Page 50 of Vicarious

“You were pissed off before. Figured you needed a way to channel it. You need to hit something or beat something or dominate it when you’re that angry or else you’re miserable to be around and useless for anything until you do,” she explains.

“So you really did want to spar.”

“That’s literally what I texted you.”

“And that’s literally not all that happened,” I say, and to emphasize my point, I reach over and touch the wet spot in the middle of her shorts.

“Still wasn’t the kind of sparring you do naked.”

“We can still do that kind.”

She rolls her eyes and asks, “Seriously. Better?”

Dele’s not going to let this go until I give her an answer or she gets tired of trying to get an answer. The latter would be entertaining, but that’s time wasted that I could spend fucking her the way I intend to in about ten more minutes.

“I…”

I trail off. I intended to dismiss her and say that the only thing that would ever be able to quell my anger would be putting my bare fucking hands about Stephen Pray’s throat and watching the light leave his eyes. But even though that anger is still there, just simmering beneath the service, it’s not all consuming. And the tension headache that I felt coming on earlier is gone.

“Better,” I finally admit.

“I figured.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How did you figure that out?”

“You really didn’t think all those late night spars back in the day were just an excuse to touch you without risking us betraying Phae, did you?” she asks blandly. “You needed it. Otherwise you were a bitch to be around. And I never wanted you take that out on someone who didn’t deserve it or couldn’t handle it.”

“So you volunteered to be my punching bag?”

“Essentially.”

I roll over climb over onto her. Not to fuck her. Not yet. But just to… observe her. To see if there’s something I can glean that can help me figure her out.

Every time I think I have her figured out, she reveals something else that I didn’t know about her or that I thought I knew about her but misperceived. I have a feeling I could spend a lifetime observing her and trying to completely figure her out and I would never unlock the mystery of her. Yet, I’d still never get tired of the challenge of trying.

I raise my hand to touch her face, caress her jaw, run my thumb over her lips. Fuck, she’s mesmerizing. Even when I tried to make a clean break, she just drew me right back into her orbit.

“Dele,” I begin.

“Viper.”

“I forbid you from ever allowing yourself in the way to be harmed by me to be my fucking punching bag because I’m pissed at someone else.”

She shrugs in that way that tells me she has no intention of obeying that order.

“I would let you if I didn’t like it.”

Huh.

“So what you’re saying is that you like it when I hurt you?”

I suspected she got a thrill out of resisting me. A thrill out of making me angry and fighting me until she couldn’t fight anymore. But liking a good fight before an even better fuck is a lot different than liking when I hurt her.

She gives me another look.

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