Every Part of You: Resists Me by Megan Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

stopped herself, struggling to find the words adequate to describe how it had felt. She swallowed hard to keep her voice steady. She and Tree had shared a lot over the years, but … “I’ve never told anyone this before.”
    Teresa smiled. “Keep going.”
    Simone closed her eyes, remembering. “He smacked me across the face. And you’d think my first reaction would’ve been to punch him in the nuts, but I didn’t, Tree. I fucking exploded. I mean, he smacked me hard enough to rock my head back—I’d have gone to my knees if he wasn’t holding me up—and the pain was enough to make me see stars. Or maybe I was coming so hard I saw stars, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that nobody had ever hit me like that, and I knew I should’ve hated it, but I didn’t.”
    “Were you ashamed?”
    “No.” Simone gave a breathless laugh. “I knew I was supposed to be. Or I was supposed to be angry at him. Something. But I wasn’t. I loved it. And when I asked him what had made him do such a thing, all he could say was that he’d seen it in a porno movie and thought he’d try it.”
    “Oh my god.” Teresa laughed and shook her head as she manipulated herself into another set of poses. “What if you’d hated it?”
    “Right?” Simone punched the air, one-two-three, and burst into laughter. “What if I had punched him in the nuts or like, pressed charges for assault? It left bruises. Split my lip.”
    “But you didn’t.”
    “I did not.”
    Teresa shook her head. “You figured out that you liked it.”
    “I did. And I guess I’d probably known it for a while, I mean, I don’t remember it being a surprise. Other than how good it felt. And then I wanted to do it more and more, but we sort of stumbled around it, you know. Neither of us really had any idea how to go about it. And as it turns out, we didn’t last much longer after that, anyway. But he was the first guy who helped me figure out what really, truly gets me off.”
    “Think how sad it is for women who never figure it out.”
    Simone nodded. “Yeah. Totally.”
    “Wanna work on your core?”
    Simone groaned. “How about we drink margaritas and eat nacho chips instead?”
    “We could do that, too. Ed won’t be back with the kids until closer to nine.” Teresa grinned. “Sucker.”
    Simone sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. There weren’t many times when she envied her friend’s life. Kids, husband, pets, house. But for a moment, something panged inside her.
    “You okay?” Teresa unfolded herself and stood in a fluid motion that emphasized her lean shape, unchanged even after kids.
    Simone got up, too, much less gracefully. She’d prided herself on trying to stay fit, but there was no denying that everything about her creaked when she got up. She steadied herself for a moment with a hand on the back of Teresa’s armchair.
    “It’s hard to find someone,” Simone said.
    Tree frowned. “Is this about this guy again? This Elliott.”
    Sudden, unbidden, and surprising tears burned in Simone’s throat and her eyes. She blinked rapidly to keep them from falling. She cleared her throat, again struggling uncommonly to find the words to describe what she wanted to say.
    “Oh. Oh, honey.” Teresa reached to hug her, and Simone let her. “Hey. Don’t.”
    “It’s hard to find someone who gets it. Who gets what I like. And who likes it, too, without all the trappings and … and rigamarole. Without the bondage and submission stuff. And he gets it, Tree. He gets off on it, the way I do. And he’s smart and beautiful and he smells so fucking good. And he’s got this smile, Tree. He doesn’t smile a lot, but when he does … it’s amazing.”
    “He sounds wonderful.”
    “He is.”
    “But he doesn’t want to see you, honey.”
    Leave it to Tree to put it that way, all blunt and honest. It made Simone laugh, though. Because it was true.
    “And he’s a dumbass,” Teresa added.
    “He doesn’t want me,” Simone said quietly,