Pretty Pink Poison

Chapter 14

BANE

I woke in the early hours of the morning, with the sun just barely in the sky.

I woke with the dawn, breathing deeply, cataloging my mind and my mood before letting the day begin.

Three breaths and three small truths was what I needed before I accepted the light of the day.

A person should right themselves before they let in anything else.

We should center ourselves first, tend to our inner chaos, before facing the world. It was a standard I held myself to.

One of many.

My other standard I’d failed at.

I opened my eyes, not nearly as disoriented as I should have been from a proper drugging, and looked around at the wreckage within the room where I’d failed at last night. I’d admitted too much, rejected her too little, and fucked our relationship up too perfectly to be as coherent as I was.

Bianca, my pretty pink poison, had mixed her concoction up wrong. I wasn’t nearly as fucked-up as I should have been to consent to all the shit we’d done.

I turned to look at her and still couldn’t hold back a smile at the mess that she was lying beside me.

Her curls were tangled, her robe open, the sheets hanging haphazardly on the bed.

She’d fucking drugged me, and I was letting her live to tell the tale.

And she was going to marry my brother. It was the constant reminder of her screwing him that should have pushed me to leave her alone, let her rot for five years until he was ready for her.

Yet, I was as messed up as she was. I always had been. Something about the way she was the chaos to my order made me want to reorganize her and make her functional.

And that wasn’t how I normally operated. I normally found the holes in someone’s life, found the crack in their structure, and then chipped away at it, bore down on it, and caused their complete destruction. It was what I was good at.

Yet, I wanted to tidy this girl’s life up and make her whole. Make her understand that her life, even if she didn’t care enough to take her meds and treat herself right, was precious.

I pulled her close to tuck the curls of her hair behind her ear and froze at the sight of her phone on the nightstand.

Fuck.

My tendencies were a war, not a choice, but I’d been fighting diligently for months now to control myself.

I was trying to train myself to let go of her after hearing she’d slept with Rafe, but it took time.

She’d been an obsession most of my life and I was used to finding out every single detail about her.

Now, though, I’d pulled back. I didn’t go into her room or rifle through her belongings.

I barely listened to the calls she made although she was right that I did warn off her family and friends.

I only checked the call logs and listened to the tapped line because it was business now.

Her health was the one and only thing I allowed myself to obsess over, and still I missed the mark.

I would make sure her gluten intolerance was monitored and managed.

Her losing weight had caused my ass to lose weight too.

I wanted to blame the nurses or her father for not at least sharing that relevant information with me.

That fucker deserved to die for how he’d raised her.

I knew there was more too. When I asked her, she looked away, as if she didn’t want to talk about it.

And she hadn’t talked about it. She suppressed it so much she didn’t even put it in her diary.

I was surprised none of us stabbed him with a fork.

I saw the way my colleagues eyed him though.

I’d missed the signs, and there was no one to blame but me.

Had I been more diligent, had I not let my emotions for her cloud my focus, I would have caught it.

I knew I would have. She wouldn’t have rashes, wouldn’t be in pain, wouldn’t have had to endure the consequences of my fuckups.

I’d been trained not to miss things like this.

My father had always been as meticulous and exacting as I was, and he’d told me countless times that I was one of the few people capable of carrying the burden of knowledge on my shoulders.

Every detail mattered. Every piece of the puzzle had to be checked—thrice over—because someone I cared about could get hurt otherwise.

He was hard on me, unrelenting even, but he was right. And I would make sure I never failed like that again.

Staring at her phone and considering if I should go through her digital life was what I would have called an overstep before last night.

Now, in the end, I found myself reaching for the device because Bianca had said something that rang true. I was Bane Black. And above all else, boundaries didn’t exist between her and me. They never would again, either, because I wouldn’t sacrifice her health again.

I wasn’t a saint, nor was I ever going to be. Plus, my excuse was that I’d accepted the position of keeping the family affairs in order, and that meant keeping her in line for five years.

The Oracle app I found on her phone was a hack journal entry startup that should have been going nowhere. Except I saw it was popular enough for those who wanted therapy or a shoulder to cry on in this day and age.

So everyone in the western world?

I pulled up her entries and realized this must be her new fucking diary.

She’d been keeping entries. So, I swiped open a week-old entry and the sound of her voice, soft but fast with complaints, jumped through the speaker.

She talked the same way she moved, a total mess that was quick and honest. And I guess I kept listening just to hear her voice, to listen to her catalog all her woes of living in a damn luxury resort.

She talked a lot. God, she talked a lot.

About absolutely nothing. I mean, she didn’t mention me, and it was completely a disorganized disaster the way she blurted out everything else.

I halfheartedly listened as I stared at her, imagining her walking around telling a damn app she was painting her nails but the paint wasn’t that good from the spa or that she hated gluten food.

As I continued rubbing her thigh, her legs spread, and I wondered whether I could fuck her now or not. My hand had a mind of its own as it slid up her thigh where it was met with residue of my come still leaking out of her.

I hummed as I listened to her voice but rubbed my come into her skin, wondering if maybe this time she was pregnant again. Wondering if that would mean it was for sure my kid.

She didn’t talk about that at all in her entries, and I wanted to know why.

“Shit,” I grumbled and rested the phone between my shoulder and ear as I sat up to wipe a hand down my face while still massaging her thigh.

And as she rambled up, I dragged my finger up, up, up to push cum back into.

Watching the thick liquid slide so easily to where I knew it belonged had my cock throbbing again.

She wanted it too, because she moaned in her sleep, and so I gave her a little bit more pleasure by sliding another finger in and curling them up and down.

Would she spread her legs for me in the early morning still?

Would I be able to live with knowing I was fucking her sober now?

