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“I know I may seem like the nicest one, and you probably think I regret the shit I give you sometimes, and someday I’ll wake up and reevaluate my life and its purpose, but I won’t. I sleep like a baby at night.”
“Don’t you know that you can have anything you want?” His eyes searched mine. “I’ll hurt anyone for you.”
His scent hit me. Bergamot and blue cypress, and I looked up at his brown hair, perfectly styled and rich against his perfect skin and dark brows. Black lashes framed eyes that looked like the leaves surrounding a lagoon on some stupid island somewhere, and for a moment, I was lost. Just for a moment.
“Abuse can feel like love.”
“Starving people will eat anything.”
My pulse raced more by the second, and the feeling almost made me smile because I kind of liked it. Something built inside me, stacking one brick on top of another until I was a wall, and every second more that I stood there, the more the room started to spin around us like a storm.
He took my chin in his hand and lifted it up, trying to get me to look at him. His heat surrounded me, and the pulse between my thighs throbbed. I didn’t want him to go anywhere.
“Real monsters don’t wear masks, William Grayson III,” I retorted. “They look like everyone else.”
Yes, let’s lock up more than a hundred hormonal teenagers in one space. What a stupid idea.
“Something that lets us end the night in one piece, and between the sheets with something pretty.”
Damon didn’t like to play alone. He needed me. I liked someone needing me.
“Why does no one ever get to go into your room?” I asked. “Not me. Not Michael. Not Kai. Definitely no girls. Can’t we all go somewhere comfortable?” “You wanna see my bed?” Damon teased. “I’d like to make sure it’s not a coffin.”
I smiled to myself. She’d fallen asleep with her glasses on last night. I took them off. I loved the way her tie was always tightened half-assed, her cuffs were too long and never buttoned, and her skin was my fucking religion lately. Especially the skin on her neck.
“You wanna fuck me, too?” I said in a low voice, a soft smile tilting the corner of my mouth. He grinned, still not looking at me. But surprisingly, he replied, “Sometimes.” I stilled. “Sometimes I think about her watching us,” he went on. “I think she’d like it, but she’d hate that she liked it.”
she had a mouth on her. I loved her attitude and her anger, because I was always too warm and I needed the ice. It made me smile. But I also saw things no one else did.
Damon smiled, standing up straight. “Get your ass in here.”
Inhaling, the scent of old books and burning wood hit my nose,
“I went easy with those hits,” he gritted out. “And believe me when I tell you I know how to take one,” I replied.
“Emmy, Jesus . . .” Will glared at me, his eyes drifting down my body.
“Use your head,” he told me, carrying me into his room as if I weighed nothing. “You’ll need it to stay alive, because this is not how we end, Emory Scott.” Despite myself, I almost smiled. But I didn’t. No. This wasn’t how I ended. I had twenty-nine days.
“Stay,” he said again. And something about how he said it made my insides shake a little. Slowly, I stopped. Stay.
I’d let him mess with my head and take me away, because every day more and more of me needed my head messed with. I needed away.
“You’ll press me against that wall”—I jerked my chin to the one near the girls’ locker room door—“and I’ll let you have me, because your attention feels so good.”
Will rubbed his thumb across my finger, and my stomach flipped, the gesture comforting.
take
When the bus stops, get in my fucking truck. I breathed out a bitter laugh. Aw, someone’s lost his temper. Why? I asked. The next thing I know, the bus stopped, he yanked the earbuds out of my ears, and I sucked in a breath as he leaned into my face. “Because you’re mine,” he growled in a whisper.
Was I on some scavenger hunt he was doing or something? Nail the Nerd?
“I think that’s why I’ve always liked this time of day best. People hide in the dark. They quench their thirsts in the dark. They build their secrets in the dark. We’re more ourselves here than anywhere else. I get to be me”—he swallowed, staring at me—“when nightfall is coming.”
“Come here,” he said again. I absently shook my head. “Why?” “Because I’m your man.”
But he lifted my thighs up around his waist and backed into the shower again, slamming me into the wall as he took my bottom lip between his teeth.
“Why did you do it?” he asked. “Ashamed of what you liked me to do? There was still so much more to come, but you cut us short. We didn’t even do half of everything I had planned for you.”
And then Damon chimed in. “We should kill someone.” Michael snorted, Kai rolled his eyes, and I plucked the cigarette out of Damon’s mouth, taking a drag and shaking my head.
“Em, look at me a minute.”
“Look at me,” I whispered. But she choked out a sob, turning her face away so I wouldn’t see. “Don’t,” she demanded. “Please, don’t be sweet. I . . .”
Who hurt her?
She stared at the floor and then retreated a step, but I grabbed her face, bringing her in close and rubbing my thumbs underneath her eyes. I wiped away the tears, but more just streamed down.
I stroked her hair with my hand, my fingers humming at the feel of finally touching her. Such a big mouth and attitude on a person who was really so soft and small.
She focused her bright eyes back on the screen, a smile still spread across her mouth that I had a hard time ignoring. I’d seen her in the theater by herself from time to time, so I figured this was her happy place.
“I don’t think about anything else when I’m watching them,” she explained. “They take me away. It’s an escape. I like the survival aspect in some of them, too. Ordinary people becoming extraordinary. Being called to do great things.”
Like everything was lighter when I held her.
and I threaded my fingers through the back of her hair, fisting it as I nuzzled into her mouth. “Em, Jesus.”
I slowed everything, slipping my hand under her skirt and squeezing her thighs as she repositioned herself and straddled me. I wanted this to last forever. “So soft,” I panted over her mouth. God, her lips were soft.
Because contrary to whatever she thought, this shit wasn’t ending when the lights came up.
He dipped down, slipping his hand around my waist and breathing into my neck. “Emmy . . .” Heat covered my body, hearing him say it just like he’d said it when I straddled him in the theater.
“And then I’m taking you to my house. Just us. I want to have a Mission: Impossible marathon with you tonight.” A Mission: Impos . . . ? I snorted, despite myself, and quickly looked away, trying to hide my smile. God, he was an idiot.
