Chapter Eleven #2
“You ask too many questions.” I’ll never tell her that I don’t mind it. She already has enough control over me as is.
“I’ve asked a total of one.” Contrary to our usual push and pull, her bratty response holds no bite to it. Still, I can’t help but push every single one of her buttons.
"That's one too many.” I don’t need to look at her to know she’s rolling her eyes at my clap back, but that’s all right.
She’s about to start her metamorphosis from the hungry caterpillar looking for a way to fill that lonely gap inside her chest, to the titanium-armored butterfly whose wings could slice open a carcass.
Turning into one of three open parking spaces in front of the Nutty Grind—Blue Hills Grove’s fancy coffee shop where Berkleigh gets her daily dose of sugar with a hint of coffee—I turn off the engine and narrow my eyes at my neighbor.
“Don’t fucking move.” I wait until I get physical confirmation that she’s ready to listen to simple instructions.
Knowing Berkleigh, she’s capable, on a whim, of deciding she can walk home in an effort to feel independent and strong or some shit.
She’s both of those things, as the last few days have shown, but I need her to stay in the fucking truck so I can take her to my favorite place in the world.
“Yeah, because walking around town in slippers is exactly what I need. The rumors will start with me losing my mind and trashing my office, to me literally losing my brain and turning into a flesh-eating zombie. I’m good, I’ll stay here.
” As she speaks, she looks at me with a playful smile on her face and I can’t help the need to taste her again.
Spoiler alert, psychopaths have little impulse control unless we’re actively trying to push them down.
Sitting in this truck with Berkleigh’s blood and cum still coating my dick and the taste of her on my tongue is like a physical wall between me and my impulse controls.
In other words, I have none and give zero fucks about it.
My hand flies out and my fingers wrap around her throat hard enough to get her attention, but not enough to cause her too much pain.
I pull her to me, meeting her halfway, and my dick goes instantly hard at how pliant and willing she is to bend to my silent demands.
Her mouth opens, her tongue dances with mine, and her moans fill the cab of my truck as I bruise her very soul with just that one kiss.
I know this because it’s exactly how I feel.
Like my lungs have been waiting the past twenty years for her breath to fill them.
It’s a bunch of bullshit, that’s what that is. I don’t do these kinds of feelings. It’s impossible for me to have fucking feelings like this, it’s what I’ve been told practically my entire life.
I must be mirroring her emotions.
One of my therapists talked about MTS—mirror touch synesthesia—but she didn’t describe it quite this way.
It has to be this, though, there’s no other logical explanation for the heat in my chest and the overwhelming need to stay right where I am, with my mouth fused to her mouth and my lips feeding from her lips.
Fuck. Maybe I just need more coffee.
The effort it takes to pull away from her actually pisses me off.
My hand, the traitorous bastard, doesn’t move, though.
It stays right there, wrapped around her throat as I take in her kiss-swollen wet lips and pinkened cheeks with brazen intensity.
She’s affected by my dominance and, contrary to most people in my life, there isn’t an ounce of fear swimming in her dilated blue eyes. What a fucking turn on.
“Act like a brat, Sweet Bee, and I’ll punish you like one. Stay fucking put. Understand?” The way I stress the word “sweet” makes it sound like its complete opposite.
To my surprise, she nods, her stare wavering as she glances down at my lips then back up at my eyes.
“I won’t move an inch.” Her little pink tongue darts out to lick her lips like the simple act of looking at me makes her mouth dry out with lust.
Without thought, my own tongue takes a long sweep across my lips, only comforting me in my theory that all of these…feelings…are an illusion.
“Good girl.” Because I can’t control it, I pull her in for a quick, barely-there-yet-hard kiss before I open the truck door and jog to the shop.
As I walk inside, I look over my shoulder to check on her.
No, that can’t be right. I’m not checking on her, I’m just making sure she’s following my instructions.
“Hey, Tanner. How you doing today?” As easy as it is to feel comfortable around Berkleigh, to actually be myself when I’m around her, it’s near torture pretending to smile and be nice to old high school friends—a term I use lightly.
