Be With Me

by Gabrielle Sands

To all the girls who gave too much and asked for too little—no wonder you prefer the villain who tells you to be selfish while he burns the world to keep you.

“I’m not a chew toy,” he said through gritted teeth. “Fucking behave.”

“You know, most men have to earn a woman moaning their name, and you definitely haven’t done that.”

“If I’d known you were the enemy, I would have enjoyed having you beneath me even more.”

While she wasn’t looking, I swiped her lip gloss off her desk and shoved it into my pocket. Why? Fuck if I knew. Probably because I was losing my goddamn mind.

“I want you to kiss me. And not just some fucking peck. I want you to kiss me and mean it.”

Mia Morales had infected my black heart with a virus that compelled me to do right by her. Fuck knows if I’d ever recover.

“Not if you value your ability to breathe without a respirator.”

“I can’t fucking sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see you so vividly that I can practically taste you.” Romolo leaned in, brushing his lips against my temple. “I don’t know what the fuck you’ve done to me, Berry, but I need to get you out of my system. And I think you need to get me out of yours too.”

“Simple. You. Me. A sturdy bed with a headboard, and a box of condoms. Remember how you said I hadn’t earned you moaning my name? Let me fucking earn it.”

Good girls didn’t sleep with gangsters. But maybe I was tired of being good.

“I love you.” The words scorched their way out of me. “I love you like I’ve never loved anything in my goddamn life. It’s terrifying. It’s relentless. You’ve gotten under my skin and into my soul, and you didn’t even try. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being mine and became yours.”

“I wasn’t living before I met you, Mia. I was just existing. Trying to drown the parts of me I couldn’t face. But you—you came in with all your light, and suddenly there was nowhere left to hide. You cracked me open. Made me feel again.”