Chapter 15 #2
She twisted, hips angling to press herself right up against my cock the way she wanted, the heat between her legs soaking straight through both our shorts.
Her breath stuttered. My hands itched to rip the thin, useless fabric away and get my fingers into her, feel how wet she was for me, but instead I just rocked against her, slow, grinding, until my vision went white.
She hooked her ankles behind my back, pinning me in place. I moaned into her mouth, so gone I didn’t care if every person in the house heard it.
I was so hard I could barely think, could barely breathe. Her hands clawed at my shoulders, desperate, as if she was holding on for dear life.
My hands slid up under her shirt, palms mapping the hot, frantic drum of her ribs, thumbs brushing the underside of her tits.
She whimpered when I cupped them, when I thumbed her nipples through the thin cotton, and the sound gave me a sick jolt that made me shove harder, rutting against the seam of her shorts until I was dizzy with it.
I slid one palm up the inside of her thigh, felt the muscles tense and quiver under my hand.
I hooked my thumb in the waistband of her shorts, tugged, testing, daring her to say stop.
She gasped, but her legs locked tighter around my hips. I pushed harder, found the heat of her through the cotton, and nearly lost my mind.
“Shit,” I whispered, voice raw. “I need to feel you.”
She shook her head, fingers winding in my hair, dragging my mouth back to hers.
I tried again, sliding my hand under the leg of her shorts to bare skin, tracing the perfect line where thigh met heat. I thumbed the seam, pressed it up, needing to feel the proof of her need against my hand.
I groaned, the sound tearing out of me, and hooked my fingers in the waistband to tear her shorts down.
She dug her nails into my shoulder and twisted away, breathless. “Wait,” she panted, shaking her head, hair flying everywhere, “too fast—”
She broke. Her spine went rigid, arms shoving hard against my chest, and with a single, panicked movement, she shoved me away.
My whole body recoiled, a snapped cable. I stumbled back, hands splayed wide, the ghost of her taste lingering in my mouth.
“Fuck,” she whispered, voice shredded with confusion. Her thighs snapped closed, feet finding the floor.
She wrapped her arms around herself, as if to hide the shiver, the heat, the hunger that still radiated off her in waves. “I can’t. Not like this, Caiden—”
I wanted to punch my own skull through the drywall. Or at least tear the need out of my chest and leave it bleeding on the kitchen floor.
She was trembling. I held my ground, fingers splayed on the counter, and tried to breathe through the violence of wanting her.
My cock throbbed, every cell screaming for the heat of her, but my jaw locked, and I let her put space between us. I watched her arms wrap tight around her ribs.
I hated her for retreating, for breaking off when I’d have burned the fucking house down for another taste of her mouth. I hated myself more for letting it show.
“Why do you do this?” The words crawled out of me. “Why do you fuck with my head and then pull away?” I wanted to bite the words back, but they were out, fouling the air between us.
I knew I was a hypocrite for saying that. I do the same thing to her, but having it done to me was crippling.
She flinched, and her eyes flicked up, wild and wet.
“I don’t know,” she said, voice shaking.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, hair falling into her eyes.
“It’s like—like I can’t help it. I want you, and then I get so scared I can’t even breathe, and I have to run.
I see your face in Pathosbury, when I believed you were a monster, and it’s like something in my mind switches.
I know I give in when I’m drunk, but that’s different.
I’m not thinking clearly when I’m fucked up. ”
I wanted to say ‘good.’ Wanted to say that was exactly how she made me feel, every second of every day since I was old enough to want anything at all. Instead, I clenched my jaw, fists, every muscle. “We’re not in Pathosbury anymore.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, shivering now, and finally looked up. “All I know is, when you look at me the way you do, it’s like I’m drowning in this hunger. But it’s also the only time I feel alive. It’s fucked up, Caiden. You fuck me up.”
She was crying now, just a little, the silent, shaking kind that carved lines down her face and never reached her eyes. I wanted to lick the salt from her cheeks, to devour her sadness.
