Chapter 23 #3
This whole encounter, in fact, makes me want to do bad things to good people.
I don’t submit.
I don’t fucking teach. At least, not in situations like this.
But this is the second time I’ve submitted. First to Haven when she pulled a fucking gun on me, and now this.
And this is the second time I’ve taught Kai how to do something.
The heat building inside me is as much arousal as it is rage.
I want to strip off his skin. I want to make him watch while I do the same to Haven. I want to—
Nothing, because right then, Kai clamps down on the side of my neck with his teeth hard enough to make me gasp.
And I come.
Christ, how I come.
Releasing a guttural groan, I buck into our tight grip, my cock sliding against his, slick and hot with cum.
“Jesus,” Kai mutters like it’s a fucking curse.
Jesus, indeed.
My hand is flush with his warm skin, which means at some stage I slipped a hand under the neck of his hoodie.
At some stage he slid a hand under my shirt and grabbed my waist.
I don’t remember either.
His nails rake over my lower back as his cock throbs in my hand a second before another flood of warm cum erupts over our fingers.
The wet mess makes the most delicious sucking sound as we both ride out our climax, side by side, breaths matched in a furious panting that sounds as feral and savage as this entire exchange has been.
But the comedown is brutal.
One moment I’m floating in that rare, blissful space where nothing exists but sensation. The next, reality crashes back like a car slamming into a brick wall.
I’m in an alley behind a dive bar, cock out, covered in cum—mine and his—with Kai’s forehead pressed against my shoulder like I’m someone to lean on.
Like I’m safe.
The rage that floods me is instantaneous. Absolute.
I shove him off. Hard.
He stumbles back, catching himself on the dumpster with one hand while the other fumbles to tuck himself back into his sweats.
His movements are clumsy, uncoordinated.
The adrenaline that fueled his little power play has burned off, leaving nothing but a drunk, stoned boy who’s struggling to stand upright.
“The f—uck?” His voice wobbles like a child who’s been scolded.
I don’t answer. I’m too busy flicking cum off my fingers and zipping up my jeans with hands that won’t stop trembling.
“You let him do that,” Bad Wolf growls. “You let him take control.”
“But you enjoyed it,” Good Wolf chimes in. “Because you’re changing.”
I can still feel the ghost of his teeth on my neck. Can still taste him on my tongue. Can still hear that guttural sound I made when I came—for him, because of him—with his hand wrapped around my cock like he even had a fucking clue what the hell he was doing.
No one controls me.
No one.
“Did I—Did I do it wrong?” Kai’s voice is still shaking. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“You think I wanted a clumsy fucking hand job from a simp like you?”
He flinches.
Good Wolf howls.
He rakes his fingers through his hair, grimaces when he realizes there’s cum in them. “Jesus, sorry.” He’s trying to sound angry, but he just sounds…lost. “Not like I fucking meant to—”
“To what?” I round on him, and whatever he sees in my face makes him press back against the dumpster. “Rip off my dick? Slobber all over my face like a fucking dog? Make me—” I cut myself off, jaw clenching so hard my teeth ache.
Make me lose control.
That’s the real crime here, isn’t it? Not the kiss. Not the desperate rutting against the wall like animals. The crime is that Kai—this spoiled, broken, disaster of a boy—made me submit.
And I liked it.
“I thought—” Kai swallows hard. His eyes are glistening in the dim light. “I thought you wanted—”
“Christ. You gonna fucking cry now?” I don’t recognize the sound of my own voice. I straighten my hoodie, brushing off imaginary dirt. Anything to avoid looking at him.
“Fuck you!” But the words are weak. Broken. “You were into it. You came—”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I came because I was thinking of Haven.”
His face crumples when he hears the truth in my voice. Because it is true…to some extent. Enough to matter, anyway.
I drag in a steeling breath.
Feels good to be back in the driver’s seat again.
Until a tear races down his cheek, glistening in the floodlight like I’ve been transported to a low-budget rom-com, and this is the part where the main leads break up for all of ten on-screen minutes.
Good Wolf whimpers.
Actually fucking whimpers.
“You made him hurt. Fix him.”
I tell Good Wolf to fuck right the fuck off.
But it persists, whining away like the pussy-ass bitch it is.
“He’s drunk and confused and he just did something terrifying. Now you’re punishing him. Haven would never forgive you if she knew—“
Haven.
Good Wolf knows it struck a nerve. “Yes! Haven would never forgive you.”
She will hate me for reducing her monster to tears in a filthy alley and walking away. She’s protective of Kai in ways she doesn’t even understand yet—ways that have nothing to do with love and everything to do with shared trauma, shared history, shared damage.
I didn’t come out here to break him. I came to punish him…and even I know I’ve gone too far.
