Page 138 of The Invite
“I can protect myself.”I always do.
Just not from Augustus, it seems.
“I don’t doubt you, little prey. But you won’t do it alone.” I hear ruffling before my back meets the sheets as he lays me down in my bedroom. Looming over me, he grazes my cheek and stares into my tear-filled eyes intensely. “I’m not giving you a choice.”
“But who’s going to protect me from you?”
He doesn’t answer that—it should scare me—and sinks us onto the bed. Laying sideways, I’m pulled against his chest, and the blanket envelops us. Pitch-black eyes that reek of sinister intentions soften for the first time, causing my heart to hitch at the magical sight because I never thought that to be possible.
As unbelievable as a glimpse of a rainbow amidst a storm.
Rough fingers brush the lingering tears away from my cheeks before drifting to my waist to hold me closer.
“I told you this before and I’ll repeat it. Your anger, your frustration, your hatred, you take it out on me. Be furious, yell, and hit me as many times as you want, I’ll happily endure it,” he says in a low and firm tone before hardening his gaze. “But I won’t tolerate you disrespecting your body the way you did downstairs.”
“How is it any different than what you do to me each night you visit?”
“Iworshipyou, Nessa.” His voice is a raspy growl, eyes turning molten. “Even when I degrade you, I worship and marvel over every inch of you. Be it your sharp tongue or your gorgeous body. I’m mesmerized by everything about you. It’s why I can’t stay away.”
He finds me mesmerizing?
My pulse begins to race at his praise. Nobody has complimented me so unabashedly.
I search for lies on his face but there’s no ounce of insincerity on his features.
Goosebumps rise on my skin as he trails his palm up the curve of my hips to my side and seals it around my throat, tightening possessively.
“I won’t deny my desires are warped, dangerous, and immoral. Until I met you, I kept them on a leash. Now, they’re unshackled and breathe a life of their own. Your sweet submission has poured gasoline over them, making them darker and insatiable. They should scare you. But it’s who I am. Just like you have no control over craving them and coming undone. I don’t either. The only difference is I own it while you run from it.”
His words make me feel vulnerable and bare to the bones even though I’m lying naked in his arms. Yet he rips off another layer. His admission isn’t reassuring or soft, meant to put me at ease.
It’s unapologetically him.
Raw, intense, and dripping with wicked promises.
And he’s right. I should be terrified. I should be kicking him out, not that he’d leave. Instead, I’m intrigued and burning to experience his sadism. However, I won’t do it at the expense of being treated like dirt.
“You ran yesterday,” I accuse him, balling my fingers into a fist to not let the hurt show.
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I don’t do feelings, Nessa.”
“Because they’re messy?”
His jaw tightens as though the reason maddens him. “Because I’ve never had them. The little I felt died a long time ago.”
My stomach knots. That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s more working underneath him but he doesn’t say it out loud, leaving me to wonder what it is.
Thrumming his fingers against my pounding pulse, he rasps, “Cruel irony I’d become fascinated with a girl who wears hers on her sleeves. I can read you like a book.”
I believe him. It’s the one thing I haven’t been able to change about myself, not for lack of trying. “What am I thinking right now?”
“Wondering what made me this way and hurting for me.” His palm slides lower to rest in the middle of my chest over the wildly beating organ that resides there. “Because you also have a big heart, which I can’t decide if it’s your weakness or a strength.”
“The world is filled with enough black-hearted people trying to crush the souls of those around them, I don’t want to be one of them.”
