Chapter 18
Idon’t move. I don’t even know how to move anymore, as I sit against the cold crypts that seem to suck all the warmth out of my body. Staring into the blackness, I force myself to take a breath. Then another.
“How did you know I was in here?” I whisper finally.
“Because it’s the best hiding place in the cemetery.
And the one that most people would shy away from.
There are fresh crypts, after all.” He shifts closer, his thumb stroking over my pulsepoint.
“But not you. Not my little mortician who doesn’t fear death at all.
” His voice is crooning, full of praise and sweetness.
“No, this was the perfect choice and I knew you wouldn’t disappoint.
But I believe I asked you a question, did I not? ”
I can feel him shift closer. Can feel his warmth against my side where the mausoleum has leeched away my body heat. Part of me aches to lean against him, and I tell myself it’s only for the heat, nothing more.
“I don’t know, I didn’t look,” I admit quietly. “I was a little busy, umm, you know, trying to find a hiding place.” Amir’s fingers just barely tighten. My breath feels caught under his fingers, and my heart flutters in my chest, though not yet the terrified bird it would be if I wasn’t medicated.
“You’re different tonight.” Amir’s voice is thoughtful. “You don’t feel as panicked. Your heart isn’t racing like it has before.” His hand drifts lower, tugging down the neckline of the sweater until he can press against my sternum.
“What did you take?”
The words surprise me, and I glance blindly to my side. “W-what makes you think I took something?” I demand, before belatedly realizing I’ve all but admitted it.
He gives a soft huff and finally eliminates the distance between us, giving me back some of the warmth I’d lost. “Don’t insult me, Nell. What did you take?”
“I took…” When I move my fingers, they find his thigh, and the rough denim of his jeans. It distracts me enough to not answer. Especially when his fingers move back up to gently grip my throat.
“Nell.” The word is soft against my ear. “Just tell me what you took before you—”
“Ativan,” I turn towards him, and immediately I realize I overestimated the amount of space between us. My lips brush his, and I feel the softness of his mouth against mine before jerking back. “I’m sorry—”
But he doesn’t allow me to pull away. His hand on my throat tightens, and suddenly Amir drags me against him, our bodies pressed together and his warmth pouring into my skin.
“Oh my poor little mortician,” he purrs. “What have you done?” Without another word, he kisses me. His mouth is soft against mine, and I can feel myself instinctively melting into him. Whatever panicked responses should be firing off in my brain right now simply…don’t.
But I can’t blame it all on the Ativan. Especially as my lips part, allowing his tongue to lick between them.
His kiss is so slow, so fucking thorough, that I feel like he’s trying to take me apart starting with my mouth.
My back bumps the wall, and belatedly I feel that he’s turning me, until I’m facing Amir and cornered against the interior of the mausoleum.
“Wait—” I gasp, my hands coming up to find his wrists. “Amir—”
“You were never going to stay hidden from me, Nell,” the man purrs against my lips. “You were never going to win this game.” Suddenly he grips my hips and yanks me up until my thighs are pressed around his hips.
“What do you want?” The words are out of my mouth before I can consider that they might be a bit stupid, and the question a little too obvious, but—
But I need to know.
“You.” He doesn’t even hesitate. Amir’s lips find mine again, and he moves us until I’m pressed against the engraved marble behind me. A low whimper leaves my parted lips, and he seems to take that as encouragement.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs against my jaw. “If you tell me to stop, I will tonight. This isn’t what I had planned.” For the first time, there’s a roughness to his voice. A note of uncertainty, like this really isn’t how he expected the night to go.
If I don’t tell him to stop, I can’t even pretend it’s research for my impending comeback at these awful games.
If I don’t tell him to stop, I’ll have to face it without the Ativan in my system tomorrow. With that knowledge, I open my mouth and lean my head back, trying to figure out why the hell I’m doing this.
I know better than to want him.
But here I am, my hands in his shirt, letting him push between my thighs in the dark. “What are you doing?” I finally ask, like it’s somehow not obvious.
