Chapter 35
Elowen
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demand, stalking toward the bed.
He closes his eyes. “Sleeping in my bed.”
I grit my teeth. “Don’t test my patience, Hunter. Get out of my room.”
He ignores me.
I storm to the other side of the bed, yank open the drawer where I keep my gun, pull it out, and return to him. I click off the safety, load the gun, and press the muzzle to his temple.
“I’ll ask you nicely one last time. Get out of my room, or I’ll fucking kill you where you lie.”
He opens his eyes. A smirk ghosts across his lips. “Do it.”
I tighten my grip on the gun. “I’m not kidding. I’ll do it. I’ve had more than enough of you.”
“If you wanted me dead, you wouldn’t be keeping your voice low despite being this angry. We both know how much you love to shout.”
I purse my lips. “Maybe I’m keeping my voice down because I want to kill you myself.”
He gestures with his chin. “Then why aren’t you pulling the trigger?”
“I need a moment to prepare for my first kill.”
He laughs, a full, rich sound that fills the room. I want to clamp my hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, but that wouldn’t be a good idea. My irritation spikes at the flutter his laughter stirs in my chest.
I scramble for more threats, since clearly I can’t shoot him. But I don’t get much time, he suddenly frees one hand from behind his head, grabs the barrel, and wrenches the gun from my grip.
Before I can protest or curse him, he grabs my arm and pulls me down too.
I land on the bed with a heavy thud. He pins one of my hands above my head, then takes the other, keeping my gun in his hand, and pulls my wrist up to join the other, holding both of them there.
He immobilizes my legs by throwing one of his over my knees.
I writhe beneath him. “Let me go,” I hiss.
He unloads the gun and engages the safety. But instead of setting it aside, he brings the barrel to my lips and taps. “Shut up.”
My molars grind together. He taps the barrel against my cheek. “Don’t. They’ll become sensitive, and you’ll have to go to the dentist.”
“I’m already going to a therapist because of you, what’s a trip to the dentist on top of that?”
He dips his head and inhales along the curve of my neck.
“Don’t worry, it’s a hassle for only a few more days.
I’ll have you rid of that therapist soon enough.
” He murmurs the words against my jaw. My breaths turn shallow; a current buzzes to life beneath my skin.
Fuck this man and the effect he has on me.
“Get off me, Hunter.” I mean to snap, but it comes out a plea. I’m becoming vulnerable beneath him without meaning to. I can never wear a mask around him for long.
He draws his face up, hovering over mine. I can see the hungry predator stirring behind his expression, in his blown pupils, his threadbare restraint, and I can feel my body answering it, whether I want it to or not.
“What I said about you touching me, that still stands. You don’t know the guilt it puts me through. If torturing me is all you want, then please, do it in a way I can survive.”
Why am I expecting understanding from him when we both gave up on understanding each other long ago?
“Why do you feel guilty?”
“Because it’s cheating on Salvario, and I’m not a cheater.”
He scoffs, his expression a double-edged blade, one side craving me, the other thirsting for Salvario’s blood. “You are my fucking wife. The cheating would be you letting him touch you, not me touching you. Correct your flawed logic.”
I grit my teeth. “You know exactly how I became your wife.” I writhe. “Just fucking get off me.”
He clicks his tongue. “You should have kept begging. I was almost persuaded.”
And then his hand moves down, and he strips off my shorts and panties in one motion. I cry out, barely keeping my voice down. “What the fuck are you doing?”
He’s no longer listening to me, I know because I know how poor his listening skills become when he’s concentrated on watching me. And right now, he’s in one of those trance-like states he falls into whenever he gets lost staring at me.
His jaw clenches. He swallows hard, his eyes fixed on my bare flesh. My head snaps down at the feel of something cool grazing my thigh, it’s my gun.
He parts my thighs with his knee. I try to clamp them shut, to hide myself from him, but it’s impossible. He drags the tip through my folds, from my entrance to my clit. My eyes flutter shut; my breath catches as the cold metal meets the heat coming from me.
“Why are you so wet, baby?”
I force my eyes open, drag air into my lungs. My heart slams against my ribs as I see the muzzle, glistening with my arousal.
“It has nothing to do with you. I love gunplay, and I’m wet for the gun.” What the fuck am I saying? It sounds good to my ears, though. Yes. I’m wet for the gun.
He chuckles. “Such a beautiful liar.”
“Think whatever you want. I hate you, and there isn’t a single cell in my body that wants you.”
