Page 28 of CurVy 13

“Yeah.”

I don’t like this, but I don’t push. Positive feelings for captors… “I don’t like the word freak,” I say. It’s true, but it also serves my cause. “I’ve never thought of you as a freak, Tyler. You’re a lunatic, sure. But not a freak.”

His eyes roam my face, and it’s catching—his passion, this spinning kind of adoration is everything.

“I'm going to fall in love with you,” he declares. “Is that okay? You don’t have to love me back. Just let me feel the way I want to at my own pace.”

“See.” I arch an eyebrow at him, and he frowns. “Lunatic. You can’t fall in love with me so quickly. You don't even know me, Tyler—"

“But I do!” he insists. “I know that your eyes are brown but orange and gold when the light hits them. I know that you're an alto, but when you come for me, you're a mezzo-soprano, and when you came for Donnie, you were a soprano, but I don't mind that he got a higher register, because your orgasm with me lasted longer.”

I swallow over a lump in my throat, my pulse a flutter in my neck. I place my hand over it, afraid he’ll see the way his insane words make me feel. Make me hope. “Those aren't important things,” I lie through my teeth.

“No? Your eyes are your soul, and your climax is your vulnerability. What is more important than those?”

Fuck. Sympathy for their beliefs? “You shouldn’t make sense to me, Tyler.” I try to smile.

“But I do.” He looks at my bookcase that displays bookish merchandise: Not Safe For Work art, masculine scented candles, a bookmark that says Spread Those Pages Like a Good Little Book Slut. He sighs with a sweet grin. “‘Cause you're a freak, too.”

“Yeah.” I can’t lie. “I am. And perverted.”

“Such a pretty pervert.” He lifts his thumb, dragging it along his lower lip, watching me closely. “Do you get wet when you read those stories? I get hard when I play the piano.”

Overcome by his proximity to me, by the heat and waves of volatile energy, by the fake syndrome that feels real, I answer him with a nod.

He bites that bottom lip with a hunger that is clearly meant for me, and I shuffle. “Can I watch?”

I blink at him. “What?”

“Can I watch you read one?”

“You want to watch me read?”

“Yeah.” He grips the kitchen bench on either side of my waist, swaying his hips back and forth provocatively.

He squeezes the marble top.

I arch back but peer down at his forearms, seeing his sleeves bunched above his elbows, cords and veins pulsing under his effort to stay calm.

Fuck.

I love veiny forearms.

God, help me.

“I want to watch your body, baby,” he admits in a deep timbre that throws his words directly to my pussy. “I want to see which parts make you shift in your beanbag, which make you lick your lips, gloss your eyes. I want to watch you get all tight and blush and—"

Gliding a tongue up the side of my neck, he groans as he collects my taste. “Then I want to lick you clean. Can I do that?” He leans back, catching me as I blush at the vision crafted by his words. “I don’t want to force you, not like yesterday. I can see that was wrong. I got confused. I thought you loved me, but you don’t know me. I thought she loved me, too. I was wrong. I’m wrong a lot.”

Something like affection moves through my chest while my protective instincts want to wrap him in cotton wool. I’m a moth to his damn underdog flame.

Keeping eye contact, I peel one of his hands from the counter and thread his fingers with mine. When I swipe my thumb up and down his skin, I can feel those little grooves. Scars. They must be.

Another detail to note.

He has scars on his hands.

I walk him to my bookcase, letting his fingers slip through mine as I settle into my beanbag. I’ll pretend that I’m alone, that this isn’t completely fucked up.

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