Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
MASON
It was strange seeing Dakota sitting alone on the couch, no longer cuddled against Micah’s side. I’d become so accustomed to that subtle ache in my chest over the past weeks that I almost wasn’t sure what to do without it.
In the absence of being slowly bled dry by seeing them together, how was I supposed to feel?
Happy wasn’t anywhere close to the truth.
I stretched my legs out, propping them on the coffee table.
We were watching yet another movie together, which was still weird, but I’d also grown to like it. Mostly because Dakota was always the one who picked the movie and I liked seeing what she liked.
Dakota and Micah had arrived home together with takeout earlier after they’d been in his lab or something. I knew he was pissed off and denying her access to him, but I didn’t know how she was taking that.
This behavior was typical for Micah when he felt out of control.
Something I’d experienced before more than once.
When he felt like his control was slipping, or he was too close to being actually hurt by a situation, or like he was going to expose something near his darkest center by continuing, he’d close himself off—distance himself, just until he had a handle on the situation again and could ensure it wasn’t going to hurt him irreversibly.
There wasn’t often any consideration for the feelings of the person making him feel out of control.
I hoped he felt hurt by Dakota cheating on him. He deserved that shit. She cheated on me too.
And now we’d hooked up behind her back.
I was trying not to think about that, though.
That was what I’d deleted off my phone right before Dakota threw it out the window—texts with him. I didn’t want her to suspect anything, even though blatantly admitting I’d gotten rid of shit probably made her more suspicious than anything.
Hopefully Dakota would get tired of Micah’s bullshit soon, and then I could have her all to myself.
In the back of my mind, I’d started trying to form plans on how to get her away from him more often, and eventually with some level of permanence. Once Aamon was dead, I had no idea what was going to happen to this fragile triad, but I wasn’t going to sit around waiting to find out.
I didn’t have anything else to worry about other than keeping Dakota.
There were no other considerations for me to make, no other things Micah could try and hold over my head, no other parts of my life he could ruin to make me give her up.
He had those things, though. His job, his lab.
I would be happy to destroy either of those things for him if he stood in my way. Somehow.
Dakota pushed off the couch and started towards the stairs without saying a word, breaking my train of thought. Micah’s eyes tracked her across the room.
He stood up once she got to the stairs, following her up to the second floor.
I hadn’t even noticed the movie had ended.
By their footsteps, I could tell they’d gone into his bedroom together and their voices were low enough that I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. I almost wanted to go listen at the stairs, but I decided against it.
I settled back further into my seat, letting my knees fall apart, my glazed eyes staring at the television screen glowing blue through the night, the credits rolling. Some instrumental music droned on in the background.
Violent thoughts were making me restless, memories replaying in my skull.
I envisioned Dakota jumping off that cliff right in front of me, her fragile body hurtling through the air towards the rocks.
Micah doesn’t know about that, does he?
He doesn’t know about the gun, the water, the cliff, or how hard you come with a hand covering your face.
I’d jumped off that cliff myself several times, and some of them had ended in me making zero attempt to fly.
The thing about angelic healing was it didn’t hurt any less to get these injuries; they simply healed faster.
So me ending a two-hundred foot freefall by crashing into a dark rock, slick with seawater, felt like dying.
Most of my bones broken and most of my organs ruptured or damaged beyond recognition.
I’d learned that magnitude of pain was purifying.
The only difference between my fate and Dakota’s was that I would heal from it.
Physically, at least.
It wasn’t long before Micah appeared back in the living room, returning to where he’d been sitting in the armchair, breaking the mirage of lethal fantasy that’d consumed my vision in his absence.
“She’s asleep,” he said, eyes skimming over my relaxed body before gliding back to the TV.
“Alright.”
I wished he hadn’t come back down here, wished he’d just stayed upstairs with her, because as much as I’d been trying not to think about it, I couldn’t get what we’d done together out of my head.
The memories yanked wickedly at my resistant brain, pulling me back into the same addictive darkness I’d been swallowed in every time Micah was in my life previously.
I rolled my neck, trying to stretch out some of the discomfort.
