Page 125 of Pay for Your Lies

“Shut up.” He spits.

His eyes spark with flames of fury, making my heart stutter in my chest. Instead of pacifying him, I think I’ve just enraged him further.

Without a backwards glance to Phoenix, he grabs my arm in his brutal grip and throws me back into the bathroom, slamming the door in my face.

“Hey, what are you doing? Let me out!” I ask, pounding my fists against the door, my heart racing wildly in my chest.

I try to open it, but can feel the weight of his body pressing it shut from the other side.

I press my ear against the door, but with the noise and the music blaring, I can barely hear a thing. I make out a dull thud, followed by a groan and then I’m shoved back away from the door when it opens.

Rhys looms threateningly in the doorframe, his large body blocking almost the entire scene behind him as he walks in.

He stares at me with eyes devoid of any humanity as he closes the door behind him and stalks towards me.

We’re in a mansion-sized bathroom, but a bathroom nonetheless, and I have nowhere to run as he descends on me.

His face is completely closed off, his eyes slashes in his furious face as he reaches out and grabs my throat.

No, grab is too kind of a word.

He squeezes it, immediately extinguishing all the air in my windpipe and making it impossible for me to breathe.

“Do you want me to murder my best friend?” He demands, hissing every cutting, furious word. He shakes me hard enough to make my teeth rattle.

“Is that what you want to see?” He snarls, enraged and out of control. It’s a dangerous combination. “What the fuck were you doing with him, Thayer?”

I open my mouth to try to answer, but I can’t speak with the way he’s crushing me. His eyes follow the movement and drop to my mouth where I watch as desire and rage battle each other for dominance.

I cup his hand to signal that I can’t talk, that I can’t breathe.

He squeezes harder, punishing me, lording his power over me, his teeth bared as a growl rips from his chest before he relaxes his hold marginally.

“Is your plan to fuck him next?” He asks, his words cruel, “I broke you in and got you warmed up so now you’re making your way through my friend group, is that it?”

Anger flames my blood and I try to knee him in the balls. He evades the blow with an infuriatingly easy move of the hips, his eyes narrowing to murderous slits as he grabs my arms and twists them behind my back, keeping them captive with a hand on my wrists.

We’re standing chest to chest, and I can feel his heartbeat against mine.

“Let me go.” I order, trying to keep the loose hold I have on my anger.

“No,” he answers, his face inches from mine.

“If that’s really what you think of me, then let me go.” I say, thrashing against his hold.

He uses his free hand to cuff my jaw, forcing me to look at him.

“What else am I supposed to think?” He asks, his voice thundering disbelievingly in the closed space. “I’ve been looking for you, calling and texting you, and I find you with my best friend, wearing his clothes.”

He holds his face so close to mine that I can feel his breath on my lips.

“What else am I supposed to think except that you gave him something that belongs to me?” He whispers furiously against my mouth, and I think I detect hurt in his voice.

“Did he kiss these lips?” He demands to know, running his thumb along the seam of my mouth.

His jealousy heats my blood.

I wish I could say it was a turn off, but knowing that he was this heated, this driven to madness at the thought that I’d touched someone else, it just makes me want him more.

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