Page 44 of Corrupted Deception

Something in my chest used to clench every time I saw the proof of another girl on him. It doesn’t clench anymore. It just sits there, numb. Maybebroken.

I slip the scrap piece of paper I use as a bookmark into a library copy of Octavia E. Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ and wait for him to speak.

“Did you eat already?” he asks.

“Yup,” I lie while I threaten my empty stomach with all kinds of retribution if it gives me away.

“A few of us are going to Ethan’s cabin this weekend,” he says in between mouthfuls of what might be the best smelling food in the world at the moment.

My mouth is salivating.

“You should come with us,” he suggests.

Well, doesn’t that sound like fun? Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll get to lie in the room next to him, listening to him screw Miss Hot-pink Lips’ brains out. Yeah, thanks, but no thanks.

My mouth dries up, and I’m not hungry any more.

“I can’t,” I say with a careless shrug. I’m good at those. Fake smiles too.

“Why not?” he asks.

“I have to work, and my mom needs me,” I say. I’m good at lying, but it’s no lie. If I’m not here to get groceries and cook, Mom won’t eat. She’ll lie on the worn checkered sofa with the broken springs all day, shooting up and spreading her legs for her latest dealer. “But you have fun, Cielo,” I say, and I try to mean it, I really do, because his life isn’t easy either. He deserves to have fun.

He shakes his head slowly, eyeing me disapprovingly. “Fine, but one of these days, tempesta…”

Yeah. One fine day, and once upon a time, and in a land far, far away too. And don’t forget about happily ever after. Life’s full of those.

I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the memory away because I wanted this. God, how I wanted this. To fuck away my frustrations, to get lost in the arousal and the adrenaline. To forget all about impulse-control and wise decisions. It was what I needed after so many days of running down a dark, endless tunnel.

But this wasn’t some random stranger, some nameless fighter outside an underground ring, sweat-slick with too much energy still pumping through his veins—the perfect mark for hard, rough ‘fuck you and forget you’ sex.

So, despite the heat that was already pulsing and burning low in my abdomen, I maneuvered my hands between our bodies and shoved with everything I had.

The shove was enough to break the kiss, to make Cielo stumble back half a step, but he kept his fingers in my hair.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hissed while my chest heaved, not entirely the result of physical exertion.

“Taking what I should have taken a hell of a long time ago,” he said without missing a beat, right before he delved back in.

Those demanding lips, the hard press of his body against mine. The tingling pain at the nape of my neck where he held my hair tight. So freaking good.

But I sunk my teeth into his full bottom lip, just shy of hard enough to draw blood.

He jerked his mouth away, but amid the anger in his eyes, there was heat. So much heat, it made my skin prickle and my clothes feel heavy and unbreathable against me.

“You waltz back into my life after a decade like sex on fucking heels and let me believe you—” He slammed his mouth closed.

“I didn’t ‘let you believe’ anything,” I seethed right back. “I told you none of this was any of your business.”

He scoffed.

I shoved. But even I could feel the lack of conviction in it.

He didn’t budge an inch. He just kept looking at me like he was determined to see right into my thoughts. And for once, he seemed satisfied, like he’d found what he was searching for.

“You want this,tempesta.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped, anger and arousal mingling in my veins and lighting me up in a way I couldn’t recall experiencing before.

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