It made me think of when I’d first met him, in Heaven. He’d been so different from me then—and still was now, but there was more imbalance between us in the past.
He was the first and only man I’d ever been with. That wasn’t the case for him.
He’d been the one to come onto me, to pursue me, and thinking about that part of my life now made my stomach clench with a combination of emotions. Lust, misery, hatred, pain, more lust.
Our relationship had initially started to serve a single purpose, and it wasn’t romance.
It was sex.
Micah’s head turned to face me, surely noting the change in my scent, my kapnos flooding the room like a horny tidal wave. My dick was getting stiff in my sweats, tenting the thick fabric, and I hated how easy it felt to get like this with him.
He got me so fucking hard I couldn’t think straight.
It’d always been like that.
I remembered the first time he fucked me like it was yesterday, remembered all his low words in my ear, breathed into my mouth, licked onto my naked skin, every filthy promise he’d made and kept. Everything had been so foreign back then, so exciting. So nerve-wracking.
Not yet so agonizingly painful.
Micah’s eyes drifted down to my groin, where I’d crudely started palming my growing erection over my sweats.
He didn’t say anything, but I caught the stutter of his breath.
I could smell all the ways he was affected by this, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking of the same thing I was—the first time we’d done anything together.
Before sex, before touching. Back when I hadn’t known his name.
I’d learned what his cock looked like before I learned what to call him.
It was strange to think there was ever a time when I existed without knowing him—to think there was a moment when he’d made eye contact with me for the very first time.
It hadn’t always been like this, even though it felt that way.
Micah Killshaw was so integral to every single part of me, still flowing in my veins like ichor, regardless of the years that we’d been apart.
All my thoughts and needs and desires were tied up with him, whether or not I wanted them to be.
Any emotion I ever had towards Micah was powerful, purely because he affected me that fucking deeply. I couldn’t feel anything less with him. There was always something in my brain turning up the intensity. What used to be love was now anger. What used to be care was now hatred.
Never indifference.
The lust was the same, though.
And I wasn’t the one who left.
That fact could never be hidden, and it existed in every interaction between us. Noiseless, but there. Like barbed wire around my throat, pricking razor-sharp into eternally bruised flesh.
I’d never chosen this life for us. It was Micah.
I would’ve stayed with him forever. No matter what happened.
He knew that.
I hated that he knew that.
My cock gave a fierce throb, thickening against my hip, my palm pressing hard into the tip.
I watched Micah, waiting to see what he was going to do.
Finally, he looked back at me, eyes drifting down my sprawled body, then he reached for the ties on his shorts, tugging the string free and hooking his thumb under his waistband as if he was going to push it down. He didn’t though. Not yet.
“Me first?” I taunted, keeping my voice low.
His eyelids lowered halfway, the look in his eye tipped with arrogance.
“You always were this easy, weren’t you?” His tone tightened the barbed wire encircling my neck. “You’re fucking her all the time, and still ready to get your dick out and show me whenever you think I’d like to look.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks, staining my skin. I prayed he couldn’t see it.
“You should hear yourself when you’re pretending not to want me,” I responded, keeping my own tone unbothered. A lie. “I think you miss when I used to listen to you.”
Without warning, Micah shoved his waistband down, his heavy cock springing free of his shorts.
“Get yours out,” he said, nodding at my lap.
I didn’t waste time tugging down my sweats, my chest rising and falling faster now.
“Look at you listening to me now,” he mocked.
His hand moved lazily up and down his shaft before dipping beneath his waistband to cup his balls, pulling upward to expose them. I adjusted my hips, stretching my body out on the couch as he tipped his head back, still watching me with lowered eyelids.
“Whatever. At least I can admit what I want.”
I twisted my hand over the leaking head of my dick, groaning under my breath.
We stared at each other—not speaking, but unable to look away—both our fists moving on our cocks.
The air thickened, the tension so heavy I felt it in my lungs. I leaned back further, swallowing hard, pleasure burning low and insistent in my stomach. My hips twitched as my thumb stroked over the head of my cock, smearing the slick precum there.
Micah’s nostrils flared as he inhaled my kapnos. Deeply, purposefully.