12. Twelve #3
“You’re telling me you don’t want poison?” He looks down, towering over me, a handsome disaster waiting to happen. His hand lowers and leaves a trail of heat pinning my waist to the wall, causing a small whimper to escape from me.
“I’m the fucking poison. Me. One that would keep you comatose but never strong enough to kill you, even when you’d beg me to die.”
I want to look away, but I’m not the coward he thinks I am.
“You’re sick.” My tone drops, even though I’m losing the fight in me, I refuse to let him see what lies beneath; sorrow and fucked-up feelings caused by a man making me feel absolutely worthless. Maybe he’s the only one who can truly see me for who I have become.
“Why do you show up just to tear me down?” I hold my ground, but I want to sink into a cavernous abyss.
His hand curls into a fist beside my head, every muscle trembling, while his other hand deftly slides up the thin fabric of my dress, offering no resistance.
He hitches up the hem, revealing my skin that tingles under his touch as he squeezes the inside of my thigh possessively.
A sharp pain shoots through me, forcing an uninhibited shriek from my lips.
“Because every time I look at you, I think of how Joe will never come back.” He bites out each word.
Tears sting, hot and sudden, rolling down my cheeks as his eyes burn into mine, sharp enough to slice. He lets his forehead fall against the tile so close to my neck, sending goosebumps into my flesh, and I hate how my body responds to him, I hate how I can't help it.
For a split, inexplicable second, I want to reach out, wrap my arms around him, pull him closer and tell him I understand the grief and pain he feels, but then again, I’d be a fool to think I could read a man like him, let alone fix him.
Surely, it’s obvious he doesn’t want me to be the glue that puts him back together, and I’d rather drink bleach than waste energy on a deprived soul like his.
Yet, when his shoulders tremble slightly against mine, I feel that soft agony for him again. The brush of his chest, the way his hand cups my face, his scent thick in my lungs feels so intense I can taste it.
My pulse trips faster, harder, betraying me. My breath hitches as my brain screams no, but my body burns yes, and I uncontrollably rock my hips over him. A dizzying shock rolls through me.
“You’re hard.” I lift my chin, reckless on my part. “Guess I affect you more than you’d like to admit.”
For a heartbeat, he doesn’t answer. He emerges back out of my neck, and his eyes flick down to the side. I swallow hard when he presses himself deeper into my stomach. My head falls back from a need, and his mouth curves into something cruel as he’s studying my reaction of shameful desire.
The quiet stillness on his face is worse than his fury, the crushing weight of his stare while relentless knocks on the door cloud my thoughts.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” His hips press harder. “That’s not for you. Half this fucking club could get me hard faster than you. You just happened to be close enough.” The words bang into me with his next thrust over my dress.
“You think you’re special because Joe loved you?” His breath is hot at my ear with knocks on the door getting louder and louder, hitching my breath to a halt.
“You’re not. You’re nothing but a sad little girl who knows how to cry in the right man’s lap. And I don’t get hard for tears. I get hard for control.” He rasps, curling his fist in my hair and tugging it, revealing my chin to his mouth, grazing over my lips.
“I’m hard because I want to destroy you. Because I want to ruin every piece of you Joe thought was worth saving. And that thought…” His hand lifts my leg, opening them wide and wedging between them. “That thought turns me on more than anything else ever could.”
Venom. Fire and heat flood low in my stomach, a pulse between my thighs I wish I could eradicate.
“Semantics, Liam.” I breathe out and his darkened eyes meet mine.
He’s lying.
I feel it in the way his breath stutters against my cheek, in the way his jaw clenches when my lips part in a gasp. The hatred in his eyes is real, but it’s twisted with fucked-up desire when I lean an inch closer, our lips almost joined at the seams.
He wants me.
And knowing that makes me feel alive.
His thumb drags across my bottom lip, slow, mocking, breaking the spell I’m under.
“By the way, you’re going to be a good girl,” he teases with malice, terrifyingly steady. “You’re going to walk straight to Tyler and tell him to go the fuck home. Alone.”
“Or What Liam?” I writhe under him.
“Or I’ll show you what being sick really looks like.” He withdraws and, just as suddenly, pushes off the wall, as if I were filth on his hands. Leaving me trembling, he unlocks the door and storms out.
A line of girls runs in, and I slide down the wall, gasping, torn open between shame, rage, and the ache he left thrumming in my body, leaving me to wonder if I’m not just as sick as he is.
His words echo, Pathetic. Good girl, and I know I have one more thing to do tonight, and that is to make sure Tyler doesn’t come home with me. But Liam didn’t say I couldn’t go back to his place. Hello, little devil on my shoulder, my old friend.