Chapter Forty-Seven
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
BONNIE
We’re finally heading through the lobby when I realize she isn’t taking me to the exit. She’s taking me to Building B—the adjacent complex.
“Wait, you live in Building B?” I ask when we circle into B’s lobby, the words spilling out as I remember that she just told me we were going to the other building, and that I shouldn’t be surprised.
We step inside, and she presses the button for the fifteenth floor.
“Yeah,” she replies. She leans her back against the wall, and I can’t discern the look in her eyes, her shoulders are rounded, hands cupped around the railing. “What’s in my place… you can’t run when you see it.”
I step up to her, making her peer down at me in that dominant way that makes my knees weak.
“I’m only running if it means you’ll tie me up and fuck me after,” I breathe against her lips.
“I thought you were mad at me.”
“I’m fucking furious,” I hiss. “Still, you don’t have to worry about me going anywhere. Now that I know your psycho matches mine, you get your wish. Me. All of me . That’s what you wanted, right?”
She’s staring at my mouth when she says, “Yes,” in a breathless rasp.
“Then I also get you. In all your forms.”
“What does that mean?” she asks.
“It means you don’t get to stop being her just because you got caught.”
The elevator doors open. Gemma tilts her head, nose brushing mine.
“Red-fucking-handed,” she drawls. “Harley.”
“Ivy.”
I chastely kiss her lips, and she grabs my hand to walk us down the hall to her apartment.
She’s been right here.
She was five minutes from me the entire time.
Gemma pauses at the door, keys out as if she wants to say something. I reach under her hoodie, grab my gun, and press it into her side.
“Just open the fucking door,” I tell her.
Her hand turns the key, and when she opens it, she makes a gesture as if she’s waiting for me to go in first.
It looks like a normal apartment.
Sectional couch. Dining table. Television. No decorations or glimmers of her personality, though. Still…
“This isn’t so scary,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at her. “A little dull… kind of hospital-chic. Honestly, I thought there might be bodies. Evidence of kidnapping. Ropes. Dungeon setting. Maybe weapons. Worst-case scenario would have been a whole Jeffrey Dahmer situation.”
Gemma scoffs and sets my bag on the kitchen island. “I’m not a serial killer, Bonnie,” she says, going into her bedroom.
“I’d believe you, except you broke his spine and snapped his neck like you’ve done it before,” I say.
Gemma’s eyes roll my way from the closet she just picked a duffle out of, and I pivot in her direction, arms drooping at my sides.
“Oh.”
Because she’s clearly done this before.
She takes out a box from beneath her bed. “There’s a difference between a serial killer and what I am. It’s important to me that you know that.”
A framed photo sits on the television stand. I pick it up and run my thumb over the photo of a younger Gemma smiling with her parents.
She used to be so innocent.
I take the photo with me as I loop around the couch and head into her bedroom. She’s back in her closet, kneeling on the floor and going through what looks like a suitcase. I start to open my mouth and say something about her having a case full of weapons, except the moment I turn, I almost drop my gun.
“Holy shit.”
On the wall to the right of the doorway is six monitors, five of them displaying one to four different camera feeds.
“Holy shit,” I repeat, my eyes wide as I pour over them.
The music studio. My hallway. Her hallway. My…
“You have cameras in my apartment?” I ask, rounding on her.
Gemma is standing in the closet doorway and checking the ammunition in her gun—suppressor attached. “Yes,” she admits. “Three.”
“Three?!”
Gemma’s eyes drag over me. “Tell me what you need right now, Bonnie,” she says, her voice hard. “What do you need to hear? Do you want a recount of every day that I thought about you? Every outing when I followed you?”
I lift the gun. “I want to know why you left. Why… when I went to rehab, you left me.”
She steps out of the closet, gaze shifting down and around like she’s gathering her thoughts. “I had decided a long time before that night that I’d be the villain in your story if it meant you survived,” she says deliberately. “I’d be your bedlam if it meant you took another breath. My life never mattered. All that ever mattered was you, and leaving you all those years ago was the hardest fucking thing I ever did. I don’t regret giving you that time to heal. You would never have healed as well as you did if I had still been in the picture.”
My weight moves foot-to-foot, jaw quaking. “Why do you have to say things like that?” I ask tiredly.
“Like what?”
“Like that… like…” I swallow, glaring at her as I collect my thoughts. “Like I’m worth any of this. All this fucking effort. All of this—” I gesture to the monitors in disbelief. “This is crazy.”
“I can’t tell if you’re upset or flattered,” Gemma says.
