It’s only illegal if I get caught
It’s only illegal if I get caught
Ilie there, naked and sated, my breath still uneven.
Every inch of my skin tingles. His weight shifts like he’s about to pull away, but I refuse to let him.
Not this time. I lock my legs around his hips, holding him against me, his hard dick pressing firmly to my still-soaked pussy as I shamelessly grind against him.
Just one more inch, and he’d be inside me.
I meet his gaze. “I want you to fuck me.” He doesn’t answer. Something flickers behind his eyes, something I don’t understand. “Please,” I whisper.
His forehead presses to my chest. “You have no idea how badly I want that, but—”
But.
I loosen my legs and push gently at his shoulders so I can see him. He doesn’t resist moving back. I grab the sheet, pulling it over me, suddenly all too aware of my nakedness.
“Don’t,” he warns. He stands at the foot of the bed and rips the covers off.
My voice turns sharp. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t hide your body from me.”
“That’s rich coming from someone who hides everything.” I didn’t plan to say it now, but it’s been sitting in my throat for too long. If he’d tell me what the hang-up is, maybe I could stop guessing.
He bends down, tugging on his jeans. “Lyra—”
“No,” I cut him off. “You listen to me for once. I’ve told you everything,” I say, voice shaking.
“You know what broke me. What scared me. What fixed me. But you. You’ve got walls I can’t touch.
Secrets I’m not allowed to know. And you can’t even bring yourself to fuck me.
Why?” My voice cracks. “What are you hiding from me? Does it have something to do with Eva?”
His face shuts down. “Did you ask Callan or finally look me up?”
“Does it matter?” My eyes burn, but I blink it back. “Is she the reason you won’t have sex with me? Do you still want her?”
His silence is telling.
“Do you?” I repeat, my voice rising.
I feel sick. Did I have this wrong from the beginning? Was this all just fucking around and a sick control game to him? Then why share as much as he did? Why is he still holding this back?
Or.
“Is it because I was raped? Is that why?” Because if that’s the reason, I won’t survive it.
Every time I thought I’d seen the darkest side of Oliver, it was all child’s play to the version of him standing before me. His eyes go cold first, then furious. His jaw tightens so hard I hear the clack of his teeth. He steps closer to the bed, hands fisting at his sides.
“Don’t ever fucking say that again. You’re perfect, Lyra.
Fucking perfect.” His chest is rising sharply, matching my quickening breaths.
“Not in spite of what happened to you. Not regardless of it…because you survived it.” He drags a shaky hand through his hair, eyes never leaving mine.
“You think I could ever look at you and not want you. Consume you. Fucking drown in you. I would quite literally kill myself at your feet before I let you believe for one second that what someone did to you makes you less.”
“Then why?” My voice breaks as I wipe a single stupid tear I let free.
“You can’t run. Once I tell you, there’s no going back. I won’t let you leave me.”
“Oh, fuck that, Oliver.” I sniff, climbing out of bed. He follows like the grim reaper. I bend to grab my shirt, and the second my fingers touch it, his hand closes around my wrist.
He takes one step forward, guiding me back with nothing but presence. “You want to know why? Why I haven’t fucked you, Lyra? Why I moved to Willow Hill?”
Each word pushes me back until the back of my knees bump the mattress. My chest heaves. “Tell me.”
“I killed her.”
“What…what do you mean? Killed who?” Is he referring to Amelia? Jade? Fuck, the possibilities are endless.
“Eva.” His voice stays level, like he’s reading a fact. “We occasionally went to charity events or school functions together. She was a warm body. She liked it rough, and it was the only way I felt anything. She kept asking for more, so I gave it. And I didn’t stop.”
The world stops. My body goes still. My knees buckle, collapsing on the edge of the bed. He walks over, kneeling eye level.
“By the time I realized something was wrong, she was gone.”
I look at him, but it’s like he isn’t fully here. The messages flash through my mind like they’ve been waiting for this moment.
Told you.
Scared yet?
Run while you still have air in your lungs.
Maybe he’ll kill you too.
“She wasn’t important to me.”