But if I comfort him—if I pull him into my arms and whisper pretty little lies about how everything’s going to be okay—I lose something far more valuable.
Control.
Another tear tracks down Kai’s face. He wipes it away furiously, scowling at me before dropping his head to check himself.
As he tugs down his sleeves, I notice the scratches on his arms.
My gaze flicks back up to his neck. I left my own marks there, and I know he has some nail marks on his shoulder, too, courtesy of my momentary lapse in judgement.
I could chalk this evening up to a massive indiscretion, spiral, and end up slitting the girl in my basement’s throat.
Or…
Or I could stop feeling so goddamn sorry for myself and do what I’ve always done.
Prey on the weak.
And right now, this poor boy is the weakest, most pathetic—
“You know what?” Kai mutters, pushing off the dumpster. “I’m coming for you, Rooke.” He grimaces as his feet tangle beneath him. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’m gonna—“
My laugh cuts him off. “Do what? Fight me? Fuck me? No, Kai. As soon as you’ve sobered up, you’ll just reach for another bottle again.”
He was stumbling toward me, but now he freezes mid-step.
“Because that’s what you do, boy.” I circle around him slowly, like a shark scenting blood. “When things get tough, when emotions get complicated, you drown them in alcohol. In sex. In violence. Anything to avoid actually confronting something.”
“You don’t know shit about me,” he hisses, pointing at me with a shaking finger.
“I know everything about you, Kai.” I stop directly in front of him, blocking his path to the fire exit.
“I know you’ve wanted me since the first time I put my hands on you.
I know you hate yourself for it. And I know that what just happened—“ I gesture to the space between us “—is going to eat you alive…even if you can’t remember a fucking thing.”
His jaw tightens. His eyes glitter with unshed tears.
Good Wolf howls.
Bad Wolf bares its teeth.
“Want to know the best part, boy?” I lean in close enough that my lips brush his ear when I speak. “When you wake up wondering if this was real or just some fucked-up dream.”
“Rooke—”
“But I’ll remember.” My hand finds his jaw. Grips it. Forces him to meet my eyes. “And every time you see me, every time you see Haven, you’ll feel this—“ I press my thumb against his racing pulse “—and you won’t know why.”
“F-Fuck you, you fucking p-piece of sh-shit,” he stammers, ripping his face out of my hand and stumbling back a step before he finds his balance.
He’s crying properly now. Silent tears streaming down his face, shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.
It should satisfy me.
It doesn’t.
Because even now—even with tears on his face and cum drying on his hands—some part of him is still defiant. Still meeting my gaze like he’s daring me to do my worst.
Like he’s not afraid of me at all.
That is unacceptable.
“Go on, boy. There’s a blackout in there, waiting for you.”
Kai stares at me for a long moment. Tear-streaked, trembling. Beautiful in his devastation.
Then he shoves past me and stumbles back to the bar.
I don’t watch him go. I’m too busy thinking.
The metal door clangs shut behind him, leaving me alone with the stench of garbage and sex, wallowing in what might be regret, if I could ever experience it.
“You’re just as evil as the rest of them,” Good Wolf whines. “Haven will never forgive you for this.”
No. She won’t.
But I don’t care.
I can’t.
Kai won’t remember what happened, and if he does, he’ll rewrite it to fit his own narrative. Come morning, I’ll be the only person who knows that he kissed me, that he took control, that he made me—
The rage surges again, hot and black and suffocating.
He has to pay for this.
Not with his life. That would be too easy.
But there are other ways to destroy a man.
The tightness enveloping me slowly starts to release.
I have a girl in my basement who can’t remember her own name. A boy covered in scratches and bruises who’s bound to wake up with an awful hangover and a chunk of his time unaccounted for.
I know exactly how to turn those two things into a fairytale worthy of the Grimm brothers.
“She’ll never forgive you,” Good Wolf’s final, pleading warning is as pathetic as this entire night has been.
But I consider it anyway, weighing it against the fury still boiling in my blood.
Ultimately, I decide I don’t care. Haven has proven time and time again that all it takes is a little pressure before she bends to my will. She’ll have no choice but to forgive me, because I’ll make her do it.
I straighten my clothes. Smooth my hair. Practice the neutral expression I’ll wear when I return to my car.
Kai made me lose control.
Made me submit.
Made me feel things I’ve spent decades learning to bury.
This time tomorrow, he’ll be in a cell, wondering how the fuck his life fell apart so quickly.
And Haven? She’ll be guilt tripping herself into a fucking vegetative state for running to me.
Oh, how they’ll hate me for orchestrating the chaos to come…
Yet I’ll be the only one either of them can turn to.
And that’ll make them hate me even more.