“Exactly what I’ve wanted to do since you figured out that Andrew was murdered.” One of his hands slides down my front, teasing the knit of the sweater. “You wore what I got you. That’s my good girl.”
My stomach twists at the praise. Simultaneously sinking and getting lighter, though I don’t know how that’s really possible. Suddenly his hand is between my thighs as one leg is hooked around his knee, and he doesn’t waste any time before pressing his fingers against me.
I gasp into his mouth, arching off the mausoleum wall.
“We won’t ruin this pretty outfit,” he murmurs. “Not tonight. Especially not before I’ve seen how you look dressed up for me.”
“Oh, fuck,” I breathe as he presses my underwear to the side and his fingers find my slit. “Oh, fuck, you can’t—I can’t—”
“Then tell me no.” He kisses the side of my mouth, up my jaw, until he’s able to graze his teeth against my ear. “Tell me to stop right now.” His fingers leave my slit, but when they return a few moments later, they’re wet with what I assume has to be Amir’s saliva.
He presses them into me without hesitation, sinking two fingers into me as far as they go. I gasp, back arching, and try to figure out how the hell this went from a game of hide-and-seek to this.
Somehow, I think his kiss is a gateway drug.
Amir’s fingers crook inside me, searching until he rubs over a spot that has me jerking upward and my hands gripping his shirt harder.
“The next time we do this, when I really fuck you instead of just playing with you, it won’t be in the dark.” His words are soft and conversational against my ear. “Because I want to see you, my perfect little doll. Wearing clothes I’ve picked out. Playing a game of my choice.”
I don’t say that every game so far has been his choice, but that stirs a thought in me I’ve never had before.
Do they have to be?
That thought’s swept out of my head when he adds another finger. I gasp, unable to focus on anything except his fingers. Especially when he also strokes his thumb over my clit.
“Why?” I gasp.
“Why, what?” He doesn’t stop. Only fucks me on his fingers like he has all day.
“Why do you want this with me?”
With anyone else, the words would feel like a buzzkill. But Amir shifts closer and kisses me again like I’ve asked something special or important.
“You really don’t see it.” That’s all he says for a few minutes until I’m writhing on his hand like I can’t get enough of his fingers.
“That’s it,” Amir murmurs. “Take what you need. Come on, my little mortician. Use my hand however you need.” With his other hand on my hip, he encourages me, pulling me to grind against him.
My heart races in my chest and I don’t even think about it as I move.
I just move.
My hands come up to find his face, cupping his cheeks in my palms. Dragging him in for a kiss, I cry out as he thrusts into me, and it gives him the upper hand to once more pry open my mouth and kiss me however he wants.
His tongue laps against mine, his teeth graze my lower lip, and he presses his fingers into me so deeply that I keen.
“Amir, please, I need—” Honestly, I can’t believe I’m this close. What with taking Lexapro and the occasional chaser of Ativan, I’d resigned myself to an existence of unsatisfying, infrequent orgasms.
Maybe Amir is just above the rules of SSRIs and mortals.
That’s the only explanation I can consider as he kisses me hard, dragging me closer to a release I’m desperate and aching for. When I hear a noise, it takes a few seconds to realize it’s coming from me, that I’m whimpering needy sounds into Amir’s mouth as I rock against his hand buried in my cunt.
“Oh, fuck!” I gasp. “Oh, fuck, oh, fuck—”
“So vocal for me.” He crooks his fingers a bit more sharply and I arch again, giving a sound somewhere between a yelp and a keen. “And so responsive. Have you not gotten off in a while, hmm?”
I really, really haven’
The last guy I fucked was back in school, a few weeks before we graduated, then the week of graduation itself.
It was…subpar. If I’m being kind, I could say lackluster. But I’d just wanted to see, after upping my Lexapro for the third time and feeling a bit better about things, if I could still get what I needed out of sex.
Neither time had proved successful for me, though afterwards he told me I was ‘so great’ and ‘so hot.’
Thinking back, those were about the only things he ever said while he was fucking me.
Compared to Teddy from mortician school, Amir is truly something else.
