Page 112 of Bonds of Magic
“I know.” I leaned down and kissed his stomach. “Look, I don’t want this to become a fight. And I don’t want you to feel rejected. But I don’t even have any condoms on me.”
“So don’t use any,” he said, still glaring.
“I don’t have any lube.”
“So don’t use any.”
I pushed up into a seated position and looked at him in confusion. “Cory, come on. No matter what we do and when we do it, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Maybe I want you to hurt me,” he said stonily. He pushed back against the headboard and crossed his arms over his chest. The air between us had definitely chilled. “I told you I like it rough.”
My eyes narrowed. “You told me that you might have given Sean that impression. You didn’t say that was actually what you wanted.”
“Well, I’m telling you now. You’re rough with that guy, Lew, aren’t you? You can be the same way with me.”
“I don’twantto be that way with you.” It came out angrier than I intended. “I don’t know what your dad made you think—”
“My dad has nothing to do with this,” Cory snapped.
“Really? Because it seems like he’s in the room any time we’re together. The guy clearly did a number on you, and I’m not going to hurt you just because he made you think—”
“Get out.”
I froze at his words, my sentence still hanging on the edge of my tongue. His voice was cold. I peered into his eyes, expecting frustration, maybe even tears. What I saw instead was fury.
“Cory—”
“Get. Out.” He enunciated the T’s like he was on stage. His eyes were hot with anger, but his tone was icy.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Do you need me to say it again?” He was shouting now. “Jesus, you’re the one always bugging me to tell you what I want. What I want is for you to leave. So are you going to do it? Or are you going to prove you don’t actually care anyway?”
His sharp breaths made his chest rise and fall visibly, and I stared at him for a minute. A moment ago, he’d claimed he didn’t want me to listen when he said to stop. Was this a test, or a weird kind of flirting I didn’t understand?
I didn’t know. All I could tell was that right now, he seemed desperate for me to go. And I did care—even if I didn’t want to. I was baffled about how things had gone south so quickly, but I wasn’t going to force myself where I wasn’t wanted.
There was so much to say. But Cory’s eyes burned. I held my hands up.
“Okay.” I stood up. “Okay, I’m going.”
I walked out of his room and did just that.
22
CORY
Smoke and shadows drifted past me as I ran through a smoldering landscape. Occasional flares of bright red light illuminated the night before sputtering out, leaving me in semi-twilight again. It was hard to see where to put my feet, and I needed to move faster, or the thing behind me was going to catch up.
I darted around a mountain of flame and ash, ducking as tongues of fire leapt out to catch me. My skin tingled with heat. That was close. Any closer and my clothes would have caught—
Wait a second. I stumbled to a stop. I wasn’t wearing clothes. Christ, why was I naked?
A roar filled the darkness behind me, and I started running again. I could worry about being naked later. Right now, I needed to get away.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been running. It felt like my whole life. I was tired, so tired, and my breath rasped in my throat, my lungs filling with soot and smoke. Every inhale felt like a knife scraping my insides.
Another roar rose in the night, and I looked over my shoulder, trying to gauge how close the thing behind me was. I still hadn’t seen it, just heard it. But I needed to know.
