Page 152 of Kiss the Villain

You haven’t texted me back in two hours, Kayden. You better fucking do that before I stab you.

Pick up the phone.

Seriously, where are you?

Not on campus or at the archery range or in the chess club or shopping for coffee beans.

Not in the house either.

I swear to fuck, if you don’t answer, I’m going to slice your goddamn face open.

Okay, not the face.

Where the fuck are you?!!!

KAYDE!!

Okay, then. I’ll go find better company

The better company is apparently some girl from school. Not Morgan, but another one. Blonde and pretty—another version of Cherry, who I thought we got rid of.

I’m watching him from the corner of the coffee shop as he laughs along with something she says and allows her to put her arm around his shoulders.

Yes, they’re with a group of friends, but she still has her arm around him.

And he’snotremoving it.

I slide a hand in my pocket to stop myself from barging in there and somehow breaking that arm.

As the others talk, he flips his phone over, his thick brows drawing into a line.

Probably staring at all the texts I left unanswered. It’s not that I did it on purpose in the beginning. I was in a lengthy offshore meeting at an office in London and had my phone on silent, so I didn’t get the chance to see them.

However, around halfway through, when he was starting to get anxiously obsessive, I left them on unread on purpose.

He needs to stop with the threats when things don’t go his way.

I thought the emotional control training was going well lately. He gets rewarded when he behaves, and he gets put back in his place when he’s being a brat.

However, ever since he told me about his French teacher three days ago, he’s been acting…odd.

He’s more obsessive, somewhat anxious about my absence. He tries to act unaffected when I’m around him, but then he keeps following me everywhere, and the moment I touch him, he releases this tiny sigh of relief.

As if he got a drug hit or something similarly obnoxious.

He’s also sniffing me more than usual lately, even burying his face in my neck and falling asleep like that.

He's also more vocal during sex, asking me to bite him, to mark him, to leave hickeys all over him. And he loves when I praise him—he demands it now. He'll say things like, “Was I good? Tell me I was good.” Or, “Tell me how you love being inside me.” Or, “Say it, please, say I’m so beautiful you can’t stop fucking me.”

I love that.

I love that he's owning up to the submissive streak in him, that he’s accepting his sexuality and leaning into his kinks. But while I like that he’s attached to me, I don’t appreciate the unhealthy behavior. Someone like Gareth will spiral if he keeps going down this path.

It’s a matter of when, not if.

I should probably wait until we’re at home to teach him a goddamn lesson, but then again, I won’t leave him with Blondie.

Me

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