Chapter 18 Lena #3
Then his fingers withdrew. I heard him moving behind me, heard his belt unbuckle, his zipper come down. I braced myself for what came next, heart hammering, but it wasn’t what I expected.
His hand wrapped around himself. I could hear the wet sound of him stroking, fast and rough.
“This is what you are.” His voice was strained now, tight with approaching release. “Something I use. Something I spend on and walk away from.”
He came across my back in hot stripes, groaning through gritted teeth. I felt his release land on my burning skin, marking me, degrading me, reducing me to exactly what he’d claimed I was.
A body. A possession. Nothing more.
He was breathing hard when he finished. The room was silent except for that and the pounding of my own heart.
I should have felt used. Should have felt humiliated and small and exactly as worthless as he wanted me to feel.
Instead, I pushed myself up from the bed and turned to face him.
He was still half-dressed, his cock softening in his hand, his expression carefully blank. Waiting for my reaction. Waiting for the hatred he’d worked so hard to earn.
“You think I don’t see what you’re doing?”
Something shifted in his eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or fear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit.” I stood there naked, his release cooling on my back, my ass still burning from his hand, and I refused to look away. “You think if you’re cruel enough, I’ll hate you. You think if you treat me like nothing, I’ll stop making you feel something.”
His jaw tightened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know what I saw last night. I know what I felt when you held me.” I took a step toward him, then another.
He didn’t retreat, but I saw the way his shoulders tensed.
“You can spank me until I can’t sit down.
You can come on my back like I’m nothing.
But I still saw your face when I walked away.
I still know that man exists somewhere under all these defenses. ”
“That man doesn’t exist.” The words came out rough, almost desperate. “He’s a fiction. A moment of weakness.”
“He’s real.” I reached up and pressed my palm against his chest, feeling his heart pound beneath my touch. “And you’re terrified of him.”
His hand shot up to grab my wrist, but he didn’t pull me away. He held me there, pressing my palm harder against his chest, and I felt the war raging beneath his skin.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.” His voice was raw. Dangerous. “That man would devour you whole. He would claim you so completely you’d forget your own name.”
“Maybe I want that.”
His grip tightened on my wrist. His breathing turned ragged. For a moment I thought he might push me away again, retreat behind his cruelty like a wolf retreating into its den.
Instead, his other hand came up to cup my face. The touch wasn’t gentle. It was possessive. His thumb pressed against my cheekbone like he was memorizing the shape of me.
“You should hate me.” The words came out broken, torn from somewhere deep.
“I should.” I held his gaze. “It’s not working.”
A sound escaped him. Not quite a groan, not quite a growl. He pulled me against him, hard, like he couldn’t help himself. Like his body had decided before his mind could intervene.
“I don’t know how to be anything else,” he admitted against my hair. “This is all I know. Taking. Claiming. Breaking things until they fit in my hands.”
“Then break me.” I felt him shudder at the words. “But stop pretending you don’t want to keep the pieces.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then he led me to the bathroom, one hand wrapped around my arm like he was afraid I’d disappear.
Ran a warm cloth under the faucet. Cleaned his release from my skin with hands that were careful but not gentle.
Clinical but thorough. Like I was something precious and filthy all at once.
When he was done, he turned me to face him.
“What I feel for you—” He stopped. His jaw worked, muscles jumping beneath the skin. “It’s not safe. For either of us. There are things about me you don’t know. Things that would make you run.”
“I’m already in your house. In your bed. Wearing your marks on my skin.” I held his gaze. “I’m not running.”
His eyes darkened. His hand came up to grip my chin, tilting my face up to his.
“You will,” he said quietly. “When you understand what I really am, you will run. And I’ll have to let you go.”
The words should have scared me. They didn’t. They just made me want to dig deeper, to find whatever monster he was hiding and prove I could face it.
He didn’t hold me that night. Didn’t pull me into his bed or wrap his arms around me. But when he walked me to my room, his hand stayed on the small of my back, possessive and warm.
At the door, he paused. His expression was unreadable, but his hand slid up to cup the back of my neck, thumb pressing against my pulse point.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said. “Seeing something that isn’t there.”
“Am I?”
His grip tightened. Then he released me, turned, and walked away without another word.
But I’d felt his pulse racing under my palm. I’d felt his control fracture.
Whatever he was hiding, whatever monster lived beneath that cold exterior, it wanted me as badly as I wanted him.
I slipped inside and closed the door.
But as I lay in my own bed, my skin still flushed and tender, I knew something had changed. He’d tried his hardest to make me hate him.
And I’d seen right through him.
The walls weren’t working. Not for him. Not for me.