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“Don’t fucking talk about that,” he growled. “I was drunk.” “All three times?”
He needed me. I dug my fingers into his scalp. He had to realize he needed me. No one was going to hold him up like I would. No one.
“Fuck you,” he sneered, pulling his mouth away. I grinned and flicked his lip with my tongue. “Only if you want to.”
“Damon, stop.” I hovered my mouth over his, stroking him a little faster as I nudged my knee between his legs, parting them. “What is she wearing?”
“That’s all you can do, isn’t it?” he said, cleaning and zipping up. “You can only fuck people or fuck with them. That’s the only way you can connect.”
She doesn’t want to belong to you. She doesn’t want to belong to you. Oh, I knew. And I was going to take great pleasure in delivering lots of what she didn’t want.
That was the first fucking time my mother ever touched me like that. The first episode of what turned into years of her on me.
She’s gone, I told myself. She’ll never take from me again. No one does.
I didn’t want to know that I was like him or he was like me or that life followed patterns and history repeated itself. I wasn’t him, and Winter wasn’t my mother, and no one had been where we were. This is special. It’s different. It’s unique and all mine. She and I . . . we’re alone in the universe. No one was us.
My kind of fun has a price. Better enjoy myself while I can.
“Did I kill you?” I asked. But he didn’t laugh or say anything for a moment. Just breathed. “My heart . . .” he said. “Shit.” I remembered what he said last week at my house. Do you know what I have to do to get it to beat like that? “I scared you.” “Not an emotion I’m used to being on the receiving end of,” he mused.
“This is black,” he said. “Fear, falling, release. Excitement, risk, danger.”
“Can you show me red?” I asked. I didn’t want the night to end. He paused for a moment and then whispered over his shoulder. “Someday.” “Are you still going to hurt me?” I joked. But he paused again, his whisper barely audible. “Someday,” he said.
“I can fuck my beautiful fiancée anytime I want,” he went on, “and she looks really amazing dressed only in that quarter-of-a-million-dollar necklace around her neck right now. A necklace I bought without asking my daddy for the money.”
They were fighting. While they were having sex. It was weird.
“And now you know . . .” I said, “I always close my eyes when I come.” In high school, he’d asked if I closed my eyes in pleasure, and now he had his answer.
My ex-friends were the only people who could protect those in Winter’s life I threatened, and that’s why I needed Rika on my side. Seemed she was tired of waiting for me to keep my end of the bargain, though, so she was trying to undo hers. She gave me Winter. Now she was trying to take her away.
“God, you’re like a female version of me,” I said. “It’s turning me on.” “Makes sense. You love yourself best.”
“You won’t hurt me.” “And why not?” “Because we’re friends.” “You don’t know the meaning of the word!” she snapped. “You don’t care about me!” “I would kill for you,” I shot back, getting in her face. The incredulous look on her face, like she didn’t know if she should be touched or laughing, mimicked exactly what was happening in my head right now.
“I’m sixteen, and I’ve never been kissed.” I put my hands on his chest, feeling my breasts grazing his body. “I waited for you.” “Winter . . .” “I waited for you,” I repeated, panting and brushing his lips with mine. “But I won’t wait forever.”
“You’re so silly.” “Tame compared to what you’re used to?” she teased. “Yes.” God, if the guys found out about this . . . I needed to get her home before she made me TP a house tonight.
“You dance?” she said in my ear. “No.” “You are right now,” she pointed out. And I stopped, realizing we’d been turning in a slow circle. “I think I like this dancing even more than ballet,” she told me.
But I didn’t want to love her, either. I didn’t want it to feel like this. It couldn’t feel like this.
“I’m afraid to . . .” I couldn’t catch my breath all of a sudden. “I’m afraid I’ll make you—” “I’m not dirty,” she rushed, remembering what I said earlier in the car and knowing what I was trying to say. “You’re not making me dirty. There is no you. There’s no me. This is us. Just us.”
“When can I see red?” she asked.
When you find out who just fucked you, you’re gonna see plenty of red then.
“Fucker, no one’s talking to you,” Will barked back.
Really, how was he Damon’s best friend back in the day? He was so different. Did he like abuse or something?
“I will never have your children,” I told him. It was Damon. It was my sister’s husband. And I’d rather die than raise a family under his thumb. He’d be a terrible father. But I felt him approach and stop just in front of me, his deep voice quiet but steady. “You’re going to have lots of my children,” he informed me.
“I want to talk to you in private,” he said. I straightened my spine, meeting him eye to eye. “Private?” I teased. “Like steam-room private? I’m game.”
“No one will miss you,” Michael whispered, threatening me. And I almost laughed. Bet his dick grew another fourth of an inch off that big-boy threat.
He always made Rika solve her own problems, because he didn’t see her as a possession but rather an extension of himself. He didn’t want a puppy. He wanted a partner. But there comes a point when you have to defend your house and take charge. And not just in the bedroom. Which was all she needed him for.
Or do we do all the work and you just watch?
Will was laughing already, lifting his phone to record. But Kai grabbed it out of his hand to stop him. “Fuck no.” Will’s mouth dropped open and he looked confused, but then the light dawned. “Oh, right.” Yeah. Not going down that road again. No videos.
It was a prank you were never really too old for. I always dreamed of having this room in my house someday with splatters of red paint all over the walls and sheets, so I could dump drunk friends in there who would wake up in the light of day the next morning, shitting their pants at the massacre on the walls. The small delights in life.
Years ago, this was what it was like with us. Before we realized fun had a price and anger clouded everything as we latched on to anyone to blame. Especially me. Tonight was a bittersweet reminder of everything I’d ruined, and they hadn’t forgotten that it was mostly my fault. We’d happily fallen back into the things that helped us find each other for a few minutes. The same needs, the same passion for thrills, and the same desire to break away from restraints. But they couldn’t forgive. And this couldn’t happen.
“It’s comforting how it’s always the same,” I said. “How all you cunts turn into sluts once you’ve got a good dicking.”
“Don’t be an asshole, man,” I told him. “Maybe she’s just horny, period. Bitches have needs, too, after all.”
“He doesn’t like virgins. He never wants to be that important to someone, and it’s a lot less complicated to fuck people who know there’s a difference between sex and love.”
“She either gets beat in.” I shut off the car, killed the lights, and locked eyes with her in the rearview mirror. “Or fucked in.”
I had no respect for her. She had no value. She was a warm body.
“Get a fucking life of your own, Rika, and stay the hell away from us. No one wants you.”
I wanted to fuck with her. Maybe fuck her, too, or anyone just to get my head clear—but goddammit—that wasn’t . . . He wasn’t stopping. She wasn’t having fun. She believed she was in actual danger, and all I could feel was my mother on top of me like Trevor was on top of her. It gets hard when I do that. That means you like it. No, it didn’t.
All that spirit, and I beat it down. I treated her like garbage, and instead of feeling powerful, I only saw a little boy on the ground, crying and heartsick, because he couldn’t stop what was happening to him.
Please no. Please don’t find out like this. Fuck.
Just die and leave me alone.
“I hate you!” she growled. “You’re a horror, and you had to lie because you knew I’d never want you! No one would ever love you! Get out!”
I’d changed her forever. I’d bent and twisted and broken everything that made her the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.
I love . . . I hate you. Yeah, I hate you, too. I just want a hot piece of ass. Yeah?
“I hate you,” I said, a sob thick in my throat, “and I’ll hate you forever, so do what you’re going to do, because I’m dead. I’m dead already.”
