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"I don't think you know what love is," I whisper.

He grunts with amusement. "I don't think anyone does, baby. Love is an enigma, and it's redefined every time someone says it."

I frown. All I can feel is disappointment. Not because of what he said, but because of how fucking easy it was for him to accomplish what he set out to do.

Just like he wants, a reckless, impulsive feeling consumes me. All I ache to do is let him have me. So many nights, where he’d sneak into my bed and take advantage of my weakness—whether the weakness was in my body or brain—he used that against me time and time again. But he never took it all the way, and every morsel inside my being has been waiting for this moment. Anticipating it.

I’m dying to deny him, yet I have to fight my body from turning and pulling him into me.

Maybe just this once…

I bite my lip, rolling the bruised and abused lip between my teeth.

He watches me closely, studying every movement like he’s trying to interpret a dead language hidden in the lines of my body.

“Are you only saying that because you think it’ll work?” I ask, my voice husky and uneven.

His mouth is still angled towards my ear, with his eyes locked onto mine. Slowly, he shakes his head, his face severe and gaze intense.

“You’re telling the truth?” I push, my voice hitching with the desperation for him to just lie and tell me no.

“Yes, Adeline,” he whispers.

I close my eyes, resignation seeping from my pores. Sensing the change, his hand travels across my flat stomach. I tense beneath his touch, goosebumps rising on my skin.

His long fingers latch onto the zipper of my hoodie, slowly pulling it down, parting the material at a painful pace. The sound of the metal teeth separating disrupts the sound of my erratic breathing.

“Don’t torture me,” I bite out, anger flashing from his deliberately slow pace.

A wicked smile flashes, and even the mirror can’t lessen the cruelty.

“Poor little mouse,” he taunts. “You’re sadly mistaken if you thought I was going to make this anything but painful.”

Chapter 30

The Manipulator

H e has the strangest ability to suck the air from my lungs with a simple look. And when his terrifying words accompany the deadly stare, it feels like I don’t have any lungs at all.

The hoodie parts and he slowly pulls it down my arms. The material drops to the floor, where muddy shoes have trekked across a thousand times tonight.

It feels like a cruel metaphor. Along with my clothes, my flesh and soul will be stained tonight.

“Someone could come in here,” I whisper, my voice barely penetrating the tension in the air.

He smiles—a wicked smile that tells me he wouldn’t mind if someone did.

“What do you think they’d do?” he implores as he lifts my shirt, the pads of his fingers grazing my skin. Goosebumps rise, a physical reaction from the electricity dancing across my skin wherever he touches me.

“Do you think they’d watch?” he asks. “Do you think they’d enjoy the sight of your naked flesh on display? Maybe they would get off on seeing your dripping pussy reflected back at them everywhere they look. Or the pretty flush on your chest when you come. I think they’d even enjoy watching your eyes roll to the back of your head when my cock fills you so fully, you can’t fit any more of me inside you.”

A shot of fear injects straight into my heart, forcing the muscle into overdrive. But yet, my body still responds in a much darker way.

Just like his words, I feel my pussy pulsate as my panties gradually dampen until it’s exactly like he said—dripping.

Would I be okay with a stranger watching? I don’t think so. But something about the way he paints the picture makes me wonder if I’d let it happen anyway.

“You’d be okay with other people seeing me naked?” I challenge breathlessly, watching my shirt flutter to the black floor. His fingers drift up my spine, slow and deliberate. They burn like lava searing my flesh.