Page 28 of Bitter When He Begs

“You’re reading too much into this shit like you always do,” he mutters. It’s a lie and we both know it.

I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “You always say that, even when I call out what this is. Because it’s easier to make yourself the victim than it is to admit you like what I do to you, isn’t it, Sunshine?”

His eyes dart away, and that just pisses me off more. “Luca—”

“Don’t,” I snap, and I hate how sharp my voice sounds. I’m coming apart around the edges and trying to glue myself together with whatever control I’ve got left. “Don’t say my name like that. Don’t fucking do that soft thing with your voice like you’re the one who’s confused.”

He stares at me, blinking, and his mouth opens like he’s going to say something that’ll make this worse. Or better. Or maybe just ruin me completely. I don’t let him get the chance.

“Why the fuck are you still in my head?” I ask, my voice cracking with everything I’m too proud to name. I slap one handon the roof of his car beside his head, trapping him in—not with force, not with threat, but with need. “Why can’t I fucking shake you?”

His brows pull together. “W-what?”

“I made you come without touching your dick,” I bite out. “I shoved my fingers in your mouth, made you thank me for degrading you, and watched you swallow every drop of my fucking control, and I still can’t get you out of my fucking system.”

His breath catches, the kind of sound that shreds through silence and leaves the air raw. He’s blinking like he doesn’t know what to say. Because this version of me—the one who’s unraveling, hungry, obsessed—isn’t the one he’s used to dealing with. “You were supposed to be a one-and-done. Scratch the itch. Walk away.”

“Then walk,” he sneers, lifting his chin. “Big, bad King of Blackthorne can have anyone he wants, yet he’s hung up onme.”

That hits, low and dirty.

I inhale through my nose, fighting the instinct to slam my mouth onto his and devour that smug little smile off his lips. He’s weaponizing my own reputation against me—my name, my title, the fucking crown I never asked for but wear anyway because this place demands it. And he’s not wrong.

I don’t know when my hand moves, but it’s suddenly on his jaw, tilting his face toward me. His lips part, and I don’t wait.

I kiss him like I’m starving.

It’s not gentle or soft. It’s frustrated and demanding, and laced with every fucking second I spent trying to get him out of my head. His mouth parts on instinct, like he can’t help it, like he’s just as fucked as I am. Our teeth clash. His hands twitch in his sleeves and it pisses me the fuck off. So, I grab his wrists and pin them against the car.

I kiss him like I’m trying to erase the last week, like I’m trying to drown in him, like I’m furious he still tastes the same; like peppermint and rage and something softer that sticks to my fucking teeth. I pull him flush against me and grind our hips together just once—just enough to hear him make that sound again.

That fucking sound.

He moans and I nearly lose it. I tear away, panting, pressing my forehead to his and trying to catch my breath, trying to rein it in.

“I really fucking hate,” I hiss, brushing my nose against his, “that you keep pulling away just enough to make me think I still have control.”

I drag my mouth over his jaw, biting the skin beneath his ear and he whimpers. “You started this shit between us,” he whispers.

“Yeah, well, now I can’t stop.”

He sucks in a stuttered breath, and it makes my dick twitch. “I’m not a habit you can just fall back into, Luca.”

“No,” I say and grab his jaw rough enough to make him look at me when I continue, “you’re the one I can’t fucking quit.”

I press him harder against the car, and his breath hitches again. It stokes something violent in me. Something primal. Something that can’t stand the way he’s still quiet, still giving me that look, like he doesn’t know what this is. Like he hasn’t already let me ruin him once.

So I make it worse.

I lower my mouth to his neck, to that spot just below his ear where I know he’s sensitive, where he shuddered the first time I brushed my lips there. And then I suck.

Slow at first.

Then deep, dragging my tongue over the skin before pulling it between my teeth and marking him.

Sage lets out a broken, gasping sound; it’s half-moan, half-protest, and it only makes me groan against his throat. I feel his body arching instinctively and his hips twitching forward. He doesn’t pull away. He never fucking does. He lets me do this to him—again and again and again.

And every time he acts like he doesn’t know what’s happening. Like he’s not mine already.