“How’s it going, Olivia?” Avoiding eye contact so she can’t see the boredom in my gaze, I look up at the menu, even though I know exactly what I want. Coping Mechanisms 101.
“All good for me.” She leans in closer, not overtly flirting but giving me clear vibes that she wouldn’t mind riding my dick again. “I haven’t heard from you, thought maybe we could go out or something?”
Giving myself a little pat on the back for not turning into a complete asshole, I purse my lips and look down at her with soft eyes.
“Sorry, I’m seeing someone.” As soon as the words spew from between my lips, I realize two things.
First…what the fuck did I just say? Since when am I seeing someone?
The image of Berkleigh’s cunt spread open for my cock and taking a good, hard fuck like she was made for me pops into my mind. The thought of having only her pussy for the rest of my life doesn’t even piss me off or make me want to volunteer for a year-long mission. Huh…
My second realization is that I just voiced it out loud in the biggest rumor mill this side of the Mason Dixon with said someone sitting in the passenger seat of my truck.
By tomorrow at noon, we’ll be married with three kids if these gossip addicts have their way.
Fuck it, it’s no skin off my back and I’m sure Berkleigh would prefer the townfolk talking about who she’s fucking rather than what happened to her the other night.
And since we’re about to bring justice for her, it’s better to make sure no one ever hears about it so that when their bodies disappear, she won’t be on anyone’s radar.
As if on cue, Olivia’s eyes dart over my shoulder and I don’t need to follow her line of sight to know she’s staring straight at Berkleigh.
“Oh. I thought you two hated each other?" It sounds like a question but I don’t miss the accusatory tone lacing her words.
I shrug, then give her my best boyish smile—one I practiced for hours in front of a mirror to make sure I looked approachable.
“We used to but we’re adults now.” And the asshole is back.
“Oh my God! You’re like a romance novel. You know, enemies to lovers?” Fuck my life, I have no idea what she’s talking about but decide it’s best that I go along with it.
“Something like that.” Fuck, I just want my coffee. It should be pretty elementary given we’re in a fucking coffee shop.
Olivia visibly melts, her eye lashes honest to fuck fluttering, and I’m half expecting little cartoon hearts to bubble up and float around her head. “That’s so sweet.”
I don’t respond, just in case more word vomit spews out, and I definitely ignore the unfamiliar need to turn around and look at Berkleigh for the sole reason that I want to.
The bell over the door rings and Olivia springs into action. “I got you both!”
Three minutes later—two years in mental exhaustion time—I’m walking out with two coffees. Well, one coffee. The other is some kind of concoction that smells like sugar and milk. That shit’s gonna put her in an early grave.
Just as I walk out, I see Cameron, who used to bully Berkleigh thinking she was pleasing me, talking through the open passenger window. My spine stiffens and my eyes narrow.
My growl must have its intended effect, because Cameron takes one look at me and gives Berkleigh a quick wave before speed walking away.
When I slide into my truck, I hold out the cup to Berkleigh and wait for her to look at me. I won’t forbid her to speak to that hypocrite, that’s crazy talk, but I will make sure Cameron never fucking comes near Berkleigh again.
“Enjoy it. That’s your last one.”
Berkleigh chuckles but it dies on her delicious pink lips when she realizes I’m serious.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”
“We’ll see.”
For the next fifteen minutes, we drive in silence as she downs her poor excuse for caffeine.
When I turn onto a dirt track road, she stiffens in the passenger seat as her head swivels from side to side trying to figure out where we are.
“Wh—” I cut her off with a tsk, reminding her that questions are unnecessary.
“You’re impossible.”
It’s not like she’s in danger with me, at least not in the traditional sense.
We stop in the middle of the woods, where a natural grassy area thrives surrounded by birch trees.
It’s a blissfully secluded plot of land that I bought just days after I returned to Blue Hills Grove.
In the center of the clearing, I’ve set up bales of hay ten feet apart, with targets stuck to wooden branches.
“Tanner?”
“Time to leave your old self behind, Sweet Bee. Lesson one starts now.”