," he said simply. "And you have always been blind too."

I turned away, my lips parting. "Maybe I just didn't want to see."

I could feel him suck in a sharp breath, and I closed my eyes. I hated that I knew exactly what he was talking about. The very thing that had made me fall for Damien was really just Florian.

Because now that I was realizing that Damien only gave me the time of day because I glowed up, I was also realizing that Florian had taken my first kiss in that closet on my eighteenth birthday despite poking fun at my looks.

I swallowed, remembering every single detail from that day. Right before the dinner, with Taylor, my brother, Florian, and a few of my friends, we had been in our sitting room, spinning bottles and playing truth or dare.

I remembered it like the back of my hand. How Florian had been dared to kiss me. How he had laughed and paid the one thousand dollar fine just so he wouldn't kiss me.

I remembered how I had gone to my room to cry and how he had followed me up. His knocks on the door prompted me to hide in my closet, but he had found me there, his eyes dark and beautiful, watching me.

"Why would I ever refuse to kiss you, Rox?" He had said, his fingers gently caressing my face, his thumb resting in my bottom lip. "Why would I ever refuse to reach for a dream?"

Those words still echoed in my head sometimes, even though I never gave meaning to it. Even though I never explored that dream. That one kiss, and I avoided him till I finally left for college where I met Damien again.

Maybe that was my biggest mistake. It wasn't trusting Damien. It was refusing to explore Florian, despite seeing it in his eyes that day.

I turned to him slowly, my eyes wide, my chest heaving. What if... just for tonight...

I blinked, shaking my head. That would make me a horrible person. Taking advantage of Florian and using him for a night... that made me too similar to Damien.

"If you are wondering if I would do it again, then yes. Yes, I would."

I blinked. I hated how he knew exactly what I was thinking. How he knew exactly what I was hoping for and how he knew I would take his offer in a heartbeat. I needed something to mend this shattered piece of me and get me through tonight so I don't fall apart before the sun rises.

"Then do it," I said in a whisper, hoping he would hear me and hoping at the same time that he wouldn't.

He did hear me, and he slowly turned to me, his eyes dark and intense, like it had been that night. Like it had been right before he kissed me.

Throwing all caution and safety to the wind, I moved, pushing myself onto him, my hands cupping both sides of his face, my lips seeking his in fervent, feverish need.

"Roxanne," he sighed on my lips before swerving the car to the side of the road. The screeching filled my ears, but he moved his hand, pulling my back to him so my body pressed against his, his fingers adjusting my thighs on either side of him, his fingers cupping my face, his lips seeking dominance against mine, and finding it.