“Of course, I’m fucking flattered! You just snapped a guy’s neck because he touched me—”
“Okay, you have to stop saying that out loud,” she tells me.
“—and it was senselessly hot and terrifying. That you would risk everything for me just sounds insane to me, and I hate you for it.”
Gemma sets down her own gun. “Bonnie, the only thing I’m not willing to do when it comes to you is walk away,” she admits. “Not again. I can’t handle that again.”
I don’t speak, and Gemma sighs like she knows I’m waiting for her to continue.
“Earlier, when I was going to tell you who I was, I kept thinking I was going to lose you, and I didn’t see a future after that,” she confesses. “So, pull the trigger already if that’s what you’re eventually going to ask. Put me out of my misery because I don’t want to go back to before these last few weeks with you.”
I gulp, trying to stifle the rising emotion, the way my body wants to tremble.
Because I don’t want to go back to before this either.
Her phone buzzes on the bed, and I almost shoot it for interrupting us.
Gemma looks at me, then the phone. Her shoulders drop. “It’s Kade,” she says. “I have to…” She peers at me in a desperate way, and I nod.
“Quick,” I say. “I’m nowhere near done with you.”
Gemma nods before answering. “Hey, Kade. No, we’re… we’re okay…”
I glance around her room and decide to snoop while she chats—however long I let her. The rest of her bedroom is typical: standing dresser, nightstand, corner chair, a couple of lamps. It’s so impersonal that I wonder if she’s ever bought anything for herself.
Maybe in her drawers…
I step to the standing dresser and open the top drawer, assuming it, like mine, will be used to keep her underwear.
Except my stomach twists the moment the contents are revealed.
There’s my missing underwear.
The two colorful thongs and lace cheekies stare at me from the corner. I pick one up, trying to remember if the last time I wore them they were clean, or if she’s been collecting my dirty underwear and sniffing them like a creep.
I twistedly hope it’s the latter.
Visions of her rubbing her face and smelling them as she fucks a pillow fills me. I’m heated as I think about it, as I begin to imagine her obsession, the way she wants me, the way she protects me…
No one has ever come close to that.
Beneath the underwear is a variety of sex toys, each one placed in its box’s casing on display—nothing like the way I have mine just thrown in the drawer by the bed. I pick one of them up, the box skewing, and as I try to straighten it back in line, a picture beneath it catches my eye.
I shove the boxes over, brows narrowed.
Oh.
It isn’t just photos of me. There are clipped pictures and articles from every magazine article Young Decay has ever done, cut-out social media posts, even a stack of ticket stubs. It’s like a Bonnie Miller shrine.
There’s something sick within me that has my insides growing all warm and fuzzy at the sight.
I should be creeped out. Any normal person would see this and freak. I should be scared, run out of here while she’s distracted on the phone, and tell the band that we have to find someone new because my fucking stalker is the one watching our asses.
And yet…
I. Fucking. Love . It.
I blow out an uneven breath as I turn to look at her again—to truly look at her this time.
I don’t know how I missed it. Each time she held me in the bodysuit, it was Gemma’s body cradling mine. Her hands on me. Her voice taunting me so goddamn deliciously. Chills rise on my arms as I think about the time she held me in front of that mirror and called me a slut, when she tied my wrists to the bed and rode my pussy. I can feel her breath on my ear without the mask, telling me to tell her stalker to fuck off while she drove her fingers in and out of me. I remember the fantasies I’ve drowned myself beneath since she walked into my real life and each time, I imagined it was her beneath the mask—
And it always was.
Heat pools between my thighs as her gaze lifts. I don’t know what she’s saying. I haven’t caught a single sentence between them. Still, as I look at her now, I see her face in the darkness.
I see Gemma standing by my bed at night watching me sleep. Gemma carrying me out of the clubs. Gemma fucking me in the suit, at the masked party at DeathFest. It was her texting me to ask if I was okay after the phone call. Her telling me she had me.
It was Gemma protecting me every time someone drugged me. Gemma who made sure I was safe despite how fucking wasted and cruel I was to everyone around me. She knows my flaws—even the ones I’ve tried to hide from everyone else.
Even before this, she had me memorized. She could pick me out in a body bag.
And now, after being Gemma with me these last few weeks, she knows all of me—she’s claimed all of me, and she isn’t running in spite of all of that.
I’m not going to abandon you.
My Bedlam… I’d know you in complete darkness.
I’m already hurting you.
You’re mine, rockstar.
You’re mine now, Bonnie Miller.
I can’t refute it.
