I'M NOT YOUR WOMAN. (✓)

16. ego.

|◁ II ▷|

stormzy — lessons.

EBÉN AWOKE from his sleep to a grand rising in his boxers and a burnt-red bruise seared on his ego. The abject feeling of rejection felt unfamiliar that a woman objected his advances; not because she was seeing someone, or even that she was nursing her heart to heal following a heartbreak.

But because she had painted him with the same brush the press used to decimate his character.

There was a part of him — an minuscule one, that wanted to disprove her fallacy and show her that she needed to look harder and judge him fairly. But he had gotten tired of always having to prove himself to people as a decent human being. He had also grown tired of her resistance to him even though her body verbalised the opposite. She had firmly shut her walls and crystallised her message that whatever he thought they had; would never bloom and take root.

He also wanted to prove that he wasn't this stony-faced soul or habitual user of woman but he felt things, even if he felt them in silence.

But, last night's drunken invite into his bed that he had extended to Ezra had been a mistake, a bad one, powered by a wounded ego and a hip flask of Patron.

He couldn't stomach the thought of journeying through Ezra's body sober but he needed a body to vent his frustration at and she had gladly obliged.

If people saw him as a prick, he'd continue to be one.

Ezra's wild russet brown hair was splayed on his bare torso, softly humming snores in her sleep. He had nursed the beating that his ego had took through foreplay and sex and she had now overstayed her welcome; brushing her body off him.

His body let out a deep and tired internal groan before he took an unenthused stroll down the stairs; where Beatriz found him lying in a slump on the sofa.

Her loud clanging of utensils disrupted his kip that he wanted to take away from Ezra as the broad hadn't let him sleep; insisting on back to backs.

"Buenas dias. Estas bien?" her accented tongue trilled loudly, her mood so painstakingly obvious. "Why... are you shouting?" Ebén yawned; his entire body overcome by a tired stretch.

"Necesitas la cabeza comprobado" joshed Beatriz, passing him a glass full of orange juice to wash out the alcohol still left in his system. "Gracias" he said softly, drinking the whole thing in one draught.

"¿Dónde este tu novia?" asked Beatriz, with an inquisitive smile plastered across her face.

"She's not... my girlfriend. She just... let's me fuck"

"¿Y ella? ¿Es eso algo que ella también quiere?" wondered Beatriz, how a high-flying heiress would reduce herself to a mere booty call.

"I've never actually taken the time to ask — "

"Debería" Beatriz said with unfolding lips, gripping her spatula tightly. Ezra's whiny voice blared from the top of the staircase which made them both swivel their heads to the source of her sound.

"Morning baby. Why don't you come back to bed?"

Her mousy brown hair was loose and rumpled with bite marks still visible on her pallid-white skin.

"Why don't you leave?" Ebén's morning hoarse gruff shot a dagger at her ego; that rubbed out like a joke but he meant it. He wanted her out; as the need for her had gone now that his needs had been fully serviced both from last night and an eleven minute window this morning.