Chapter 47
Mason
I could smell Micah the second I stepped in the house.
Without any further confirmation, I knew Dakota was here. Now.
His scent was goddamn suffocating, invading my lungs in a heavy wave of pure need.
With it being this goddamn strong, they had to be fucking now—or getting ready to.
I walked through to the kitchen, my muscles stiff and my breathing shallow.
I didn’t want to smell him like this. Not when I knew it was her making him feel this way. Not when it affected me the way it did.
I swallowed and tried not to breathe. Tried not to inhale every molecule of his kapnos to the depths of my lungs the way I wanted to.
Fuck.
I dragged my hand over my jaw, my cock already getting hard in my jeans.
Irritated, I pushed out the back door and gripped the railing on the deck hard enough to whiten my knuckles. Anything to prevent myself from jacking my dick right here, I guessed.
The more masochistic parts of myself wanted to go back inside, inhale his need until I almost could’ve come from the smell alone.
I knew how it felt to get like that, to be breathing so hard and so heavy, smelling Micah in that way, my stomach tightening, every breath electric, my cock throbbing with the animalistic need to fuck something.
Late at night, rain on the windows, lightning carving his perfect face out of the darkness, endless forest in my lungs, Micah’s erection only inches from mine, my heart pumping brutal and angry and lustful—
But I stayed where I was, palms pressed to the worn wooden railing, staring out at the dark trees framing Micah’s house as they scraped the low clouds.
When I went back inside, my eyes caught on something glittering on the floor on the other side of the kitchen, behind the island. I hadn’t noticed when I first walked through here, but I could see now that it was broken glass. All over the floor.
Did he do that? Or her?
My eyes drifted up towards the ceiling, to where they were together up in his bedroom, jealousy and rage striking my chest. If Dakota hadn’t been here, I would’ve left.
But I felt less content leaving when she was here—at the place Aamon would be most likely to show up. I needed to kill him, and soon.
If only things were that simple.
If only I had the assurance I wouldn’t end up killing myself in the process.
I hated that I hadn’t really seen her since that night in the bath, not in private at least. All I could think about sometimes was the stuff she’d told me, about her brother.
I didn’t ask questions, despite wanting to, but I didn’t need to hear her say everything to understand what’d happened.
She’d told me she learned how to lie at fourteen, and I could put the pieces together pretty well from that.
Four years, he’d messed with her. I had no idea how much older he was than her, nor did I know how long he’d been in her life before all the bad shit started happening.
It made me feel sick, like my lungs couldn’t keep up with the amount of neon my brain needed. Dizzy and shaky and so fucking angry.
Anthony.
Did he have the same last name as her? Would she hate me if I killed him?
I pictured her, younger, more vulnerable, keeping secrets for a boy who didn’t deserve it from her. Pulse beating like a butterfly’s wings as her brother twisted every thought in her head, made her depend on him. A white-flecked doe, darting into a dark forest to escape her own life.
━━━━━
I was already awake when I heard her walk down the hallway, past my bedroom door to the stairs. Just like the night I’d heard Micah heading down to the kitchen, I shoved the covers off my body and got to my feet, slipping out of my bedroom and following Dakota down the stairs.
All I ever did was chase my obsessions.
Dakota’s bare feet padded quietly across the kitchen floor, the hem of her shirt—Micah’s shirt—hitting just below her ass.
The moonlight skimmed her bare thighs, her taut skin, dripping down her calves and ankles, puddling around her perfect feet as she pushed on tiptoes to grab a glass from the cabinet.
I thought about the day when she’d stepped on a piece of glass on the beach, when she’d cried for me.
The day when I’d held her under the water for the first time.
My eyes darted up her body, catching a glimpse of her ass as his shirt rode up. Soft, biteable, fuckable.
My cock stirred in my sweats. She didn’t know I was standing here in the doorway, completely concealed by shadow, just watching her through the heavy darkness.
It was like being underwater in a way, the moonlight glinting through the windows as it might glisten off the waves of the Pacific, the darkness in the house rivaling that of the deep, churning waves.
I leaned against the door frame and the wood creaked lightly, my hand drifting down to cup my hardening cock. The noise of my subtle movement was enough to alert Dakota to my presence, though.