I’ve always been hers.
And I’m pissed about it.
All the time we could have had together, she was sitting in some fucking shadow like a coward. All the moments we should have shared… The time we missed…
She can spend the rest of our lives making up for it.
I cross the space between us. Gemma looks up and pushes the phone back, confusion in her eyes.
“You’re done talking to him,” I say, taking the device away from her.
“Bonnie—”
“No, shut up. You can call him back.” I press the phone to my ear. “Hey, Kade.”
“Ah… Hi, Bon,” he says hesitantly.
“Don’t you fucking ‘ Hi, Bon’ me, asshole,” I snap. “I know you were in on it, too. Gemma is going to call you back.”
“Bonnie, I have to know what exactly happened,” he says.
“Oh really? You can’t just watch your camera tapes?” I ask.
The line is quiet for a beat.
“Bonnie—”
“She’ll call you back.”
I hit the end button, throw the phone across the room, and raise my gun again.
Gemma stares as I walk backward to her dresser, holding her gaze the entire time.
“Bonnie, I need to tell him—”
“Is this the toy you use when you think of me?”
I toss the vibrating bullet on the bed and Gemma’s jaw ticks.
“Or is it this one?” I ask as I pick up the rose.
“Bonnie…”
“Which one?”
She visibly swallows. “Rose… and the wedge.”
My brows lift. “Is that how you imagine riding my face?” I ask, knees weakening at the thought. “Were you smelling my underwear every time you got off?”
A glint rises in her eyes then as if she knows how fucking turned on I am with these questions.
“Yes,” she answers. “Sometimes I rode them, too. Just to know what we’d be like together.”
Chills rake over my arms as the image fills me.
I’ve never been jealous of underwear until now.
“Take your clothes off,” I tell her.
Her brows narrow, and I move the gun up and down in an urgent way.
“Take them off,” I repeat.
“Why?”
“Because every fucking time you’ve touched me, you’ve had on these ridiculous hoodies and pants or that damn bodysuit,” I say. “You’ve been masked. Covered. While I was naked and exposed. And when I fuck you in a few minutes, I’m going to enjoy every inch of you.”
Gemma considers me for a second before doing exactly as I ask.
I’m a goner as she peels her clothes off, layer by layer. Her boots. Her hoodie… I have an innate need to lick her entire stomach, every vein, and every crease in her arms. She unzips the front clasp of her sports bra, and when her full tits bounce free, I almost crumble.
I’m parched… gasping for a taste of her. She hooks her thumbs in the waistband of her pants, wiggling her ass a little as she strips down.
And when she’s standing absolutely bare, a noise leaves me that I have zero regrets over.
“Get on the bed,” I manage, clearing my throat.
She holds my eyes and crawls onto the mattress, kneeling on the edge in the middle, her legs spread wide. The crease at her hips makes me want to reach out and grab her, watch her body bounce on me as I lick her cunt and then her tears after.
I let out a quivering breath as I step toward her. We’re almost touching, faces a breath apart. I resist touching her with my hands, and instead drag the barrel of the gun over her cheek, across her jaw, down her throat…
“I want you to show me how you think of me,” I say, trailing the gun down further. “When you’re in here all alone, watching the cameras…”
She opens her mouth, a broken sigh leaving her when the barrel reaches her pussy.
“Do you get wet watching me touch myself?” I rasp, head tilting. “Did you wish it was your fingers inside me and not some toy?”
“Always,” she breathes.
I slide the gun between her thighs, parting her labia. She sucks in a breath as the cold steel strokes along her, and I’m jealous of the shift her hips make to grind along the shaft.
“I was thinking about you these last few weeks,” I say as I lean in, my teeth grazing her earlobe. “One of the versions… and each time I envisioned my stalker taking off her mask, it was always you beneath it.”
“Bonnie,” she whispers, her eyes closed.
“You’ve fucked me entirely,” I breathe. “You’ve ruined me. I can hardly catch my own breath without fantasizing that it’s your hand around my neck allowing me to take it.”
My teeth drag along her jaw, and I reach for one of her curls to twirl around my finger. Shit, she looks so ethereal like this—so perfectly poised and ready, legs spread, nipples peaked…
I’m keeping up this face, yet I can’t wait for her to decide I’ve had enough fun and punish me for it.
“Look at you, babygirl… How wet is this gun going to be?” I ask her.
Her nose brushes mine, tongue parting her lips. I meet it with my own—just the tip—and it almost makes me push her back.
