Page 70 of Cruel Cravings

I direct my attention at the plate in front of me.

He really has put together a full-course meal. There’s the spaghetti in the center of the plate and some crisp garlic bread on one side. Steamed veggies on the other. He’s poured us fruit punch to drink.

All ingredients I’d spotted in the pantry and the freezer.

I hold back the smile threatening to spread on my lips. “Do all stalkers in minotaur masks know how to cook?”

My smart-alecky question goes unanswered. Instead, he gestures to the plate he’s put together for me, signaling he wants me to eat.

I sigh and pick up the fork. “Okay, but you have to too—which means that mask has to come off, right?”

He blinks, his broad shoulders tense and still.

I understand immediately, a pang of guilt from last night hitting me.

Up until now, as I woke in bed to the morning light streaming through the window and the hot shower awaiting me, I hadn’t letmyself think about it. I’d blocked out everything that happened between us last night.

It was easier to pretend it never happened.

How else was I supposed to function around Brontë when I’d said the cruel things I did? How was I supposed to act after he retaliated in the most twisted, perverse ways and made me come?

Made me enjoy every second of it.

But some of the things I said weigh on me. The conflicting emotions war some more, leaving me caught between the genuine loathing I’ve felt for him and the other feelings he’s begun to stir…

“I don’t think you’re hideous,” I mumble. “I said you were… but you’re not. You just… you look different… and that’s okay. It makes me more curious than anything. It makes me want to know you. I mean, you know, know where the scars come from.”

It feels like I’m going from bad to worse the more I try to explain. Pausing a second time, I inhale another breath and distract myself by spooling spaghetti onto my fork.

“You’re not pathetic. You don’t… you don’t make me sick. I said what I said because I was desperate. I was angry and I wanted to hurt you. Handcuffed to a bed didn’t leave me many options. Mean words had to do. Please… take off your mask.”

A long moment passes between us where I’m left to spool more and more spaghetti noodles onto my fork and he peers at me from across the table. I’m beginning to wonder if this is a hopeless endeavor and things are too fractured between us when he moves. His hands reach up to lift the minotaur mask.

It comes off, revealing his naked, mangled face.

My posture relaxes, my insides fluttering. I smile without realizing it. “That’s better. Thanks.”

I taste my first mouthful of spaghetti and hum in surprise. The garlicky tomato flavor hits my tastebuds more pleasantlythan anything I’ve eaten in days. It’s way tastier than the soup and oatmeal I’d relied on.

“This is pretty good,” I say, going for a second forkful, then a third. “Who would expect you could cook?”

I laugh at my own question, feeling lighter than I have in a while.

A strange pivot after the turmoil I’d felt yesterday. I’d been worried and desperate as Sheriff McGrath and Deputy Dudley confronted me. Scared out of my mind as I fled into the woods, trying to escape Brontë. More furious than I’d ever been in my life when I woke to the handcuffs snapped shut on the bed posts.

Swept up in a powerful orgasm that knocked me out for hours.

So many emotions that any person would have whiplash.

But here I am the day after, more focused on spaghetti and my strange meal companion.

“You could’ve let me starve, you know,” I say in between more bites. “After what I did to you, I’d deserve it. I left you without food for more than a day. I didn’t even give you water.”

He’s taken to shoveling the spaghetti into his mouth. He eats just like I’d imagined he would—barbarically without regard to manners and polite society.

It makes me laugh as I pause and watch him tear the garlic bread in half and shove it into his mouth.

He even ditches the fork and scoops up a handful of spaghetti that he dangles over his face and swallows whole.

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