She spun around, wide-eyed until she spotted me. And then she froze.
“What are you doing down here?” she whispered.
“I followed you.”
“Why the fuck would you do that?” Her eyes were narrowed.
I pushed off the frame, walking towards her as she backed away from me. Her hip hit the counter and her breath hitched. Nowhere to go, baby.
“I never see you without him anymore.” Without my sadistic ex, who doesn’t deserve to touch a single hair on your head. He doesn’t understand you like I do. “Not sure how I’m supposed to fuck you when you’re always with someone else.”
“You’re not supposed to fuck me.” She stared up at me as I approached, cornering her in the darkness, her chest rising and falling faster now. “We’re not good together. I want…something else.”
The words might’ve hurt if they were true, but they weren’t. Were we good together? Not really. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want it like I did. She hadn’t been faking the look in her eyes when Micah made her suck my dick in front of him.
She still needed this.
And I still need her.
“Little fucking liar,” I murmured, my hands gripping the counter on either side of her hips.
The fear in her eyes was making me hard.
I thought of that night in the bath with her, my forearm barred on her chest, the hot water covering her face.
Her soft voice whispering that sick fantasy against my lips.
“You’re scared of what you told me, but that’s the point, isn’t it? For you to be scared?”
“Please let me go back upstairs,” she whispered, but her body was begging me not to listen to her words.
I moved even closer to her. I could smell her shampoo, but not the one I bought for her in my shower. Not hers from home either. Something else. Micah’s shampoo, or one he’d got for her to keep here. Like he was planning to keep her here often.
My fingers tightened around the edge of the marble counter, my mind flooded with violence.
I wanted her mine. I wanted her destroyed.
I almost couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
Dakota wouldn’t look at my face, her eyes glued to my bare chest, her own hands gripping the counter inside mine. We weren’t touching, but it would only take the slightest movement to change that. My entire body burned with needing to be closer to her.
“I want to talk to you,” I said.
“I don’t want to talk.” She shook her head fast, eyes wide, pulse quickening with the nerves that came with wanting to keep a secret. “Please, I—just treat me the same as you did before. I’m not broken in the way you think I am.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I hadn’t really been planning on treating her any different. My shitty behavior wasn’t something I controlled very well.
“Not about that, baby. I want to know why you’re here. Why you’re with him.” I stared at her, watching the way the moonlight created soft shadows on her face. “He’s your professor, isn’t he?” A muscle flinched in my jaw as I thought about it.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
Actually, it does. Actually, you have zero clue how tangled the spiderweb you’re walking into is. Actually, you don’t know just how many years of history you’re getting caught in the middle of. You don’t know how old I am, or that I’m not even human.
“It concerns me that you’re fucking another man. You said you were mine. Do you remember that? I’m not with anyone else.”
She hesitated, lips slightly parted, like she couldn’t figure out which lie to tell to best appease me.
But I didn’t want her to lie to me, so I pressed my thumb against her lips, stopping her from speaking.
I didn’t really want the truth, either; I wanted to go back to before Micah stole her from me.
Back to when she was just a pretty girl alone on the beach, wading into the ocean, trying to save my life.
I need you. I need you so much.
Let me have you, or at least let me pretend I do.
“It only counts if you wanted it, right? Isn’t that how this works?
” I leaned down, running my lips over her cheek, feeling her shiver when my breath tickled her ear.
There was relief in her body language, gratefulness that I was still awful and I wouldn’t make her tell me why she was having sex with her professor.
Subtly, she tilted her head to the side, exposing her neck for me.
“It’s not cheating if you didn’t consent, right? ”
“Fuck. Stop,” she whimpered, her arms looping around my neck, nails digging into my back. “Don’t say things like that. You’re really sick, Mason.”
“Just as sick as you.” I pressed my mouth against her neck, her pulse fluttering fast under my tongue as I licked along the hollow of her throat.
Goosebumps scattered across her skin and she arched into me just a tiny bit, enough to still give herself plausible deniability.
It was dark in the house, and anything could be happening in the dark.
She could blame me for the whole thing, tell him I forced her for all I cared.
I just wanted her to be mine again. Now.