Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
GRIM
Five Years Ago
Gemma Crowne was acting strange. Her family’s famous Fourth of July party was happening at Crowne Hall. But instead of joining kings and actors and whoever the fuck else, she was at my beach, staring off into the black ocean, her silky white dress swirling in the wind.
This bad habit of mine started years ago.
Gemma has been a secret obsession since the day I found her crying in that empty high school room. It started slow, watching her in class, figuring out what she liked and what she pretended to like. Making sure her favorite cheat snack appeared in her locker (Cheetos with ranch, fucking weird).
When some jock asshole tried to grab her and force her into his lap, it escalated into breaking his good throwing arm the day before a college scout was supposed to see him.
I would have done so much worse, and had.
After we graduated, and I no longer had her in my sights, it escalated further. From following her on every social media she had, to spying through her window, watching her cry when no one thought she was looking.
Finding out who made her cry, and making them pay.
It was hacking her computer, finding the porn she watched, and jerking off to the same video that made her come. It was studying the erotica she read. It was memorizing her secret fantasies.
It was definitely fucked up. Amoral. I should have left it—us—in that empty classroom. But my world had always been like an old movie, seen in black and white, where some parts had faded into time and lost sound completely.
But Gemma?
She was Technicolor.
And when I was with her, the world was Technicolor too.
Gemma took a step toward the ocean. I was ripped out of the past, locked on her movement. She walked until the waves hit her thighs, dress sticking to her skin. She stayed like that for a moment. The moon rippled on the black ocean waves.
Then she dove, head disappearing under the black.
One wave crashed.
I knew I should leave it alone. Let it be. We’d had one interaction almost three years ago and had never spoken since.
Another wave crashed, still no Gemma.
She didn’t know who I was beyond the rumors. Our worlds were so far apart they may as well have existed in different timelines.
Except that one moment three years ago was enough to tattoo her inside me indelibly.
A third wave crashed. Before I could think, I was in the water. My jeans sticking to my legs and weighing me down. I waded quickly to where she’d been, then dove.
Gemma floated above the ocean’s sandy floor. Moonlight illumined her in the black ocean water, pale and ghostly. Eyes closed, she almost looked…peaceful.
I ripped her out, throwing her to the sand.
She was still.
“Fuck.”
I bent over her, pressing my hands into her chest. What was the song you were supposed to sing? “Stayin’ Alive”?
Ironic.
I pushed and pushed against her chest. She didn’t move, her face frozen in uncanny peace. Shit. I tilted her head back, placing my mouth against hers, and breathed.
It took three breaths and two more rounds of pumping, but then Gemma convulsed, coughing up brackish water. She turned to her side, purging the Atlantic from her lungs. After three rounds, she fell to her back on the sand.
For a moment she stared up at me without walls. Eyes wide and teary, glossed in wonder. Something passed on her face then, a look that would haunt me forever. Like she knew this would happen. Like she was waiting for me.
Then she blinked, and it shattered.
She shoved at my chest. “What the fuck are you doing?” I stood and she scrambled to lift herself up to her elbows, gaze burning with anger.
I turned from her, facing the ocean, and reached for the collar at the back of my neck. I pulled the wet shirt over my head, dropping it to the sand. She could see the tattoo I was never supposed to show.
Twistedly, I wanted that.
The waves crashed in a cathartic, preordained order.
Their bruised blue color was too similar to the dark rings circling Gemma’s baby blue irises.
I was content to have watching her from afar be my life.
Knowing her without ever revealing myself.
Content with the small windows I’d carved for myself into her soul. But then she tried to end it.
And I felt something inside me snap.
I spun around. Gemma hadn’t moved. Her white dress stuck to all the illicit, mouthwatering parts of her, nipples pink beneath the fabric, a small triangle of hair visible between her thighs. I wanted to bury my face in it.
I’d imagined this for a while. I’d seen glimpses of Gemma when she changed—the blade of a tanned collarbone, the side of her naked thigh. Like the fucked-up pervert I was, that was what I get off to. I jerked it to glimpses of Gemma Crowne.
“Fuck you,” she bit out. “You had no right.” Her eyes dropped to my cock, where the bastard was hard.
The venom she spat didn’t match her fiery, hazy gaze, like morning sun caught in fog.
Hungry.
A better guy wouldn’t even consider taking her after she nearly died.
