Page 87 of Forbidden Lessons

His thumb invades my mouth, bringing with it a bitter-sweet hint of grass. Skin slightly rough, mostly warm.

He leans his hips forward, crushing them against mine. “Try it. You might just like it.” Which is confusing as fuck, becausenow I can feel his cock. A rigid length digging into my pubic bone.

Is that what he’s talking about?

“I’ve strangled someone before,” he says, so matter of fact, my knees want to give in. “It’s hard work, Heavenly. I kept at it as long as I could, but it didn’t get the job done.”

My eyes flutter as I squeeze his throat.

He lifts his chin, eyes flashing down at me, daring me.

So I squeeze harder, and harder.Harder.

I could teach courses in compartmentalizing. Run masterclasses. I’ve been doing it all my life.

I’m only now, right now, realizing how I’ve been repressing. A hundred million thoughts bubble to the surface of my mind as I try to strangle the life out of Kai, because fuck him, I was ready to give him everything, and he just fucking ghosted me.

“Don’t hold back,” he says, and then his other hand is on my stomach, curling around my side, sliding down my ass. “Kill me. If you can.”

I grimace, my arms shaking as I strain to tighten my grip, but his face isn’t even turning red.

“Yeah, just like that,” he murmurs. “Nice and tight.”

He ducks, his hand darting between my legs from behind. If his thumb hadn’t been pressing down on my tongue, my squeal would have been much louder.

I try to knock him away, but then he hasmeby the throat, and I can’t even take a breath. My hands claw uselessly for his face, punch his waist. But he has me pinned with one fucking hand.

And all the while, he’s staring down his nose at me like I’m every bit the poor, needy slut he thinks I am.

“Kai!” My voice is hardly loud enough to carry past the tree line, but I still try to reason with him.

Or maybe I’m just antagonizing him so he’ll end it faster.

God knows, I haven’t always been Haven Shake-It-Off Lee. In my darkest days, those where I slunk home at midnight only to hear my uncle’s bed creak as he got up to greet me, those nights I prayed for death.

I don’t know what the hell I want now.

For it to end?

For it to continue?

For it never to stop?

Now that I can breathe, my body is coming alive again. Pin pricks in my fingers and toes to remind me I’m still here, that I can still fight. A slow, hard ache in my core. Taunting me.

Because I still want him, just like I’ve always wanted him.

Kai was my one and only. My everything.

And despite the hatred seething in his eyes, the bittersweet pain radiating through my chest, I never stopped wanting him.

It explains why, when he uses his stranglehold to lift me up against the tree, that I barely struggle.

That, when he growls, “Spread ‘em,” and jerks my thighs apart, that I let him.

And I don’t hesitate to wrap them around his waist, because he might just throttle me, or he might just fuck me.

I don’t know what I deserve.

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