“As wet as you are right now,” she says as her lashes raise. “I knew you were aroused the moment I snapped his neck,” she claims. “I could smell you, baby. You can’t hide from me.”
Every hair-raising word from her lips has me weakening more. She leans in and kisses my jaw in that devastating way, nearly causing my knees to give out from under me.
I slowly pull the weapon from between her thighs and look down at it.
It glistens in the lamp light.
Fuck .
Catching her eye, I bring it to my lips and drag my tongue the length of the barrel. It’s barely a glimmer of her taste, tainted by the metal’s iron tang. Still, it drives my greed, and I’m fucking throbbing just staring at her.
“Get a toy and show me how you think of me.” I step out of her grasp, set the gun on her dresser, and begin pulling my clothes off.
Gemma stares at me and reaches for the rose. I toss her the pillow from the chair and sit, putting my own foot in the seat and spreading my legs wide. Her eyes drift down my nakedness, tongue licking her lips when she glimpses my ready cunt.
“Show me,” I say, breaking her out of the daze.
She slides the thick pillow between her thighs and sets the rose in the center. I’m salivating as she turns it on, cycles through to a setting she likes, and lowers herself onto it.
Fucking hell.
It takes her a couple of seconds to adjust it to exactly the right spot, and when it’s there—when her body flinches and her eyes close, I blow out an audible breath.
I want to be that toy.
I want her soaking pussy riding my tongue like that. Every movement of her hips is mesmerizing. She grabs her tit with one hand, the other digging into her thigh.
“Is that how you imagine riding my face?” I ask, practically panting at this point.
“Yes,” she says as she watches me grasp my own tit.
The moment I hear her pussy making noise on that toy, I almost leap out of the chair.
Gemma leans forward like she thinks I might finally kiss her when we’re inches apart again. I reach between her thighs for the toy, intending to tease her a little… Except when my fingers graze her wetness, all thoughts of teasing her fly out of the window.
I toss the toy on the ground, sucking air through my teeth when I finally touch her.
“Oh my god,” I utter, ready to collapse at this. “Oh my god, Gemma .”
“Right there, baby,” she whispers when my forehead hits her shoulder.
Shit, one touch, and I turn into a pool of worthless tissue. I close my eyes and kiss her shoulder, her chest, bending slightly to take her tit into my mouth. She lets out a noise of approval when I suck her taut nipple into my mouth, and my mind goes blank.
At some point, I climb onto the bed. Gemma sits back, legs opening wide as I crawl on top of her. I’m consumed with licking her breasts and toying with her clit, finally tasting every part of her I’ve been dying to have. I straddle her thigh, grinding on it and relishing every groan coming out of her.
And after a minute, I finally force my hand to her throat. “Straddle my face,” I tell her. “I need to see you cry for me.”
I smack her ass and shift off of her leg, then lay on the bed behind her. There’s a devious glint in her eyes that makes me swallow—as if she was waiting on me to get on my back so she could do worse.
She twists in my direction, yet pauses as she hovers over me. Her lips press to the inside my thigh, making my mouth sag as she works her way up. I jerk as her tongue flicks over my clit. A groan sounds from her throat.
“No,” I say, tugging on her hair. “No, you don’t get that yet. You’ll beg for my pussy before you can taste it again.”
“Fuck, you’re killing me,” she mutters. However, she doesn’t push it, and instead straightens to place one leg on either side of my hips. Shit, the view of her like this… I’m such a goner.
Her back arches as she bends over me, lips kissing up my torso. I tilt my head to see her hips shifting, and when her wetness grazes mine, I whimper.
“Oh fuck, babygirl,” I almost cry. “Don’t do that yet. I won’t have any willpower to stop you.”
A snicker leaves her that makes me forget everything. She smiles my way, and I think my heart gives out.
Her.
Her .
Her eyes soften the longer we stare. Warmth spreads throughout my entire body, breath escaping me.
It’s always been her.
I take her cheeks in my hands. Gemma meets my tongue with hers before crawling the rest of the way and settling her thighs around my face.
I blow out an unsteady breath staring at her cunt.
“Shit, baby. Your pussy is so fucking pretty,” I say, dragging my finger over her. “So fucking…”
I’m so consumed by her pussy that I hardly notice the scars on her thighs. Still, I know they’re there. I know the fresh ones are more than likely from Radio Eleven.
Because I wanted to do the same after.
I lick her, and the moment her taste is on my tongue, I lose it.
“Oh my god, Bonnie—”
Holy shit, this is better than I expected.
“Goddammit, you taste amazing,” I utter.