The amusement vanishes from his face. “Don’t provoke me into proving you wrong, I’m already tempted enough. The only thing holding me back is the thought of you torturing yourself with that stupid guilt.”
He looks down, then back at my face. “I will make you come. Decide the way you want me to do it. I need to see you come and fill my ears with your moans to stay sane for one more week.”
My thighs clench, or at least try their best to clench, at his words. More wetness gushes out of me. But I don’t answer his question. I don’t want to give him my explicit consent, how will I dump all the blame on him later if I do?
He brings the gun back to my folds. “Since you claim to like gunplay, let’s play out your fantasy.”
I bite down on my lower lip, trapping the moan as he rubs my clit with the barrel.
“Don’t hold back your moans, or I might stop playing out your fantasy and start playing out mine.”
He slides the tip lower and pushes it inside. My back bows off the bed; a moan tears from my throat.
“Look at me,” he commands.
I obey. He holds my gaze while fucking me with the gun. The lust in his eyes feeds mine until I’m on the edge of losing my mind. Seconds away from begging him to fuck me.
He angles the barrel until the tip finds that exact spot. My eyes roll back at the sharp, blinding sensation.
“Fuck. This was a bad idea,” he grits out, but his hand doesn’t stop, doesn’t ease the pressure.
In no time, my insides clench around the barrel, and I come. Hard. So hard my spine arches clean off the bed and I lose myself entirely. I float in a state of blissful, numbing darkness for a long time. When I open my eyes, he’s licking the gun, like a man starved.
He tosses it onto the bedside table when he’s finished, with the frustration of a beast who got only a drop of my taste when he needed to devour me whole.
He pulls my shorts back up, then seizes my chin, his stare still thick with undiluted lust. “Don’t let him touch you. I’ll come back in a week.”
He releases my wrists and turns to leave, but I stop him, my hand closing around the thick, hard curve of his bicep. He turns his head, looks at my hand on his arm, then at my face.
“Don’t go.”
“Do you know what you’re asking for?”
I nod. “Stay until I fall asleep.”
Once he leaves, the darkness he keeps at bay will come slithering back. And this time, the guilt and hatred waiting for me will be worse than ever. I don’t know if I’ll be able to survive it.
Hunter
I frown. This isn’t a typical request, and I need to know the reason behind it. I have a feeling I should be afraid of whatever that reason is.
“I’ll stay, but you have to tell me why you want me here.” I settle back against the headboard.
She tilts her head toward me. She’s withering by the second.
“I will hate myself for letting you do all that to me, and for enjoying it,” she says, her tone almost detached. But I know she’s affected. Far more than she’s letting on.
“What do you feel when that bastard tries to get close to you?”
The frenzy sparks back through my synapses. It had gone quiet when she said she hadn’t let him touch her. But I know he must have tried. Why wouldn’t he? I clench my jaw, forcing the rage back down.
“Whenever he gets close, you take over my mind.” She speaks hesitantly, then pauses. I know she has more to say, so I don’t intervene and wait for her to finish. In an even lower voice, she continues, “I feel like I’m in the wrong place.”
Her words still the chaos instantly.
“Don’t you understand what that means?” I ask softly.
“I understand. It means you’ve ruined me.”
And just like that, I’m furious again. I lower myself over her, planting both hands on either side of her head.
“You’re not that dumb. You know damn well it means you want me, and that’s why you’re feeling this useless guilt. You think you should want Salvario, but your own body and mind are against it.”
She searches my eyes like she’s looking for a way out of the maze she’s built around herself. Why the fuck can’t she just leave that motherfucker and move on with me?
And then, God knows from where, she spouts the nonsense I never thought I’d hear again. “How are you not Salvario? When you look at me like you can feel me more than I can feel myself. How are you not him when you look at me exactly the way he used to? He doesn’t look at me that way anymore.”
It fucking infuriates me beyond my ability to contain it.
“You need to understand something, whatever you had with him wasn’t so sacred that you can’t love another man in this life. I can look at you like you’re my reason for living, because you are. That’s not a privilege reserved for that bastard alone.”
I cup her jaw. “Just forget him,” I plead. “You can fall in love with me, and you don’t have to carry this guilt.”
She closes her eyes, leaning into my palm.
“I love you, baby.”
She opens her eyes again, looking at me the way she used to. The high of that familiar gaze rushes through my veins. It’s the relapse I’ve been praying for, despite not believing in any higher power. The rush is so sudden, so overwhelming, it aches.
“Do you really still love me?”