A sick chill crawls up my spine. “Did you feel anything? When you killed her.”
“No.” The answer lands like a blade right through my chest. “Another body buried under money and silence.” Like Vee said. Fuck, I’m such an idiot.
He reaches for my face again, forcing my eyes to his, but I can’t look at him.
Everything blurs at the edges. His fingers don’t register.
The sheets don’t register. Even the cool air on my skin feels distant.
There’s only one thing I can hear. One sentence, repeating in my skull, drowning out everything else.
I killed her.
“Don’t touch me.”
Oliver’s hands drop. He doesn’t step back, but he doesn’t reach again either. He keeps talking, the words coming fast, like he’s trying to make this make sense. “With you, it’s not numb. It’s not forgettable. I want you so badly it feels like I can’t fucking breathe.”
“You’re afraid you’ll hurt me,” I whisper.
One by one, things click into place. The times he left. The times he held my pulse. The times he pulled back. Weeks of me trying to fuck him and him stopping my advances.
“But you fucked me.” I throw my hands out. “Did you forget about all the times you fucked my ass?”
He holds my gaze, unblinking. “I didn’t forget, no, Lyra, but I also didn’t want to fully take you until you knew everything.”
I gape at him. “You could have told me from the start.”
“You wouldn’t have been mine then. Look how much it took after you saw what I did to Amelia.
I know it wasn’t right. I just…didn’t know what right looked like.
Until you. You teach me what it is every day.
” The words vibrate between us, heavy enough to alter the air itself.
He hates admitting this. I can hear it in every strained syllable.
“What I feel for you…it isn’t just love,” he says finally. “It’s an obsession. It’s need. And I don’t think I know how to want something without damaging it.”
“I’ve wanted you since the second I saw you,” he continues. “I’ve imagined you under me a thousand times. Every breath. Every sound. And every time I get close to losing control, I stop myself.” His eyes don’t leave mine. “Because if I let go, Lyra, it won’t be gentle.”
“You killed someone,” I say again, because I need to hear it out loud. He waited until I was so attached. So entangled in this web he wove so well that I rely on him even if, subconsciously, I don’t mean to.
He helped with my nightmares, forced me to open up, crumbled every wall, showed me how to let go, and made it possible to sleep next to him, feeling one hundred percent safe. When I was sleeping next to a killer.
A part of me wants to act shocked, but I’m not. I’ve watched him threaten people like it’s nothing. I’ve felt his hands on my throat. I’ve seen what lives in him. Still, Eva wasn’t a threat. She wasn’t a stranger. She was a girl he knew. Who he had sex with. A relationship with.
I push at his shoulders until his hands fall away. “I need a second.”
To my shock, he lets me go. He stands, hands at his sides. “A second?”
“A day. Space.” My fingers shake as I reach for my phone. I wipe at my cheeks. “I want you to drive me back. I need the night. Please.”
He’s fighting every impulse to say no. “Okay.”
He pulls on his shirt and hoodie, then grabs my shoes and sets them by my feet. Before we leave, I glance back at the room. I don’t know what tomorrow looks like. I just know I need to make it through tonight first.
As promised, Oliver drives me back in silence. He walks me to the front until I go inside. He doesn’t follow, but I know he won’t be far. Not without figuring out who’s been stalking me—if you can even call it that.
I look up to see Serena’s face. I pause my stride and turn back. “I'll give you one chance to answer, and if I find out later you lied, I'll let Oliver tell everyone about the head of admin, what's his name…Jeff.”
Her eyes blaze. “What?” she grits out.
“Have you been threatening me?”
“Besides the video, no.” Her eyes narrow. “But you’ll never truly accept his darkness. But who knows, maybe you're just as dark.”
Then she turns back to the computer. I keep walking, but her words follow me down the hall. I shut my door, leaning against it for a second.
Me:
I think it’s Serena.
O:
Why do you think that? What happened in the last three fucking minutes?
Me:
She said something when I walked in. I’ll tell you tomorrow.
I don’t wait for his reply. I shut my phone off and toss it onto the bed.