Chapter 18 #2
“Fuck you,” I sneer. “If you won’t give me back my phone, I’ll take yours. Even if that means—” He whirls us around with a sigh, shoving me face first onto his bed.
“What does that mean, hmm?” he asks, prowling around the bed.
He digs into his pocket and pulls out his phone while I watch, laying it on a shelf between two plants.
“What are you going to do to me, Winnie?” There’s a challenge in his eyes that makes my blood heat in my veins, and I sit back on my knees, panting, before scrambling to my feet.
“I’ll make you sorry you asked,” I snap.
Though, that’s a vague way of admitting I’m not exactly sure how I’ll either locate my phone or steal his.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize going home is no longer my top priority for the situation.
No, I want to prove him wrong. I want the last word, like always, and to prove that Cassian doesn’t get to make decisions for me or boss me around like he’s more than a stranger to me.
But something in me whispers that maybe, just maybe, that’s not all I really want.
“Come on then, princess. Make me sorry,” Cass taunts, lifting up a hand in a literal invitation. “Make me feel remorse for the first time in my life, won’t you?”
That brings me up short and I look at him, brows furrowed in slight surprise. “You don’t feel—”
“Later.” He rolls his eyes. “Don’t ruin our game with feelings.” His words make me pause, and I can’t help studying his expression, even when he glares at me with irritation.
“Okay, all right. Don’t get your panties in a wad.
” I hold my hands up, fingers splayed in surrender.
“I get it, I so get it. You missed me so much that you stole my phone so we’d spend quality time together.
Since you figured that’s the only way to make me stick around.
” I glance at his phone on the shelf as he stares at me, leaning on the wall beside it.
It’s an invitation.
It’s a fucking challenge.
“I think if I can grab your phone off that shelf, you should give me back mine and pay for my ride home,” I announce, the bed between us as I prop my hands on my hips.
“Oh, yeah?” He glances at his phone, then at me.
“All right, but if you get something for winning, I get something for you losing. When you can’t get my phone from the shelf, which I won’t touch, by the way, I get to teach you a lesson.
I get to teach you the consequences of running that pretty, snotty mouth of yours. Fair?”
It…doesn’t sound fair. Not one bit. My stomach twists into origami shapes and untwists rapidly, leaving me feeling a little nauseous in an anxious, expectant way. “You don’t think I can get it,” I accuse, striding a few steps closer to him.
He rolls his shoulders in a shrug. “I think you’re incredibly confident, and more than a little arrogant.
Tell you what.” He still doesn’t move, doesn’t even tense as I take another two steps closer.
“Quit whining about wanting to go home, sweetheart. Stop trying to get my phone, and we’ll go back to the couch to watch your favorite movie.
We’ll order something incredibly unhealthy and greasy, and you can sleep off all of this. I’ll take you back home…eventually.”
“Oh, wow.” I drag out the word theatrically. “Gosh, that’s such a nice offer. Really generous. Do you know what I think, though?”
“What do you think?” he asks, voice weary, as if my attitude is tiring him out. I’d feel bad, maybe, if I didn’t see the gleam of excitement in the icy blue of his gaze.
In response, I smile sweetly at him…and launch the pillow my fingers are touching into his face.
He jerks away from it, hands up to block it from hitting his face, just as I slide by him in the space between him and the bed.
I duck when he reaches for me, hearing the low curses that fall from his lips as a thrill of satisfaction goes through me.
He’s too easy sometimes—
His grip on my wrist is enough to pull a startled yelp from my mouth just as I’m reaching out for his phone. I feel a shiver of fear go through me just as he uses the momentum of me staggering back to force me to keep going until I’m once again on my hands and knees on his bed.
But I don’t intend to give up so easily.
Instead, I surge upward, pushing to my feet…
or, well, that’s my goal at least. Before I can make much progress, he’s suddenly over me, a snarled chuckle in my ear as he keeps me on the bed with his own frame.
“A pillow?” Cass growls in my ear as I pant. “You threw my fucking pillow at me?”
“You clearly needed to be humbled if this is your reaction to a pillow in your face,” I huff, bending my elbows enough that I can slam upward into him in an attempt to get him to fall backward off of me. Instead, I end up flush against his body with his arm wrapped around my waist.
