Page 140 of Psycho Devils: Aran's Story 2

All of that work.

For her to run away like I hadn’t already claimed her as mine.

Would it be different if I could talk? Would she fall against me and melt at my pretty words?

I’d thought my lack of voice didn’t matter to her.

Arabella was the first person besides my mates who could read my lips.

She was the first person who seemed to actually see me and not just want me for my voice.

For the last months, she’d watched me constantly.

In class, at meals, in our room, pink had stained her cheeks as she stared at me when she thought I wasn’t looking. Her attention had been a balm to my frazzled soul.

Arabella provided the perfect distraction from the pain slowly eating me alive.

There was only one thing that kept me from remembering how trapped I was in my own skin.

One thing I used to cope—obsession.

Infatuation was too pleasant a word to describe it.

I was overwhelmed by a frenzied need to own, taste, and know everything about another person. To climb under their skin. To possess them so fully they didn’t know where I ended and they began.

It had started years ago with Corvus and Scorpius, and to this day, I still watched them compulsively.

I thought about them constantly.

Every second of my life was filled with planning. I planned how I would touch them. Defile them. Own them. Make them irrevocably mine.

But I couldn’t touch my mates without pain, not yet.

For years, my poison of choice had been outside my grasp. Thinking about them but not being able to act on my urges was damnation incarnate.

So I’d unraveled.

At the seams.

Until about two months ago when I’d found someone new to obsess over. Someone I could actually taste. I could ruin.

For the first time in forever, I’d had a purpose and a distraction that actually worked.

It had all been going to plan.

I’d played the part of the nice guy.

Smiled when Aran needed it and stuck up for him so he would see me.

I’d offered him comfort when he needed it most. Manipulated him into caring about me back.

In a dangerous, violent place, I’d given him what he needed. Someone nice.

Still, sometimes I’d forgotten to play the part.

Like when Aran was gasping for air beneath us as we’d held him underwater and I couldn’t stop pushing his head under. His helplessness was intoxicating. The noises he’d made were so exquisite. The way he’d fought and snarled against the overwhelming strength of my mates.

Would he fuck the same way?

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