Page 76 of The Sweetest Revenge

"You are mine." He pushed himself deep, grinding his hips against my ass. "Say it, Ariella."

"I am yours."

With one more hard thrust, I cried out, and he buried himself deep inside me, stilling as he came.

"Holy fuck," I mumbled as Zaiden crawled off the bed. "Let me go."

He didn't say a word, his eyes locked on me with my ass in the air as he slowly dressed and panic set in. He was going to leave me like this. "Zaiden."

"Relax," he teased. "I'm not going to leave you. I'm just admiring the view."

My cheeks heated as I felt self-conscious. A thud echoed through the room, and my head shot to the door. "Fuck."

Zaiden climbed onto the bed and quickly released me. I flew off the bed and corrected my skirt as the lights exploded to life, reality crashing in like a wave of cold water. Coralee Mathers shoved open the door and stood in the doorway, her perfectly lined mouth forming an O of surprise. I scrambled to straighten my skirt.

"Holy shit," Coralee breathed, her eyes gleaming with the kind of hunger that made my skin crawl. "No one told me Zaiden Knight was an option tonight."

"I'm not." His eyes cut to mine, dark and unreadable. "Let's go." His fingers wrapped around my wrist, not the bruising grip from before, but something more calculated, a public display of ownership that made Coralee's smile falter.

She pressed herself against the doorframe, refusing to yield. "You don't have to be rude about it. We're all just playing a game here."

Zaiden moved past her like she was nothing more than furniture, pulling me in his wake. The party seemed to part around us, or him, really. Even drunk college kids recognized a predator in their midst.

The night air hit my flushed skin.

"Where's your car?"

Zaiden's pace never slowed as he led me toward my car, his grip on my wrist a constant reminder of what happened in that closet.

"Keys," he demanded, palm out. When I fumbled them from my pocket, his fingers brushed mine, sending aftershocks through my system.

He took them, pushing a button and unlocking the doors. "Get in." He jerked open the passenger side door and practically shoved me inside the car.

"Where are we going?" I asked, watching him slide behind the wheel.

"Home."

The car's interior filled with unspoken words, the heat from the closet crystallizing into something harder, colder. Each streetlight we passed painted shadows across his clenched jaw.

"What did Mila find out about Kacie's phone?"

The question hit like a bucket of ice water, dragging us back to reality. The monster under Kacie's bed was still out there, waiting, while we played games in dark closets.

Sucking in a deep breath, I exhaled slowly. "Her phone was on the scene, but he had no idea what had happened to it after they contacted her family."

"It wasn't with her things at the hospital."

"Maybe your parents?—"

"They don't have it." He cut me off, voice clipped. "It's the only thing we didn't recover."

"Maybe we don't need it." The alcohol made me bold, or maybe it was the lingering adrenaline from the closet.

His eyebrow arched as he glanced at me. "What do you mean?"

"Kacie used the same passwords for everything." I could feel a plan forming through the fog of alcohol. "Her MacBook?—"

Our eyes met, realization hitting him. Her MacBook would have almost everything that was on her phone. "I can get it and charge it tonight. I'll bring it to school tomorrow."

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