Page 128 of Hate Mates

“Come on, Ro,” I urge, mostly because it’ll piss him off even more. “Be nice.”

Roux shifts the knife around in his hand, reaffirming his grip on it, and points the thing directly at my face. He’s not close enough for it to be an active threat, but he could move at any time to change that.

“Get fucked, Freddie.” Roux serves me a look of what I’m perfectly aware is genuine disgust. “I hope you bite too hard and choke on your shitty blood.”

Freddie. He still calls me that. Even after everything. Even after. Well …after.

I tug at the handcuffs, the metal digging viciously into my wrist. He’s made them too tight on purpose. Roux, like all the other Novas, is, when it comes right down to it, shamelessly mean. They have a venomous cruelty rooted deep inside themthat is only matched by their equally ingrained kindness, a drive to help and to harm, like they have a coin constantly flipping where their conscience should be.

Roux rolls his eyes when I hiss at the pain in my wrist. He leans back in his chair as if his physical proximity to me has just skipped over to the wrong side of bearable. He’s dressed all in tight, black clothing, and I take a moment to admire how the stretched fabric clings to his lithe body, a body I once spent hours tracing over with gun-callused fingers and an eager tongue. Roux notices me gazing at him, remembering how he gasped my name when I licked at the crevice between his thigh and groin, how he screamed like a banshee when I fucked into him with minimal prep, which had been his preference from the beginning. It wasn’t so much that he liked to be hurt, it was more that he enjoyed the struggle, as if the pleasure meant more when he had to earn it first.

“Stop looking at me like that, or I’ll cut your eyes out,” he threatens gruffly, his attention flickering between my face and the knife.

I stare back at him, brazen and foolish and weak as I use my free hand to palm my cock. With just my underwear to conceal me, it would be impossible for him not to realise that I’m getting hard. I stroke myself slowly through the black fabric, breathing deeply through my nose to maintain some control of myself at the manic euphoria that comes from watching Roux watch me.

“Come over here, Ro,” I say, voice still scratchy although that might be partially from lust now. “I wanna feel your soft little arse rubbing against my cock.”

Roux sucks in a dramatic breath, a mix of fury and unwanted arousal. He doesn’t look any less disgusted, but he does what I tell him, shifting out of his seat and settling himself on my lap, thighs splayed on either side of mine. He brings the knife with him too and holds it against my neck, right underneath my jaw.

I grasp Roux’s hip with my free hand and yank uselessly at the cuffed one. Roux’s face is too far away for a kiss, but that’s probably just as well. I don’t trust him not to bite my tongue for me. He digs his fingers into the hair at the back of my head, fisting it, and tugs harshly, tipping my chin up to bare more of my throat to him.

“Uncuff me, baby,” I murmur hoarsely, wanting it so fiercely I can taste how good it would feel to get him under some kind of control. “Let me hold you down how you like and fuck your tight hole raw.”

Roux grinds down on my fully hard cock in answer, nicking me with his blade at the same time.

I groan at the pleasure that coils inside me, like a corkscrew twisting up the nerves at the base of my spine. My fingers grip his bony hip with too much force, but Roux doesn’t make a sound over it, clamping down on any outward noise of pain. He doesn’t try to yank himself away, instead leaning in close to whisper in my ear as he grinds down against my cock again.

“Who says it’s tight, you arrogant piece of shit?” he scoffs derisively, like he’s disappointed but not surprised. “You’re a worse stalker than you were a boyfriend if you think I haven’t been fucking anyone else.”

It’s a lie. If I’m good at anything, it’s my job. I’ve had eyes on him everywhere but his missions for the agency, and the kind of missions he’s been sent on wouldn’t leave space for sex, however fast or casual. But the fact that he would lie just because he knows it would enrage me, cause me pain, is enough to have the same effect regardless of the truth.

Warm blood trails down my neck from the fresh cut under my jaw, and I wish he’d press in harder, slice his blade in until he hits artery or bone. We’ve given each other plenty of scars, but it’s not enough, never enough. No number of marks on my skincould compete with the strips of soul-flesh he’s torn from me again and again without mercy for years.

“You’re still mine, Ro,” I promise him because he needs it, that reassurance, even if he thinks he doesn’t. “You could spread your legs for the entire English football team, and you’d still belong to me in every way that counts.”

Roux’s fist tightens in my hair like a vice and gives it a vengeful jerk, yanking my head back further so he can run his cold nose and soft mouth up my throat. He speaks against my Adam’s apple in a threatening vibration of sound.

“Like fuck I do. Stop embarrassing yourself. I don’t want you. I’ll never want you again.”

“Sticks and stones, baby. No one will ever be as good to you as me. No one will ever make you feel like I can.”

Roux digs his knife into my neck again, deeper this time, like he’s hacking away at a tree trunk because all that anguish and rage has to go somewhere, and he doesn’t want it to be accidentally unleashed on the people he actually cares about protecting from his worst self.

“We’ll see about that, huh.” He leans back to look me in the eye again, his beautiful face set in stone-cold fury. “I’ll let you know after I’ve fucked the entire English football team. Or the Spanish team if I’m feeling like I wanna fuck a winner for a change.”

He shines so brightly when he’s like this. I’m captivated by it, by all this emotion he can barely restrain, the blatant need to transform his pain into rupturing violence.

“Wewillsee.” I nudge at him just a little to bring out the creature waiting, hostile and ravenous, below his skin. “One day you’ll come crawling back to me, Roux. I promise. And I’ll make it right when you do, I swear.”

Roux releases a ferocious noise, like an animal clawing uselessly at a bear trap clenched around its leg. He presses incloser, desperate and hopeless, letting go of my hair to bring my face down so he can rest his forehead against mine. His eyes are closed, like he can’t stand to look at me anymore. I could never stand to look away from him.

“You’re not even sorry,” he whispers, his voice brittle and serrated along the edges. “I hate you, and you’re not even sorry.”

“I’m not,” I say, and it isn’t an apology, because he would despise me for that even more. “I’d do it all again. A thousand times over.”

Roux screws his eyes shut tighter, denying it, denying the horrible truth of it, and grasps my jaw between his fingers and thumb, forcefully manoeuvring both of us so his lips can brush mine with each ragged inhale and exhale.

“Ihateyou,” he snarls against my mouth.

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