Page 54 of The Pretty Savage

"No." A simple no came out, her arms limply hanging by her sides.

I knew she had the moves. I knew she could take me if she wanted to, then why the fuck wasn't she fighting?

"Goddammit!" I roared, detaching myself from her. Vega stood still, her back plastered to the wall behind her, her eyes never once leaving me as I paced in front of her, ripping at my hair.

I almost killed my best friend because he dared to touch her.

I attacked her now because I had no one else to take out this frustration on, this anger at my powerlessness when it came to her. And I hated myself even more because I hated putting that look on her face. I hated the lifelessness staring back at me, with the knowledge that it was somehow my fault.

"You need to stay away from my friends," I spat out, looking straight into her eyes. "I mean it."

"Okay," she simply murmured, still standing in that same fucking spot.

Fuck!

I wanted her to tell me no. To tell me I wasn't the boss of her or that she didn't take orders from an idiot who obviously had no idea what he was doing. Instead she simply took it, simply nodded, as if everything she was disappeared in mere seconds.

"No one can know what happened last night," I continued, hoping something, anything, would bring out some sort of reaction from her, but it didn't.

"Okay," was the word that followed, with the soft shrug of her shoulders. "No one will know."

Jesus fucking fuck! I wanted to break something. I wanted to yell, destroy, do something, but I couldn't bring myself to leave her. Not yet.

"Why the fuck aren't you fighting me?" I asked instead, hating the words the moment they came out of my mouth.

A knowing smirk came onto her face, laced with a chill that had nothing to do with the atrocious weather on this godforsaken mountain.

"Because there's no point." She finally moved away from the wall, and my eyes zeroed in on the red marks at her throat, courtesy of me, and I would've done anything in that moment to take back what I just did. "Because you're just like every other bully, Adrian," she murmured, her voice dipping low just as her hand came up to swipe something off of my shoulder.

I looked down, seeing the snowflakes on my black coat, only then realizing that I didn't even notice them falling. But what hurt more than the sound of her voice, laced with so much indifference, was the fact that she was calling me a bully.

"I know your kind," she continued, twisting the knife deeper and deeper into my gut. "You like having toys that only belong to you. You like pretending that the world exists just to do your bidding, Adrian." She smiled at that, but the smile never reached her eyes, and I yearned to touch her. To apologize.

To explain why I reacted in such a way.

Why I didn't know how to behave in her presence.

Why I hated her and needed her and why it could only end up with my demise.

But I kept my mouth shut as she continued her verbal attack.

"And you can leave your marks on my skin." She looked up at me defiantly, that little spark I needed to see coming back to life. "You can touch me, make me come, make me yours in a physical way. You can do all those things because you are bigger and stronger than I am, but mark my words," she stood up on her tiptoes, her lips brushing against my earlobe, making me shiver, "you will never have my soul. You will never own those parts of me you truly want to own. And that…" She stepped back, smiling from ear to ear, her eyes filled with vengeance. "That is where my power lies. You can hurt me, that's true. You could probably kill me right now if you wanted to. I'm still healing, so there's no way I can fight you off like I usually could. But you want something else from me, and I will never," she spat the words out, "ever belong to you."

"Vega—"

"Save it," she interrupted, taking a step away from me, then another one, until she was a safe distance from me. "The world doesn't belong to you, Adrian Zylla. It isn't yours for the taking. Forgive me for mistaking you for someone worthy." She smiled sadly, unknowingly killing me in the process. "I won't make the same mistake twice."

She spun on her heel and almost ran away in the direction we came from, leaving me with my reeling thoughts as the snow fell on me, covering the ground with a white cloak, while her words dug deeper and deeper until I knew without a doubt that Vega Konstantinova would be the death of me.

And I wouldn't mind dying for her.

For my little liar.

But instead of going after her, I watched her disappear around the corner, letting the cold seep into my bones as a plan formed in my head.

She was mine, whether she liked it or not, and I would stop at nothing to claim her.

Body, mind, and soul.

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