Chapter 4 #3
"You know what I keep coming back to?" He's conversational, easy, like we're two guys killing time.
"That face you do. Scared little rabbit—eyes down, shoulders up.
" He tips his head, studying me. "Your mom had a face too.
Different one. All warm, all let me get that for you, sweetheart.
Had my dad married inside nine months." His voice cools a degree.
"You run the sad version instead of the sweet one, but it's the same trick, isn't it? "
"I'm not doing anything," I say, to the wall.
"That's exactly what somebody doing something says.
" He sounds delighted. His knee knocks mine and stays there, heavy and warm.
"That's what I like about this. Nothing you do gets you off the hook.
Cry, and you're working me. Go quiet"—he nudges my knee—"and you're hiding something.
Tell me you're innocent, and that's just the script, same one she'd run.
" The grin widens. "You already tried running, and that only made me righter.
No way out, kid. I've got you either way. "
I don't answer. Whatever I say, he'll bend it into proof of something—so I stop handing him things to bend. I go still, and I go somewhere behind my own eyes, the way I always can, until his voice turns into just another sound in the dark.
He notices the second I sink into myself. Of course he does.
"Uh-uh." Two fingers hook under my jaw and drag my face back to his, not gentle.
"Stay. It’ll be fun. You don't get to check out, and you don't get to sleep.
" Up close his eyes are bright and pleased, and the heat of him is everywhere, and my traitor body leans the barest inch into it.
"Think of it as a preview of what’s to come for you. "
He starts to let go—and that's when he catches it. The lean. That half-inch my body gave before I hauled it back. His gaze drops to it, then lifts to my face, and something lights in him that's worse than any of the anger.
"Well." The grin changes. "Look at that."
"That's not—" My face goes hot. "I didn't—"
"Huh." His thumb moves along my jaw now, slow, testing, and whatever he finds there lights him right up. "You like this. Don't you?" His head tips. "Getting handled. Somebody bigger putting hands on you, telling you what to do."
"No." It comes out thin and too fast, all wrong. "That's not—"
"It's okay." Mock-soft, which is so much worse than cruel.
His thumb drags to the corner of my mouth, over the split he put there.
I flinch, but still don't pull away and hate myself twice for it.
"Lots of people like being made to. Takes the choice off you.
Nothing to feel guilty about if somebody's making you.
" He leans in until his mouth is at my ear, all that copper and smoke, and drops his voice. "That your thing, sweetheart?"
I can't answer. My tongue's tied in a hot useless knot and my face is burning and my body's humming under his hand like a plucked wire—leaning, wanting, going soft and pliant and awful while every sane part of me screams. I don't know what my mother made in me.
I don't know why this is happening. I just know I can't make it stop.
And he sees all of it. He clocks me from a mile away.
"Yeah," he murmurs, pulling back an inch to look at me, pleased as anything. "There it is." He pats my cheek twice, light, dismissive, and finally takes his hand back. The worst part, the part I'll be ashamed of until I die, is that some traitor sliver of me misses it the second it's gone.
He watches me a moment longer, and whatever he sees—the swaying, the exhaustion I can't hide anymore—makes him huff.
"God. You can't even sit up straight." He says it like I'm a disappointment. "Fine. I'll take the thinking out of it for you, then."
His hand closes over the back of my neck—easy, total—and he doesn't ask, just moves me, pulls me down until I'm lying across the cot with my head dropped into his lap.
I go stiff. Then stiffer, because I feel him against my cheek, hard through the denim, unmistakable, and every muscle I have locks up cold.
He laughs, low, not bothered in the least. "Don't flatter yourself. You're warm and it's been a long day. Means nothing." His other hand comes to rest on my ribs, heavy and sure, like it belongs there. "Go to sleep."
Go to sleep.
I don't know if it's the words, or the voice they come in, or the weight of that hand—but something deep under the fear, something I've never once been able to reach on my own, just lets go.
My shoulders drop.
My jaw unclenches.
The slight shaking quits.
Every alarm I own is still ringing somewhere far off, telling me this is the worst place on earth to feel safe, that this is the one who split my lip yesterday—but my body doesn't care.
It hears an alpha tell it to rest and it obeys all the way to the bone, sinks into the small, terrible warmth of him like it's been waiting my whole life for someone to give it permission.
The last thing I feel is his thumb moving, slow and absent, along my side. Like he's forgotten it's there.