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“ID number 85359,”
My pulse kicks up. How would it feel to push her? To undo her? To break her fucking glasses? Because I got the sense she might like her glasses broken. Yeah, the distance between prim and primitive is not so very motherfucking far. I wonder if Ms. Winslow knows about that.
He holds it out to me on a finger, closer. “I don’t bite,” he says. “Much.”
Her gaze finds mine, and something flares in me. Because I would catch her. And the hottest thing is that I think she knows it. Maybe nobody has ever caught her, but I would. I would catch her. I would keep her. Make her mine.
They say there are two types of fear—the kind that has you running far, far away, and the kind that shakes you so deeply that you can’t look away.
“Good girl.”
Oh God. Nicely. Correcting my grammar even at gunpoint. I’m so fucking hot for her, I think I might burst into flames.
“The fight to not feel this. The fight against desire.”
Pain is a funny thing. We fight so hard to avoid it, almost more than death. But it’s the only thing that binds us. Going through pain together and coming out on the other side is the only form of friendship I’ve ever known.
“Sometimes, Abigail, you have to punch a fucking hole in your soul to survive.” I might be driving like a maniac, I don’t know. We’re off the highway, but I’m still going highway speeds. I reach over and grab her, pull her clear across the seat to me. “Most people never have to find out what kind of shit they’re really capable of. Most people don’t have to turn themselves into something they hate just to make sure they can get that next breath.”
“You and me, we survive, okay?”
Death and kisses. Blood and sex. They twine together in a dark braid I bury deep inside. He pulls it out of me, rips it from my heart and leaves my throat raw and tight.
He’s not asking; he’s taking. He takes my air and breathes it back into me. He takes control of me, and I can finally give in. I can finally let go.
“If you think I’m going to cooperate with you, you’re insane.” He laughs, low and a little bit wild. “What ever gave you the idea I’m sane?”
“Good girl,” he says. Oh, I definitely want to hurt him.
And yeah, she’s gone somewhere, but I would fuck her until I find her again, in that place where she’s gone, or maybe until I find some missing part of me, some part that isn’t empty and hollow and wrong.
I want to hurt her and I want to protect her. Break her and shield her.
“Because I had to get you out of here.” He closes his hand around my upper arm and pulls me up. “I’ll always come for you. You’re mine.”
“Don’t let go,” she whispers, and my heart surges. “I won’t,” I whisper, pulling her in and kissing her forehead.
“Shhh,” I whisper. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.” Anyone else, that is.
My mind understands him, why he is the way he is. But it’s my heart that aches for him, wanting whatever shards of love he can give me, jagged, even knowing I’ll get cut in the process.
And now I know why I’m crying: because I’m losing, just like he said I would, because I want to be in this prison of his, enclosed by him, the object of his intense focus, and I know it’s wrong—it’s a wrong thing to like. Maybe it’s myself I’m losing. Maybe it’s my sanity. I just know I have to get away.
The sight of her broken doesn’t make me want to help her. It makes me want to fuck her all over again.
This isn’t a fucking fairy tale. I’m not going to turn into a good guy because her cunt is made of velvet and rainbows.
“You need to reach the hell down inside yourself and find that little corner in there where you know things are okay. That part of you nobody can take away.”
“You don’t know what it’s like when she’s yours, and you would do goddamn motherfucking anything for her.”
One blade to protect my brothers, one blade for vengeance.”
“You deserve to have things nice.”
We walked over to look and it was this massive blackened shell, hung with icicles like diamonds against the blue, blue sky. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Grayson is like that house. Stunning in his destruction.
“They didn’t take anything important, baby. They didn’t take what’s important.”
They don’t get that she’s the missing part of me. The best part of me.
I run my finger along her cheek. “I like it when you talk classification,” I murmur.
A breath shudders out of her, but she’s a good girl. She’s obedient. That’s why she works so well for me. She’s spent her whole life teaching herself to obey.
Not my Abby. She has to speak in library words as she gives me the hottest, dirtiest, smartest blowjob on the planet.
But the truth is, whenever I’m around him, I’m ready for him to use me and mount me and fuck me. I’m done fighting it. I want to lose to him. I want him to make me lose.
“I’m tougher than I look.” His expression sobers. “I know that, sweetheart. You’d have to be, to survive me.”
Some people have a relationship that’s sunshine and roses. Ours is darkness and vengeance.
“I’m not a good man. I’m not even human.”
“Those monsters never took what was important in him. Tell him I love him.”
And so I do the only thing for her I can: I force myself to stop following her. I do what I promised I never would: I let her go.
“Baby.” She stands. “Grayson,” she says, a sob in her voice. “You came.” “Of course I came.” I grab her face and kiss her wild, like the starving man that I am.
“It’s your book, Abby. Your story to tell.” He wants me to write down my story. And he won’t settle for anything fake, just like I wouldn’t for him. He wants it real. Raw. He always does.
He gets horny when I do anything that looks academic.
I’m his nice thing, his possession, and he dresses me up in every color and style and fabric he can find.
I want to see her eyes when I take her. She’s my sky, and I’ll watch her as I come.
She hated me once, but it’s not hate I see in her eyes now. Not even fear. It’s love.
I don’t deserve her love, but I have it anyway. I don’t deserve her at all, but she’s mine. Beautiful, smart. And so fucking strong.
“The day I made you mine.”
