Page 185 of Endgame
“Everett?”
At the sound of my voice, he blinks. Curiosity flashes over him.
“Hmm.” He places two fingers beneath my chin, turning my head left, then right.
Being touched like this, watched like this, it’s so depraved. I’m reduced to being a property he’s appraising.
Although…that’s what I am, isn’t it? His property. He has every right to examine me like one.
What is he looking for, anyway?
The answers are essential. But he’s so withdrawn that he won’t let me have them.
“Impossible. I don’t see it,” he concludes.
“Impossible?”
“Yes. Impossible. You’re different. Unique.” A sliver of warmth slips into his gaze. I’m no longer a property. I’m a person. “And I’m done withholding secrets from you.”
My lungs squeeze. “Really?”
“Yes.” His thumb strokes small circles around my jaw. “You’re the other half of me. You’re entitled to know.”
By granting me access to his world, he’s asking me to carry the burden of the truth with him. He might not say it in so many words, and yet there’s no doubt in my mind that’s what he means by it.
The pressure on my ribs… Is this what it feels like when your heart’s too big for your chest?
Is this what it’s like to be needed by someone else?
“Everett.” My voice is thick with emotion. “Thank you.”
He won’t acknowledge my gratitude. Everett closes the album in his lap, and sets it aside on the end table next to him.
Eyes locked on mine, he bends to lift me off the floor.
I’m weightless, letting him manhandle me. He does just that, rearranging me on his lap, turning me so my back is to his front. Folding his arms around me.
“There you go,” he murmurs, his breath warm against my ear.
His cock is steel against my ass, and heat blooms low in my belly.
This is fucked up. So fucking wrong. I shouldn’t be wishing that he’d take himself out and shove it in me at a time like this.
At the very least, I shouldn’t be thinking about how I’m dying to have him in my ass. I’m still sore. Still sensitive. It would probably hurt.
Fuck. I bite my tongue to silence the voices. They have no place here.
“You remember the photos I told you were off-limits?”
The closed album is on my lap now. The leather is smooth beneath my fingertips.
“I remember.” I could never forget. I have a feeling that from this point on, these pictures will be forever imprinted on my memory.
“I also told you they weren’t off-limits anymore.” He curls his fingers around the cover, and I move my hands in time to let him flip it open to reveal the contents of the album. “Neither are these.”
Silence takes over as he turns the pages one by one. He’s being slow. Deliberately so, if I had to guess.
He means for me to look. To absorb what I’m seeing.
