Page 114 of Raven

I’m hyperventilating. I try to control my breathing, but my heart is pumping too fast. I’m fucking shaking.

“So, you wanted to fuck me, Maddy,” I say, trying to compose myself, though I can tell that my voice sounds like a hiss. “Was that it? You didn’t even need to try hard. You just said yes. And you probably gloated knowing that you were playing me.”

Her gaze hardens, and her voice is chilling as the words fall off her beautiful lips, “You don’t have anything else to say?” The beautiful lips that she never let me kiss, that probably told lies and easily played along with whatever I said.

“That you want me?” I push into her. Because I have to. Because if I don’t push, I don’t get what I want. “Tell me, Maddy. You know that you wanted this, me. You still do. And what I found out inside proves it. We don’t need agreements to carry on. You simply have to say that you wanted it all along and stop pretending like you are a victim.”

“I never said I was a victim.”

“But you reminded me it was a deal.”

“The deal is over, Raven,” she says calmly.

“Oh, yeah? Are you sure? Because you sure enjoyed it.”

She doesn’t answer, just stares at me so fucking calmly that it makes me even angrier.

“Tell me that you want this,” I press on. “Tell me you enjoyed fucking me. We didn’t need to make a deal, sweet Maddy. You could’ve just told me that you wanted to fuck me.”

She doesn’t respond, and it fucking bothers me that she doesn’t admit it.

“Say you did,” I whisper angrily in her face. “We don’t have to pretend that it was just a deal. Admit it.”

Her lips move and round up one word, “No.”

It’s quiet but feels sharp, like a stab.

I lean in, wanting to prove her wrong, wanting to take what should’ve been mine from the start, a kiss, and I almost kiss her, but she turns her head just slightly.

Stubborn girl.

So, I bring my lips to her ear, so close they touch her skin. “We are good together, Maddy. See?” I run my hands slowly along her body. I want to see her response, because her body always responded to mine. Because she fucking wanted it all along, while I tormented myself with guilt that I was using her.

But her body is rigid, not shifting even an inch.

“No,” she repeats in a whisper that doesn’t sound so sure.

“Your body says otherwise. We can make another deal?—”

“No,” she repeats louder and turns to look me in the eyes. Her gaze is determined. And this time, there’s no hesitation in it. “I don’t want deals with you, Raven. We had one, and we are done.”

Now I’m angry. I fucked up, didn’t I? She doesn’t want this trash. Of course, she doesn’t. And she played me all this time.

I feel dread creeping in. She’s become the main character in my story, and I am petrified that I just ended up being an extra in hers.

“You knew from the start that you had an upper hand, Maddy. And you played your little game with me. Because you finally didn’t have to pretend to be this sweet Maddy everyone thought you were. You could be Milena. You could get what you wanted. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Maybe I wanted to know what it would be like to fuck someone I was forced to be with,” she says in a harsh low voice. “See, Raven, I was supposed to be a trophy wife, a pretty girl fucked by a guy who got me as a deal. You were perfect. You didn’t ask me what and why and where. You didn’t give me options. You just took, and the most basic of all—sex. You didn’t care what I wanted.”

It’s partially true, and I knew it all along. Then why do her words slice through my heart like a stiletto?

There’s a harshness in her eyes that I’ve never seen before. It’s the first time I feel that she is not leaning into me but shrinking away. She is so close to me, yet I’ve never felt farther apart.

Her pretty lips curl down in a smirk. “So, yes,” she says, “maybe I wanted to taste what it’s like to be used by a man who takes everything as a bargaining coin. Including women.”

She puts her palm on my chest, like so many times she’s done before, but my heart beats like a drum not because her touch is gentle, but because she is pushing me away.

“Let me go, Raven,” she says almost in a whisper that sounds like my death sentence.

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