“I don’t—”
“I’m not complaining. How could I ever complain about something like that, hmm?” He kisses me again, then his mouth wanders down my throat as I tilt my head back against the smooth marble. “How could I complain about you being perfect for me?”
He bites down against my throat and thrusts his fingers into me once more. I gasp, my body stiffens, and I close my eyes against the oppressive darkness of the mausoleum.
There’s something about the way my release shudders through me that feels a little different, and suddenly I realize it’s because my hands are now pressed to the engravings on the smooth marble of the crypts, running over letters like I’m reading braille, tracing names while I come around Amir’s fingers.
It should really bother me, but death has always been a comfort instead of a fear.
“Oh, fuck, Amir.” His name tingles on my lips while he fingers me through my orgasm, before finally he slips his fingers free and kisses me again. And again. Until I’m breathless and boneless against the marble.
“Come on.” He’s on his feet before I know what’s happening, and I’m being pulled up as well, though more gently than I would’ve expected.
“What?” I stumble out after him, into the moonlight, finally able to see more than just his silhouette.
Instead of giving me an answer, Amir turns. Out here, in the moonlight, his eyes are dark instead of honey-gold. Shadowed, glimmering, and fixed only on me. “Perfect,” he murmurs. “My perfect doll.”
I can’t help the shudder at the word, and I’m unsure I like how it makes me feel.
“I’m not your doll,” I find myself saying, only for Amir to close the distance between us with his hand on my hip, pulk=ling me against him.
“Aren’t you?” he asks softly. “Because from where I’m standing…
” He looks me up and down, his eyes trailing and wandering at his leisure.
“You’re my perfect, pretty doll.” Amir’s grip tightens as I shiver, and if anything, he seems to enjoy the feeling of unease that permeates my body. “Not only that.” He lets out a sigh.
“You lost. Again. So let’s talk about the consequences, Nell. Because after testing me today, there really should be some.” His hand moves up to my throat once more, and his other moves to toy with the necklace he’d given me. “Don’t you think?”
“I didn’t think—”
“I know you didn’t think.” The sweet understanding coupled with the condescension has my stomach twisting, hot and guilty and ashamed.
I don’t like the feeling.
I shouldn’t like it.
“Two consequences, then. One for losing, and one for testing me.” He swipes a finger over my bottom lip and pulls me even closer. “I’ll go easy on you tonight, I think. Because…” His eyes trail down my body again, like he can’t get enough of seeing me in clothes he picked out.
“Because you are you. Tomorrow, you will show me what you’re wearing before you leave your apartment. That is your first consequence.”
I don’t reply. I don’t understand this strange desire of his for control—for an entry into my life. But given that there are plenty of worse things he could ask for, I don’t think I’m going to complain.
“Deal?”
I nod, but he gives a soft ‘tsk’ with his tongue. “When I ask you a question, you will give me a verbal answer,” Amir chastises lightly. “So let us try again. Do we have a deal, little mortician?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Second.” He pauses to look at me, studying my face, my expression, and from the way his gaze dips, my mouth. “Answer me honestly. If you don’t, I’ll be disappointed, and I’ll have to think of a worse consequence.”
But he doesn’t continue until I give him one quick, shaky nod and another murmured, “Yes,” of agreement.
“When you were hiding from me, were you hoping I wouldn’t find you—or hoping I would?”
The answer is obvious, and I open my mouth to give him a quick reply. Of course I didn’t want him to find me. That would be insane.
I just need to say it.
I just need to open my mouth and—
“I don’t know.”
What the fuck was that, Nell? I scream at my subconscious to figure out where I went wrong, and my eyes flick up to Amir’s gaze in the moonlight. “I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t apologize.” My heart skips a beat or seven when he strokes his thumb over my lower lip. “I asked you for your honesty, and you gave it perfectly.” He cups my face in both hands, his touch soft and way too close to being perfect.
“Now, go home, Nell. Go home and sleep and when you wake up”—he leans into me until I can feel his breath on my lips—“try to remember how good my fingers felt, instead of regretting crying out for me like the perfect thing you are.”