Page 108 of Runaways

I don't bother replying, crossing my arms in front of my body, and when we get to the top of the staircase, he says, "Oh, and Noah?"

"Yeah?"

"We need to look high and low, so…you should look low."

"No."

"Noah…" He smiles in that way that doesn't meet his eyes and reaches for me, tilting my chin upward with his thumb. "I wasn't asking, baby, and I think you know that. Besides, it'll cheer Silas up to see you crawling around in those tight little yoga pants. Maybe you could rub up against his leg, show him you still have some meat on your ass; that might make him feel better."

"No," I say more forcefully. "I'm not going to crawl around on the floor."

"You're wasting time," he says. "Don't act like submitting doesn't make your pussy wet."

"I'm not eighteen anymore. And things are different now."

"Nothing is different." He traces my jawline with the back of his hand, trailing it down my neck before wrapping it around my throat, but he doesn't squeeze. "You willalwaysbe that eighteen-year-old girl, crawling at my feet. You'll always be nineteen, running for your goddamn life just to end up bent over my knee, getting exactly what you fucking deserve. You willnevermove on, and I think you know that. I think it's kind of beautiful, don't you?"

My eyes begin watering, and he kisses my mouth, but when I don't kiss him back, he gets angry and tightens that hand around my throat, biting my lip while I gasp for air. Then he shoves his other hand down the front of my pants and inside my underwear, his fingers easily dipping inside me.

"That's what I thought," Tate says, releasing his grip on my neck. My cheeks burn when he pulls them out and holds those wet fingers in front of my face for me to see. "I told you that you're still the same girl. This is the last fucking time I'm going to ask, and then you'll do it, but I'm going to slice this Jodie bitch all the way open and make you watch. I don't like the way you talk about her anyway…like she saved you or some shit."

She did kind of save me, but I'm not going to tell him that. Looking away, I slowly drop to my knees and crawl toward Jodie's bedroom.

"That's not so bad, is it?" he asks, following behind me. "I bet you feel better. It feels good to give in, doesn't it? Just like it did last night."

I drop my head and try to pretend I can't feel my clit pulsing between my legs, that every time he opens his mouth, I don't have to squeeze my thighs together a little more.

"Any luck?" he asks Silas as we enter the room.

"No guns in here," Silas says, sifting through the drawers of her vanity. "But she has a lot of jewelry. Where's Noah?"

"She's on her knees where she belongs," Tate says.

I look up at Silas, meeting his eyes, and watch the muscles in his jaw and throat flex when he looks at me.

He does like me like this. Maybe itwillmake him feel better.

"Get over here," he says. "Tell me which of these she doesn't wear very often and won't miss for a while."

I crawl over to him, rubbing up against his leg before I lift onto my knees, wrapping my arm around the inside of his thigh, and look inside the drawer.

"Um, well, she doesn't really wear jewelry," I tell him. "If she does, it's something subtle. She probably wouldn't miss any of these bulky earrings or necklaces."

He takes a step away from me and my touch, sitting on the stool in front of the mirror.

"I'm going to look somewhere else," Tate says. "She's not allowed to stand up."

I roll my eyes because I know he can't see them, and when I hear his footsteps continuing down the hallway, I crawl into Jodie's bathroom.

If I have to do this, I might as well take something I want, and Jodie has an entire pharmacy in here.

I don't know who Dr. Samuel Rutherford is, but he sure likes Jodie. She has massive supplies of medications that aren't easy to get your hands on, and doesn't take them enough to notice if I snatch a few here and there.

I stand, not really worried about breaking the rules; Silas would have to speak to me to make me stop, and right now, he won't even look at me. Then I sort through the bottles, careful to remember exactly where I got them from. There's a little of everything: muscle relaxers, oxy, sleeping pills. I dump a few from each bottle into my hand and stuff them into my pocket.

"What are you doing?" Silas asks.

My nerves and his voice in the quiet space cause me to jump, sending tiny white sleeping pills flying across the bathroom floor.

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