“If someone needs to be humbled here, little girl, it is most definitely you. And luckily for both of us, I’ve been wanting to do it since you opened your mouth when I bought you hot chocolate. You know what else I think?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to—” He cuts me off by flipping me over, my back hitting the bed just as he crawls over me to straddle my hips, one hand at my throat as he surveys me coldly.
“I think you didn’t hear no enough as a child.
Being on your own and making your own decisions has made you a little arrogant, hasn’t it?
Your nephew would do anything you say because he looks up to you.
Reagan would never disagree with you because she’s in love with you.
So you get away with all kinds of bullshit. ”
“Do not,” I disagree instantly. “And Reagan isn’t in love with me, you weirdo.”
Cass only fixes me with a pointed look. “Such a bratty little thing,” he goes on. “You’ve been begging me since the night I broke into your house to put you in your place.”
“Oh, I think we’ve tried this before, Cass,” I’m quick to sneer. “My fucking place—”
“Is wherever I want you.” His fingers tighten, cutting off my air.
“Maybe no one else has the patience or the desire to deal with a brat who always wants to have the last word, but I certainly do. Frankly, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get you here for days.
I didn’t want to do it at your house that first time.
I wanted to be nice to you.” He leans down slowly until his face is just inches above mine.
“I didn’t want to scare you. But when you’re begging for it like this?
When you’re all but demanding I give you what you need?
” He chuckles and moves until his lips are brushing my ear.
“How could I ever refuse?” Cass nips at my ear, pulling a yelp from my lips. I move to grab his shirt, but suddenly my hands are slammed above my head on the mattress, accompanied by a soft snarl from him. “Keep them there, Winnie,” he murmurs. “Can you do that for me?”
His gaze finds mine as my fingers curl against my palms, a refusal on my lips. But something in his eyes—something strange and a little bit terrifying—causes the words to die on my lips. A shudder goes through me, and I narrow my eyes at him before nodding once.
“Well, I don’t believe you. But it’s a good start.
” He chuckles. Letting go, Cass quickly drags my shirt and bra over my head, leaving me squirming and vulnerable on the bed.
“You’re adorable when you’re nervous.” His hands find my leggings and he watches my face as he moves to tug them and my underwear down my legs until he can pull them off as well.
“This time you have to take yours off too,” I murmur, narrowing my eyes up at him. It’s so hard not to do anything with my hands when I feel so exposed under his gaze, and I can’t help wiggling against the bed to try to work out some of the nervousness.
“I’ll consider it.” Smoothing his palms up my thighs, he lets out a soft breath of approval. “Fuck, you’re so much more beautiful than I ever could’ve imagined.”
“You make it sound like it’s something you have imagined,” I comment absently, just to talk back.
“I have.” He says it so simply, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“I’ve imagined you in so many different ways and how I’d take you over and over again.
” He leans down to brush his lips against my throat.
“And yet the real thing is so much better than any fantasy I could come up with.” His hands tighten on my hips and he moves, urging me to sit up as he gets to his feet beside the bed.
There’s a question on my tongue, but his grin cuts me off before I can even start.
“I’m going to show you something better to do with that mouth of yours,” he purrs, reaching up to cradle my face in his hands as I sit on the edge of the bed.
“But I think you’ll look better on your knees on the floor, don’t you?
No.” He presses his fingers to my lips. “I don’t need you to answer that, Winnie.
I don’t need your opinion. Get on the floor, on your knees, or I’ll make you. ”
A big part of me wants to see what he means by making me. But that look is still in his eyes, and it makes me unsure enough that I slide to the floor on my knees as he trades places to sit on the bed.
“Good girl. See? It’s not so hard to be good for me, is it?” I roll my eyes at his teasing, only for him to reach out and grip my chin, dragging my face up to his. “Don’t roll your eyes at me,” he warns. “So far, you still get to come tonight. But if you push it, that’ll change real quick.”
“I know how to get myself off, you know,” I can’t help mumbling. “So if you don’t—” His hand shifts to my hair, gripping it hard and yanking my head back to expose my throat. Staring at his glass ceiling, I hear the sound of the zipper on his jeans, and my stomach twists in anticipation.
And then I remember just how big Cass is.