17 CHAPTER 17

"I don't know what I'm feeling towards you," he admitted in a low voice."I don't know if it's what they call love but it's there. It's not just lust. I have feelings for you and I'd like to explore them. I'd like to know how far and how deep they go. I'm leaving the decision to you, though." He sounded tough in his mind but inside was a combination of hurricane, twister, earthquake, and tsunami. He was nervous. What if she runs the other direction?

There was only one answer to that. He took a deep, deep breath and let it go slowly. If she decided that she didn't want to do anything with him, he'll just have to accept it, and back down. It hurt but it'll be the right thing to do. He looked at the hand that covered his. It was small and chubby but he knew how strong they could be. The marks on the knuckles were proof of how strong the owner of the hand was.

He turned his hand around and held her small hand in his. It was dwarfed by his hand but it didn't seem to matter to her. Maybe it will be the last time for him to hold it so freely.

"This is difficult, Damien," she mumbled and looked at him with those dark orbs of hers. "What are the options for this decision you want me to make?"

It took him off-guard but he was quick enough to catch himself. "Leave or stay. Simple as that," he replied. "I wouldn't give you an ultimatum, just a set of simple options: leave and never know or stay and find out just how strongly I feel for you."

It sounded so simple but he knew that she would be thinking about that. Maybe he knew her enough to know that she wouldn't make the decision so lightly, but one look at her face made him realize that he had confused her even more. "Let me explain better." He turned her hand and planted a kiss on her palm. "You have three options to be exact: First is to leave and never find out if we would be good together. Second is to limit us to just friends with benefits, and third is to stay and take the risk to find out how good we would be together."

Lie blinked her huge, brown eyes at him. She looked owlish when she did that but surprised him when she giggled. "Okay… that's not what I expected but here are the options in my mind. 1) We can do normal things couples usually do. Go on dates, play together, and stuff, but we remove sex from the equation for now. And 2) we can continue fucking like rabbits and most of the time, I might just be thinking that we're still just sex friends."

He raised a brow at her. "You want to remove sex from the equation?"

She gave him a nonchalant shrug. "We started our relationship in an unorthodox way. I won't be entirely sure if your feelings were just a result of the heat of our sex or if it's for real if we still continue to add sex in the equation."

"That seems stupid…" he rolled his eyes heavenwards as his mind raced. He knew he could say anything to the professor with little to no fear of her being offended by it.

She confirmed his suspicions when he laughed good-naturedly before taking the glass from the tray and poured herself some orange juice. "Explain." She sipped her juice and rolled her eyes to the ceiling as she gave a slight moan of appreciation.

He stood up and started to pace the room, his strides huge, and hungry for the ground. "It's like bribing a child with candy to do his homework. At first, you give him the candy before he does the homework. Then, you change the tactic and decide to give the candy AFTER he finishes his homework instead." He scratched his head and took a deep breath. "And THEN you tell him that you won't give him candy anymore. Do you think he'll still do the homework?"

She stared at him for a while, making him wonder what was going through in her mind. Her facial expressions showed that she disagreed with him and he was sure she will voice it out sooner or later but there was something else there too.

"I understand the point of the analogy," she replied and licked her lips. ��So is it all about the candy?" she asked, swirling the juice in the glass and running her tongue over her teeth while her eyes stayed on the juice.

He stopped at that. "You know that's not it."

"That's what I understand about the whole analogy though. The deed can only be done if there is candy involved. What if I forgot to buy the candy, but promised to give it to the child in the end?"

He narrowed his eyes at her, seeing that slight curve on her lips. She was trying to pull his leg from under him and he was not going to let her do it. "The candy is the start of the whole thing in the first place. It was the reason why the child was doing his homework. Why would you remove his motivation?"

She stopped swirling the juice in her glass and drank all of it before putting the glass on the table. "Fine then," she replied and gave him the fakest of all smiles she had ever given him and it kicked him straight to the gut. "If that's what you say. I wanna shower."

Pain was obvious in every action she made and it stabbed at his guilt even more. He walked to her and helped her stand up. "I'll carry—"

"I can walk," she cut him off with a snap. She paused and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be snappy. I can walk. You don't have to baby me." She explained with an apologetic smile.

He was learning to read her facial expressions. After all, she wore her feelings on her sleeves. He knew that she was really sorry for what she did and forgave her for it. "It's okay. I forgot that you're a strong, independent woman," he replied and let her take tiny and painful steps towards the bathroom.

He could hear her panting as she walked. It hurt him. It made him curse his loss of self-control.

Her giggles made him look down at her. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she replied as they entered the bathroom. "We're not even sure if we should enter a relationship and yet we're already having this kind of power struggle and I don't want to lose."

"You don't have to lose. You've got me."

She didn't reply to that. She untangled herself from him and limped to the mirror to look at her reflection.

He saw how she winced when she saw the marks on her neck. He watched as she inspected her body and thought about it. He was lucky that she was not running the other direction but should he stand down with what she wanted to do? He wanted her. He wanted to know her more. But would sex deprivation work for either of them?

His eyes followed her actions and his body heated up as the fabrics of the clothes that covered her slowly slid down to the floor until she has clad in nothing. With the floor-to-ceiling mirror in front of her, he could see everything. He could see her backside that faced him, and the front side that was reflected in the mirror.

His hands itched to hold her body and to take her right then and there but the bruises and bite marks on her body stopped the lion inside him from feeding.

His soul jumped when her eyes met his in the mirror.

"Can you talk to me properly while I'm naked as the day I was born, Damien?"

He saw it. The challenge in her eyes was unmistakable. She wanted him to falter but he was not giving it to her. Never.

He simply tilted his head to the side and raised his brow. "Is this how you want to settle the case, professor?" he asked, trying to calm the pumping of blood to his groin.

She held the eye contact for a minute before she looked away and shook her head. "No. that'll be extremely childish," she replied and limped to the shower. "Before we dive into the world of dating, I want to tell you parts of my past. It'll be your decision whether to use them against me in the future or to use them as a reference."

He nodded and leaned on the wall, watching her turn the shower on and let the water flow down her body sexily. "Go ahead."

It took her a while to start. She had been letting the water spray over her face for a couple of minutes before she started to speak. "I had someone I loved so much and I let them ruin me."

Damien remained quiet and watched her every move while he listened to her words. The voice and tone she used was that of a survivor: someone who had gone through hell and came out scarred but stronger than before.

"They were my best friend and I had loved them for years before I had the guts to tell them my real feelings. When I did…" she paused and clenched her jaw so hard Damien could almost hear how her teeth rubbed and clashed. She took a deep breath and poured a hefty amount of conditioner on her palm before applying it to the tips of her luxurious hair. "When I did tell that person about my feelings for them, it was all an accident. They were drunk. They were being childish. And I just accidentally blurted it all out. Sometimes I regret it. But most of the time, I don't. They gave me an opportunity to be in a relationship with them and I grabbed it with both hands."

Damien didn't know what to feel about that. Or what to say. So he kept his silence and watched as she walked down the memory lane.