Over my jeans, I rubbed the hard outline of my cock. “Run, Rich Girl.”
“No,” she said. “This was none of your fucking business. You leave.”
She hadn’t lifted her eyes from my cock, mouth parting, as I continued to stroke myself.
“You sure about that?” I gripped the metal zipper. “Sure you want me to leave?”
I tugged the zipper down a few inches.
“You’re a fucking pervert,” she said, but her voice was husky with desire. A fucking supermodel voice. A voice that could sink ships.
I dragged the zipper down the rest of the way, pulling myself out. She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth, biting so the soft flesh turned white. I took a step forward, legs on either side of her hips. I palmed my cock, getting off at the look in her eyes, like she was in a trance.
Gemma slid to her knees, my cock eye level with her.
So close.
So fucking close she just had to move an inch. The same thought rippled across her eyes.
“Is this how you get off?” Her tongue darted out to lick me. So slight, just enough to tell me I wasn’t in control of this. “Finding fragile women to take advantage of?”
I knotted her hair in my hand, pulling her head back from my cock, using every last shred of control I had not to take her. The submissive haze in her defiant eyes almost tipped me over.
“Gemma Crowne is a lot of things.” I laughed. “She’s not fucking fragile.”
I released her hair, pushing her flat against the sand.
I wanted her beyond sex. I wanted to fuck her until she gave me her life so I could protect it and care for it in ways she couldn’t. Fuck her into submission so she wouldn’t even think about killing herself without my permission.
I pinned her beneath me. That soft, pliable haze glazing her eyes once more as I pulled her wrists above her head. Her eyes dropped, her lips parted.
Then she blinked, features sliding back to anger.
“Get the fuck off me, psycho.” I dodged a knee headed straight for my cock. Her dress rose with the effort, up past her thighs, too fucking close to my cock.
I pinned her legs between my thighs, immobile.
“Stop,” I gritted.
She did, for a moment, that act of obedience going straight to my cock.
Like I said, I’d studied Gemma Crowne. She didn’t get off to something usual. She wanted to be taken, to be forced, to be bent into submission. She didn’t want violence. She wanted a desire so consuming she couldn’t listen to the voice in her head.
Gemma redoubled her fighting. Keeping my grip on her wrists, I slid my hand down to the crease of her thighs. So tantalizingly close to where I wanted to go.
“What will I find when I spread your cunt?” I played in the crease between her thigh and pussy, smoothing goose bumps under my thumb.
“You’re disgusting—”
She broke off, breath catching, as I slid my hand across her bare pussy.
The moment felt illicit. Beyond her status and mine, beyond the fucked-up reason we were in the sand.
Secret desires, desires she pretended didn’t exist, reflected in her heavy-lidded gaze.
Desires that I wanted to fucking unleash.
So I teased it, teased her.
“You’re trapped, Rich Girl.” Her body melted at the threat. I squeezed her wrists, emphasizing my hold on her. “I can do whatever the fuck I want with you. You can’t stop me.” I slipped a finger inside the seam of her cunt. “But you don’t want me to stop, do you?”
A million feelings ripped through me when I touched her.
This wasn’t getting off to the same porn she watched, this wasn’t watching her through a window. I was finally touching Gemma Crowne.
I lost composure, forgetting the game we were playing, head falling on a groan. “You’re already so fucking wet.”
“It’s not for you,” she said, but her thighs pressed against mine, trying to spread against my hold. I shifted my legs, giving her more space.
Her thighs fell open instantly.
“Really?” I slid a finger inside her. I thrust in and out in a slow, controlled rhythm.
Getting off on her, on the way she battled her submission.
“This isn’t for me?” I asked, punctuating with a thrust, and the slick of her made an audible sound.
“Feels like it is. Feels like you’re being a really good girl and getting fucking soaked for me. ”
Her lips parted like she wanted to contradict me, then melted into a hazy sigh.
Still, she shook her head wordlessly, battling the feeling.
I could feel a smile on my lips as her pussy clenched around my finger.
She was so fucking perfect. I could have gotten off to just this.
I could have come on her thigh like a kid with the way her pussy gripped my finger and her eyes grew heavy with submission.
She arched, trying to get my hand deeper. I paused, finger still inside her.
“Tell me what you want, Gemma. Say it clearly.” She hesitated. I slid my finger out of her, ignoring the way her whimper went straight into my bloodstream.