I fall into a trance beneath her. Between the noises she’s making, the way she’s grinding on my tongue, her taste, this goddamn view…
I’m throbbing.
I slip a finger inside her after a few minutes, shuddering at how aroused she is, how open and waiting. My digit curls, and I add another. Her face scrunches so beautifully, tears pricking the corners.
Her pussy is euphoric. I wrap my other arm around the back of her thigh and spread my hand on her stomach, pressing her abdomen. She lets out a shuddering breath, her legs trembling, and when she encloses my hand with hers, holding on as she reaches her climax, my heart does another somersault.
She spills on my tongue as she squeezes my fingers.
Shit, I need to feel this on my own throbbing cunt.
Gemma is still catching her breath when I tell her to lie on her back. She all but flops onto the bed, and I quickly move onto her lap.
“Bend this leg for me,” I say, slapping her thigh.
She swallows when she looks at me and does as I say. I shift, one leg under hers, and when our pussies meet, I let out a high-pitched whimper.
“Oh my god .”
My shoulders droop, head hanging. Holy shit.
“Fuck—Bonnie—”
Thank fuck she reaches for my hips and makes me move. I’m entirely engulfed in this feeling, in every sound our soaking cunts make together. It pricks the hair on the back of my neck, and sends my mind spiraling. Every gyration creates music that I’ll be chasing from today on.
Gemma’s hands dig into my hips, guiding me along her pussy.
“You look so desperate for this,” Gemma says. “You like riding my pussy?”
I whimper. “Fuck yes—god, you feel so good,” I manage.
Gemma sits up slightly on her elbows and reaches between us, her finger flicking my clit each time I sit back. I hold her thigh, and Gemma wraps her other hand around my forearm, prompting me to do the same. The leverage and support lets me lean back and create more space. Longer, faster strokes.
Holy shit, I’m going to come like this.
I can feel myself weakening, my resolve turning into a flaming pile of burning garbage. I can barely keep my motions steady, each one more erratic than the last as my release climbs and climbs.
Gemma sits up, wraps one arm around my waist, and moves my legs so that I’m sitting in a W in her open lap. I can still feel her wet cunt on mine at this angle, and she presses her hand on my ass, securing us close.
Our naked bodies entirely align. I shiver at the perfection, at her breath on my cheek, her hands all over me. We were fucking made for this, for each other. One fucked up, toxic shit pile.
If I believed in soulmates, I might argue that ours was once one. One soul ripped apart at the beginning of existence. Two halves of the same whole wandering through the cosmos and fighting to get back to the other.
However, I don’t really believe in that shit.
What I do believe in is her .
She’s my crazy, my addiction, my deliverance, and damnation.
She’s my bedlam.
And as she drags her teeth along my bottom lip, my heart seems to explode in burning confetti.
“I wanted it to be you,” I breathe.
Gemma stills. She pulls back, her lashes lifting. And when our eyes meet, she tightens her arm around my waist.
“What?” she breathes.
“I wanted her to be you,” I repeat. “My stalker. I wanted you to be the same person. I even fantasized about it. I thought… how fucked up is that? How damaged am I to want my stalker to be the person I’ve been falling for every day since DeathFest… The person who makes me feel like maybe letting someone in is worth any pain I might feel later. Because I knew I’d never be able to get her out of my head. And I wanted…”
I release an uneven breath, gaze darting over her face.
“I wanted it to be you. So. Fucking. Badly .”
Gemma’s tongue darts out over her lips as she brushes a stray strand of hair from my eyes. My chest is pounding so hard I wonder if she can feel it.
“You’ve always had me, Bonnie,” she whispers. “I’ve always been yours.”
Yours.
When our lips meet this time, my entire world sets on fire.
Words can’t entirely describe every way that my body weakens, the way my heart warms and sinks, how my hair stands on end and my toes curl. Yet, somehow, it all happens. All at once. In an overwhelming, completely encompassing spiral that I want to drown within.
If I believed, I’d say this was the moment when our halves realized they were once more whole.
But we’re just two shades of fucked, two people desperate for love, for someone who sees our madness and doesn’t run.
Someone who fights for us.
I groan into her mouth when our lips part, tongues sloppily gliding against one another, and Gemma’s own moan vibrates the hand I place on her throat.
“God, do that again,” Gemma breathes into me.
And as the kiss deepens, as the world turns to acid and disappears around us, I forget I’m even supposed to be angry with her.
Fuck the noise.
Fuck the past.
Fuck what’s “good” for me, and what isn’t.
I don’t care.
I just want this.
I just want her .