Page 71 of Bake the Town Red

My words don’t faze her. There’s no hurt in her eyes, only fight. Only what I wanted her to give me.

I unbutton her jeans, push her zipper down. Her nails drag on the sides of my head, her eyes darkening. When I tug on her bottom lip between my teeth, she makes a sound that drives me wild.

She sees my sickness, my need to hurt her. She embraces it.

She shares it with me.

I tear myself from her. I have to. Her clothes have to go.

Her body is mine.

She’s mine, this beautiful, unhinged woman.

Mine.

My fingers hook on the hems of her sweatshirt and shirt. I don’t just lift them off her body. I touch her while I push the offensive clothes up. My knuckles run along her smooth stomach, the area just south of her bra.

Dahlia lets out a low hum when I pause there. When I shove my thumbs under the wires of her bra. Beneath the cups. Rubbing the undersides of her breasts.

“You’ve been dying to fuck me.” She’s not asking. Not being sweet. My little savage is being the person I pushed her to be tonight. Herself, demanding more of my honesty. “Ever since I was seventeen.”

My eyes cut to hers, cock thickening at the sight of her pink cheeks. Her pillowy lips and the smudged lipstick.

I can’t stop teasing her. Can’t get enough of her fight. “You’re sure about that?”

Her sweatshirt and shirt go up her body in one violent tug. They slide up her arms, then over her head.

“Yes,” she pants, reaching for my hoodie. I bat her hand away. “That day in the shower. You stopped resisting me.”

Thatshower.

“No idea what you’re talking about.” Next, come the cups of her bra. I shove them down, bending to bite one of her nipples like I never could before. Groan at the moans I’ve only dared dream of. “I didn’t touch you that way. Didn’t kiss you that way.”

“You didn’t have to,” Dahlia manages to say through her tormented cry. Her hands are on my shoulders. My jaw. “I saw you.”

She pulls me up, and I go, wrapping my hands around her throat. With my thumbs, I tip her head up until we’re staring at each other. Until she’s ensnared in my gaze.

“What is it you think you saw?”

The heat from her body is intoxicating. Being the sole focus of her attention is a heady feeling. I wonder if the people she kills feel what I do. That high, right before she ends their lives.

I’m so fucking jealous that I have to push it out of my head.

“You were hard, Tyler.”

To emphasize her words, she does what I never let her do back then. Cups my cock through my jeans. Rubs me. Squeezes me. Makes me curse.

“So what if I was hard?” I shove her head to the side. Bury my face in her neck and wrap an arm around her back, yanking her to me. “I didn’t take you. It didn’t mean a thing.” I meant everything. “But you’ll feel it when I take you tonight. And you’re going to wish I hadn’t.”

I’m not sold on that last part. By the way Dahlia’s writhing for me, I’m starting to think she’ll love every second of it.

“You were this close to breaking. To being mine.” Dahlia is a pro at ignoring me. “That counts. I need you to say it. That you wanted me. That I haven’t been imagining things all these years.”

It gets me harder, her insistence. I let her undo the button of my jeans, then my fly. I don’t care that she’s not fighting me. I’ll make it hurt. Soon enough, she’ll be a sobbing mess for me.

“You haven’t,” I grit out.

Her satisfaction is brief. I can feel more accusations coming when she presses her back into the wall instead of leaning into me. Quiet instead of moaning when I pinch her nipple and suck on her neck.

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