Page 192 of Like Grim Death: Part One
My heart skips a beat in my chest, and I feel frozen.
“Worry about what’s going on right now, downstairs, in the same building we’re in.”
In my head, I see Maverick, Sid, and Lucifer, and how easy they are with one another. How much they love each other. And Rain, and…
“Would you ever hurt Rain?” Atlas asks suddenly, like he’s reading my mind.
I feel too hot. Too sweaty. I press my palms to the door at my back. “What—”
“You ever think about what it would be like if he didn’t exist? If he wasn’t permanently tying Sid to Maverick?”
I can hear my pulse in my ears. I shake my head, but Atlas presses his lips to mine, his body against my own. I feel his cock against my stomach, and I suck in a breath, terrified to move. Terrified I want… whatever this sick fucking moment is, with all these things he’s pulling from my brain.
“You can tell me the truth, Ella.”
“No,” I whisper, imagining Rain’s head of dark hair. How scared Sid seemed in the hallway. How much I wanted to help her, seeing her vulnerability. But then I think about Maverick looking at her like he’s in love with her. Her legs wrapped around him in the pool. I think about her lips around his dick, and him coming all over her face and—
“Don’t you want to end it? I could make him disappear for you.Just say the word, baby.”
Where the children go to die.
“No,” I say again, trying to stop the thought stumbling around my head. My emotions, my mind, none of it has made sense lately.Nothingis making sense.
Atlas kisses me again, smiling as he does when I don’t kiss him back. His erection is so thick and hard and hot against me, and I dig my nails into the wood of the door at my back, to stop myself from reaching for him even as he puts his thigh between mine.
I gasp, and his eyes light up. “Feel good?”
“N-no.”
He shifts his thigh up and down between my legs, and I’maching.“Feels even better when it’s forbidden, doesn’t it, Ella?” He tilts his head, running his tongue over his top lip. But he’s so close to me, I feel the warmth over my own lips too. “You can pretend I forced you. You can pretend you hate this. Or…” He trails off, pulling back slightly, and I suck down air, trying to breathe, tothink.“You can open your mouth, and I can make you forget. You can experience it, and you canforget it.”
He drops one hand from my hair, reaching into his back pocket. He pulls out a bottle, and I think, in this moment, about the ways he’s taught me to fight. Instincts. Reflexes, like when he threw a knife at my head.
But the bottle… it’s strange, and it throws me off. It has a stopper. There’s a seal on it in red, the glass itself amber, but there are no letters there. He grins at me. “Let me drug you.”
Drug me.
I frown. “Drug me?”
He rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”
Yeah, technically, he has been drugging me, I guess, but it’s such a weird word to use when I’ve been consensually taking those pills.Klonopin.They help me…relax. They helped my pain. Except I haven’t felt so relaxed lately, have I? I’ve felt kind of crazy. A little insane.
A lot tired. Suddenly, I’m hyper focused on that bottle. I have no idea what I’m looking at. I don’t know much about drugs, just weed, because Mav smokes so much of it, and Xanax, because I’ve taken some here and there.
“I’ve had such a shitty few weeks,” Atlas says softly, using both hands to twist the cap off the bottle. “You have too, huh?” His eyes lift to mine, but I can’t stop staring at the stopper of the bottle. The blood red label with no words.
I meet Atlas’s gaze while he unscrews the stopper, squeezing it to suck whatever liquid is inside up into it.
“Give me consent. Right now. Tell me you don’t want to pay Maverick back, just a little? He’s doing some really fuckingobscenethings right now in the pool with a girl you hate. A girl who can’t even befuckedenough to send you a simple text back.”
“How do you know that?” I snap, my fingers drifting to my throat as the words fly from my lips. “How do you know she didn’t text me back?” My secret shame, out loud.
Atlas lifts his brows, smiling. But his words are a dark whisper.“I know everything, baby.”He drops his gaze to the stopper. “I need you. I need this.” His eyes drag back up to mine. “You can just lie there. You can pretend you hateevery. Fucking. Second of it.”
My heart pounds so fast in my chest, but my mind feels a little loopy. I’m holding onto my senses, but just barely. The consent happens now, or it doesn’t happen. And if it doesn’t, he’s going to do it anyway, and…
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like,” I protest weakly, thinking of Maverick and Sid. “Maybe—”