We stood in the ruin together. Two idiots, chained to our own hunger.
“So why do you keep running?” I forced the words out, voice barely above a growl. “Why kiss me like you mean it, then push me away?”
She sucked a breath, flinched, then finally looked up. “Because I’m scared of you.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand, eyes hollow and bright. “I’m scared of what you do to me. Of what I do to myself when I’m around you. I hate how much I want it.”
The words hit me like a fist. For a second, I thought I’d actually collapse. It was the old script, the one tattooed on the inside of my skull since the first time my dad told me I ruined everything I touched.
I was the corrupted thing, the monster under everyone’s bed, and here she was, confirming what I’d always known.
But then she did something that made my brain short out: she took a step toward me. Her hands trembled hard, but she reached for my wrist again.
She didn’t pull me in, she just held on, like if she let go, she’d drop through the floor. “I shouldn’t have come down here, but I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered, and her voice was all splinters. “But you were all I could think about.”
I laughed, thought it was a bitter sound. “Yeah. Me too.”
All my life, I’d been taught that love was a currency you spent by breaking things. That wanting meant devouring. If you touched something soft, you pressed harder, just to see where it would snap. That ache was in every cell of me.
I thought of my father. A sneering shadow at the edge of the kitchen, slurring about how all women are the same, how they love to watch a man wreck himself for them. I wanted to scream his name, curse his bones, claw him out of my DNA, but I knew better.
The monster was in me, and it was never leaving.
It was easier to break than to hold. Easier to use my strength for destruction, to lash out, than to admit I needed anything at all.
She held on, barely, her fingers shaking, and the urge to crush her hand, to shatter the moment before it could dissolve on its own, pulsed in me, bright and savage.
I could taste the old, rotten script of my father in the air. A man is a weapon, or he is nothing. You take what you want, and when they cry, you leave them to it. You never, ever become the one who cries.
I tore my hand away, a violent snap that left her arms gasping empty. “You came down here for what?” I said, voice flat, dead. “To make sure I still want you? To see if you can drag me back to the cage, just to watch me beg you?” My lip curled. “Congratulations, Amelia. You win.”
She flinched, shoulders caving in, and I hated her for that too. Hated the way she looked at me, like I was both the predator and the trap. Like she wanted me to break her, just so she could have a reason to hate me again.
The monster in me rose, all mouth and teeth. “You like it when I hurt you?” I spat. “Is that it? You want me to grab you, bend you over, make you scream until you forget all the shit I did before? I got news, princess. I don’t fuck victims.”
I wanted to break her so bad it made my teeth hurt. I wanted to see her folded in half, weeping, clawing my back, because then I wouldn’t be the only one ruined. I wanted her to admit I was poison, to say the truth out loud so I could finally stop pretending I was anything else.
She jerked away, green eyes wide, glassy, but the spark was still there. Rage, or hunger, or both, sparking off her bones. “Fuck you,” she spat, but her voice was just a hair from breaking.
“Yeah,” I said, a sickness in my smile, “that’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?” My chest heaved, the violence rising up, the old scripts tattooing themselves along my throat. “Maybe you should go upstairs and let Alex hold you, since I’m such a fucking monster.”
She looked at me, and I saw every year of history between us, every time I’d hurt her, every time she’d ever believed I was the villain and not just another animal with its bones on fire.
“You should go back to bed,” I said.
She lingered, one step between run and stay, lips parted like she was about to speak. I watched her gather herself, watched her shoulders set and her face freeze over with that practiced coldness.
“Fine,” she said, and in her voice was all the old hate. She turned, bare feet slapping the tile like a drum roll, and vanished up the stairs.
I stood there, swaying, pulse in my ears, every muscle locked. The kitchen window rattled with the wind, and for a second, my father was there. An echo in the dark, the old bastard’s shadow stretched long and mean across the floor.