I growled as she rocked on my hand in her sleep, but I froze when I heard another entry start playing … one from last night.

It wasn’t just rambling; she sighed before she started and then murmured, “Well, I still want a man I can’t have.” I froze because who the fuck was that?

And when I heard the rest, I tasted that poison, that acid in my mouth.

She didn’t go into detail about our night, but this app was learning everything about her because she was quick to give the information.

It was reckless but beyond that, her entry was toxicity in my veins.

She was my brother’s fiancée, and she was going to have his kids.

Not mine. She’d already been with him while she was happy to fuck me in the middle of the night.

I sighed as I pulled my hand from her body.

I licked the poison she was from my fingers and told myself that I couldn’t keep fucking around with her.

And I would have left right away had it not been for the state of her penthouse.

I growled as I put my clothes back on and placed water next to her bed, plugged her phone back in, and reactivated her room line.

I rearranged her bedspread so it laid nicely over her and spent another ten minutes sorting out her dirty laundry and rummaged around for a first aid kit for my shoulder.

After finding it, I bandaged myself and was walking out just as she sat up in bed and rubbed her sleepy eyes before taking me in. “You’re leaving?” She bit her lip like she didn’t know if she should ask but she made the leap I didn’t want her to. “Can you stay a little?”

“Why?”

“We could talk about last night or … you could come back to bed—”

“Not with you,” I told her, set in my resolve as I made a point to glance around. “You need to get your life together, Pink. I can only help you so much. And let me be clear, you might get to fuck me when I’m not one hundred, but I’m sober now.”

She narrowed her eyes and then crossed her arms over her chest. “What you say when you’re not one hundred seems to be one hundred percent the truth.”

“Or I’m slurring whatever I need to so I can get some pussy.”

“Oh my God.” Her eyes flashed with hurt before they burned with fury. “Fuck you.”

“Not in the light of day.” The words were meant to hurt her. To push her far away so our inhibitions didn’t unravel again. “I don’t need you on my dick, Bianca. I just need you alive and on your best behavior for our family.”

“Well, you can bet your ass I won’t be. You came here last night feeling bad about whatever my father told you? Guess what? He’s lashed out more than once at me for not living up to the standard he wants me to. And I won’t for you bastards either. You want to know why?”

I lifted a brow and waited.

She shoved the sheets off and got up to stand before me naked and vulnerable but without shrinking. She tipped her chin up and even put her hands on her hips. “Because I’m getting sick of trying to be someone I’m not for them and for you.”

“And who is it that you’re sick of trying to be?”

“I’m not appeasing or freaking good and you know it.” She glanced around the penthouse, and I saw her skin turning that pink color I loved so much. “God, you cleaned my room? You expect me to be all buttoned-up for five freaking years, Bane?”

“If I say yes?”

“I’ll make your life a living hell, I promise you.”

Was she warning me?

When I stepped toward her, her little hands were quick to grab the knife I’d put on the nightstand.

I let her put it to my throat again because I loved being connected to the rawest version of her.

Her anger was wildly out of control, but it was the most real part of her now.

I loved that her curls sprang in all different directions, her teeth were bared, and her tits were pressed right against me.

I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her closer, holding her fiery gaze, “Remember, I like your poison, Pink. Even if you’re drugging me to fuck me or holding a knife to my throat. You gonna slice me open today?”

“I should,” she said, pushing the edge in deeper. “God knows you all deserve it.”

“Really? I deserve it when I was the one who came to you giving you the mask in the night like you wanted?”

“I would have taken you without the mask. I proved that last night.”

“After sleeping with my brother and him discarding you for years.”

“That’s not what that was.” She dropped the knife to her side, a look of hurt flashing across her face as her pretty eyes filled with tears.

I hummed and told her honestly, “I don’t believe you, which is why every single moment you’re with me is already my living hell … but not for the reasons you think.”

“Bane, I swear it wasn’t what you think…” She waited as if she wanted me to ask her to explain the rest.

“I don’t care what it was.” I took a step back.

“It doesn’t matter now. We’re moving forward.

And it seems in order for us to do that, we need some boundaries.

” I glanced around her room. “You’re unhappy with being in here, you can go out.

Security will make sure you’re safe. I can’t keep checking on you daily.

So have the meals you want. And you’ll get everything you need as long as you don’t make a fool of us, Bianca. ”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms but didn’t murmur even a thank you.

I sighed and pulled my wallet from my pocket to place a black card on the nightstand. “Spend what you want. Your phone is activated again. You can get room service or ask for anything. They’ll get it. I’ll make sure everything is gluten free.”

“I don’t care about any of those things. I’ll still be unhappy here, Bane.”

“Then, you’ll continue to be for the rest of the time here.”

“I’ll be unhappy forever if you don’t find a way to be with me, Bane. If you don’t find a way to forgive me and for us to get back to what we were.”

“What we were?” How could we have been anything when she’d always been promised to him? “You fell for a damn illusion in the moonlight, and I allowed it by disguising it with masks and a hidden identity, but you’ve always been his and you solidified that when you slept with him.”

She took a shaky breath and looked toward the ceiling. “Don’t say that. It’s not true. You know that’s not what I wanted.”

I stepped back from her, shaking my head, breaking our contact.

Then she whispered, “Please don’t leave me again. Not after all this.”

And, fuck, that plea hurt and not in a good way. But my phone rang, and I saw my brother’s name on the screen, reminding me of what she was to him and to me. To me, she was the betrayal that shaped me, to him she was his promised hand in marriage. “Remember what I said about your door.”

“What?” Her eyes were shimmering with tears.

“Keep it locked if you don’t want monsters at the foot of your bed.”