Page 157 of Inevitable Endings
Her eyes flicker with heat, and shame.
“You wanted to understand me,” I murmur. “But what you don’t realize is I understood you first. Every scream. Every silence. Every time you cried and then wiped your face like you didn’t want the tears to exist. I knew that rage. That ache.”
My hand slides up, fingers threading into her hair.
“I loved you then,” I say. “Not gently. Not sweetly. I loved you like a man starving. Like something feral. It was obsession long before it was affection. Before I ever knew what softness tasted like on your lips.”
She’s breathing faster now, chest rising against mine, eyes dark as pitch.
“I didn’t want to own you like a thing,” I hiss. “I wanted to unravel you. Bit by bit. Thought by thought. I wanted to know what it would take to make you say my name without hate in it.”
Her lips part. I grip her jaw tighter, not cruel, but firm. Controlling. Possessive.
“I dreamed of it,” I growl. “Of hearing you moan it. Cry it. Breathe it like it was the only word you remembered. I still do.”
A soft sound escapes her throat. She’s shaking, and not from cold.
“You think I’m dangerous?” I whisper against her lips. “You’re right. I am. But not to you. For you.”
She flushes, heat blooming across her cheeks, her neck, down to where my hand still grips her jaw. It paints her in something vulnerable and carnal all at once. Her breath stutters, lashes fluttering as her thighs shift slightly over mine.
I feel it.
The tension in her body. The ache she’s trying to swallow. The desire curling low and shameful beneath her skin. She hates herself for it, but not enough to stop.
I smile, slow and wicked.
“You like it,” I whisper. “Don’t you?”
Her lips part like she might deny it, but no sound comes out. Her silence is the truth.
“You like that I’m dangerous,” I say, dragging my thumb across the corner of her mouth. “That I could ruin you if I wanted to. That I have.”
She trembles.
“And it turns you on.”
Her eyes widen, throat working around a choked breath, and I laugh; a low, hoarse sound from deep in my chest, rough with hunger and something cruelly intimate.
“God, you hate it,” I murmur, brushing my lips across hers without taking her fully. “You hate that your body lights up for the man who kept you in a cage. Who made you scream. Who made you fight.”
Her fingers tighten in my shirt, nails digging into my chest. A warning. A plea. She’s shaking with need and fury and that exquisite shame only we could make holy.
I grip her hip with my free hand, pulling her tighter against the ache in my lap. Her breath hitches, and I feel her fight herself.
“Say it,” I whisper. “Say it turns you on.”
“No—” she gasps, breathless, almost frantic.
But her body betrays her. It leans in. It grinds.
I growl, teeth grazing the shell of her ear. “Say it.”
She shudders, jaw clenched so tight I know she’s at war with herself.
“Fine,” I murmur darkly. “I’ll say it for you.”
I kiss her throat. Slowly. Possessively. My tongue traces the thrum of her pulse.
