Page 46 of Antihero
She squints. “I was checking to make sure you weren’t following me all week.”
“I wouldn’t be very good at stalking you if you saw me, now would I?” I lift my chin, tilting towards the door and the man who lives somewhere behind it. “Why are you here?” She knows what I’m asking. Why here? Why him? I need the reason.
Paige spreads her hands, glancing around at the garage, the hoarded wealth like a dragon’s lair. A dragon who likes boobs the size of basketballs, anyway. “Look around. Does this seem like the home of a good person? Who needs this many cars? It’s a fuckingisland.”
I start to step around the bright yellow car she’s put between us. “That’s not enough.”
“That’s all you’re getting,” she shoots back.
I grin at the double meaning she didn’t mean to give her words, the same meaning I’m going to embrace. “Cutthroat,” I say with a low laugh. “You’re wrong. I’ll get more.”
That’s her licence to make a break for it. She dives for the cover of another car, ducking low. But whatever the mirror doesn’t reflect, the painstakingly polished bodies of the cars do. I find her, and she makes a good go of keeping distance between us, in the end unable to avoid the corner I’m working her towards. Or at least, the corner she thinks I’m working her towards it. I know she won’t let herself be cornered so easily.
My fingers brush her sleeve as she spins to put a Lamborghini between us, rushing up towards the hood with me safely on the other side. “You should know, Ireallylike the chase,” I taunt.
Paige practically hisses at me. “Not if you don’t get to catch me, asshole.”
My mouth twists in a mocking grin. She shouldn’t have set my bin on fire if she didn’t want to get caught. Paige watches me, hopefully imagining what I’ll do when I catch her. She’s primed to dodge and run from whatever direction I go in. I feint left, towards the back of the Lamborghini, and she makes a break around the nose.
When I turn back to lunge right instead, sliding across the bonnet, she tries to jerk back in the other direction, but it’s too late. I slam into her as I come off the front of the bonnet, catching her back against the side of a taller, older car.
“Ugh!” Paige grunts, wriggling as I catch her between my body and the car door. As soon as she tries to bite me, I press my hips hard to hers, forcing her still from there down, then catch her hands. Her nails dig in before I squeeze them into fists inside mine.
I lean closer, pinning her hands back, and trace the soft skin of her jaw with the tip of my nose, whispering tenderly, “There’s nowhere to run, Cutthroat.”
“Let. Me. Go,” Paige seethes as she tries to wrangle a hand free to go for the knife I’m sure is secured somewhere on her. My grip tightens. If only I had handcuffs. “I thought we had a truce!” she gasps.
“We did. Until you avoided me, tried to set my apartment on fire and then came to strangle poor Mr Filan here.”
“Poor. Please.” She rolls her eyes.
Still bracing on her hands, I let space between us, looking her full in the face. “Will you run again?” I ask, letting my tone tell her I’d take savage satisfaction in that.
“Not immediately,” she tells me through her teeth.
I loosen my grip, hand snatching towards her waist as I take half a step back, her knife now in my grip. I hold it up until her eyes lock on it, then lean down to secure it in my boot.
Frustrated, Paige shoves my chest, to no effect. “Gah! Why are you so damn stubborn?”
I flick a hand up and bat hers away. “Answer my question. Why him? Then we can revisit how stubbornI’mbeing.”
Undeterred, Paige pulls herself off the car, and leans into my face. “None. Of your. Business.” When she tries to turn and march off, I hold an arm out, barring her path. She ducks under it, and I wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her back, anyway. She thumps on my chest with her fists, curses at me, then spins on her heel to go off in the other direction.
Two steps, and I’ve caught up, picking her up in a bear hug. “Just tell me,” I muffle against her fallen-back hood, grip tightening as she thrashes like a wild cat. She slips down in my arms, bare skin becoming exposed against my forearms. She manages to twist and face me, finds her feet and throws her weight into my chest, so that I fall back against one of the cars, but I pull her with me and she lands against my chest. One of her hands, clawing its way inside my jacket as she tries to hurt me, slides further, unintentionally shoving it off my shoulder.
And just like that, her hoodie already pulled up to just beneath her breasts, my jacket half off, we’re undressing each other amid the shoving, the struggling and grunting.
I’m not gentle as I slam her down onto a shiny blue bonnet, tearing her pants off her legs in the brief moment that I step back. I’m shirtless, her hoodie is gone, the singlet underneath pushed up above her bare breasts. Her noises, somewhere between protest and visceral, only spurn me on.
“Fuck,” she grates out, then seems to remember she’s angry at me, and amends it to, “Fuck you.” But wraps her legs around my hips as she does.
“You’re argumentative this evening,” I grunt, finding myself, and bracing my feet to line my hips up with her.
“Because you’re such a giant…” Whatever she was about to call me chokes off as I shove inside her, silencing that and any protests as I thrust, hard, sliding her up the bonnet.
Her gasps echo around the garage, her head tips back and to the side with a long moan. When I follow the tilt of her gaze, I only see our reflection in the mirror, separated by another, taller car. I look down at her, humming a low laugh, and ask, “Do you like to watch yourself being fucked, Paige?”
Before she has time to answer, I lift her off the bonnet, leaving a suggestive smudge on its pristine surface, and pull her to the side of that car right next to the mirror wall. Roughly turning her around, I push Paige forward so that her hands brace on the hood, and like that, with both of us facing the giant mirror, I shove my feet between hers. I push her legs wider, revelling in the way my name leaves her lips in an excited gasp, and take her from behind.
