Page 63 of Pretty Pink Poison
We walked back to the foyer and then he pulled a metal lighter from his pocket, handing it to me. “Light away, Pink. Burn down all those memories you hate.” I immediately heard how his voice had changed from the mask, how it lowered, and my whole body tightened with the sound.
“We’re going to get in a shit ton of trouble.”
“I’ll take trouble over your pain. I intend to burn down every single memory you hate and extinguish every fear you have anyway. If you hate your childhood home, we burn it down. If you hate the memories, we make new ones.”
“But I hate the silence too, Bane. I hate the silence from you most.”
He nodded like he finally understood. “I’ll work on that.”
“And what about the rest?” I held the lighter tight as I waited for his answer.
“I can work on the rest, baby girl. I’ll work on whatever you need me to as long as you don’t hurt yourself again.Ihurt you. No one else. Especially not yourself.”
“Then wreck me tonight, Bane, because I don’t exactly enjoy doing your job for you.”
The memories of how he’d fucked me before in that mask he wore came back immediately. He’d never been gentle with the tear gas, and I didn’t want gentle now.
I wanted hard and unapologetic and vicious.
The blaze flickered over the leather of it and there was that small instinct to run, to escape. I felt the adrenaline pounding in my veins and I embraced and reveled in it.
There was something about standing in your memories and facing them down, standing in your fears and not jerking back, something beautiful and empowering.
“Promise me you’ll fuck me like you want to tonight.”
“How’s that?”
“Like you hate me… Like I slept with your brother, Bane, because I did.”
CHAPTER 20
BANE
She threwmy Zippo onto a puddle of alcohol and the fire spread like it was ravenous to find the end of the path. Bianca’s gaze was just as hungry as the fire’s as she looked at me. She stood there, her dark curls shining with the flickers of the flames and her skin almost aglow with how close she was to the heat she’d just created.
She didn’t back away. Instead she was reckless, defiant—and finally there was a kind of terrible contentment about her, like she’d decided she had nothing left to lose.
Maybe I’d made her that way or the past year had or it’d built in her psyche since the day she was born. Her mental state wasn’t something I could control, and yet I was already considering what I’d have to do to keep her stable, what I could do, and what I’d find a way to do even if it wasn’t supposed to be possible.
I tightened the tear gas straps enough that the edges bit into my jaw. Until it hurt enough to feel human along with the pain she’d inflicted with those words. And the world went silent. The leather kissed my skin cold, the filters hissed, and my breath turned mechanical—controlled, deliberate. It was a sound thatdidn’t belong to a man anymore. It belonged to what she wanted me to become.
Through the tinted glass, the room shifted. Her reflection trembled in the lenses.
She wanted me to rage, I saw it in her eyes. Her pupils dilated and, damn, the look on her face made everything in me tilt. She knew this mask made me fucking mean. The black rubber straps, the steel spikes. It looked like a relic dredged from a war that never ended. Maybe it was our war, the one we fought with each other on how to exist in a world where we weren’t together. She had loved this mask the first time I’d worn it years ago. She’d left it on her bed for me to wear one night and I hadn’t hesitated. It felt like I could unleash something in me she should’ve run from. Instead, she always stayed. Instead, she accepted and wanted what I gave her.
She stepped toward me and the heat from the fire hit us both. “You’d have me fuck you in a burning house and enjoy it, huh?”
She nodded slow, and my cock jumped at how reckless she always was.
Why I lost control and logic and restraint when I was with her was beyond me. I couldn’t see the whole sea when all I saw were the waves we created, couldn’t see the sky with the all our storm clouds, couldn’t see the whole picture when all I saw was her. The lines were blurred through the smoke, the future blurred through the flames.
I just saw her. I saw her, and I wanted what would be forbidden and devastating because she was worth the consequence.
“Fine, Pink. Let’s watch it burn.”
She immediately grabbed the bottom of my mask first and lifted it just enough that she could take my lips in her mouth. She tasted like burned whiskey and that sweet poison that she was, hot and intoxicating. I couldn’t stop my hands from grippingher ass and pulling her close. I wanted every part of that body against mine.
We were fiends for one another at that point. I yanked that dress of hers up and off and she fumbled with my trousers again. The heat spread fast, licking at us and crackling like it wanted us to feel the danger, to feel how fast we could destroy what was around us.
