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Prologue
Six Months Ago
Aria
“I-I can’t do this,” I murmur between heavy breaths, as I toss my shirt on the hardwood floor anyway, with no intentions of stopping.
“Shut up Spencer,” he growls, as the tip of his tongue trails a path from the crook of my neck, up to my earlobe. His warm breath feathers across my skin, making me tremble, and our lips crash together creating electric currents that vibrate through my veins, shocking my lifeless heart back into rhythm. Bringing it back from the purgatory it’s been caged in; barely beating for so long I’d begun to think I was slowly dying inside.
The voice in the back of my head is berating me for caving to his touch, but even if I really wanted to, I could never turn him away. As we fall into his bed, I try to wrap my head around how I even allowed myself to end up in this position. So much has happened in the span of a few days, that I can’t tell reality from a fever dream anymore.
I never expected to see Travis Price’s face again, let alone at my engagement party in a whole new city, where I had a whole new name, and a whole new family. I definitely didn’t expect to see him again as he carried my beaten body from the middle of the cold, desolate streets of Silversun Valley. And I certainly didn’t expect to find myself in his bed, allowing him to spread my thighs with one knee, as he groans deliciously into my ear.
It’s wrong, it’s so fucking wrong, but the world is moving in fast forward and my brain is reacting in slow motion, on an entirely different wavelength than the rest of my body.
“We have to stop Travis,” the words leave my mouth, but I don’t truly mean them. They’re merely a performative declaration to make myself feel better about betraying Liam. So I can say that I tried to fight these feelings, even though we both know it’s a goddamn lie.
“No,” he snarls, sucking my bottom lip between his teeth and biting down. Copper floods my my mouth as the blood seeping through my bottom lip passes back and forth between us on our tongues.
“But Li-“
Travis grips my cheeks between his thumb and index finger with force, squeezing, cutting off my words as he pulls his lips away from mine.
“Don’t you dare say his fucking name Spencer,” the commanding words drip from his lips as his possessive, and hungry eyes threaten to devour my very soul.
“But…”
“But nothing. Tell me, little runaway. Fucking tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll walk away,” he growls, sweeping his fingertips through the wetness that’s pooling between my thighs. “Not that you can’t do this. Tell me you don’t fucking want it. Just 4 little words.” Sliding two fingers inside of me, he pumps them in tandem with every word that falls from his lips, “Come on…I. Don’t. Want. This.”
I suck in sharply as he rests his forehead against mine, releasing his grip on my cheeks. Pumping his fingers in and out at a slow, agonizing pace, he traces his tongue along the seam of my lips and I melt. My conscience is warring with the devil on my shoulder, and the devil is screaming at me to give in. Because he’s right. I want this. It’s everything I’ve wanted for so fucking long, so I suck his tongue between my lips and slide my hand into his boxer briefs, wrapping my hand around his thick, hard length. Cool, smooth metal grazes my palm, and I gasp. Our lips and teeth clash together as I begin stroking his cock and his lips curve into a grin against mine.
“I’m not that fucking boy from Lakeview anymore, red.”
Gripping both of my wrists in one hand, he pins both of my hands above my head and lines his cock up with my entrance. Groaning against my lips, he thrusts his into me with force. A desperate moan escapes my lips and he swallows the sounds whole as he thrusts into me over, and over, his piercings rubbing me just the right way, making my toes curl and my back arch.
He’s right, he’s not the boy I remember. He’s a savage and feral beast that won’t stop until he tears me in two. Our bodies slick with sweat, he snakes one hand between us and presses his thumb to my clit, rubbing in steady circles.
“This pussy belongs to me. You belong to me.”
Reduced to nothing more than a trembling mess of sweat and tears, I merely whimper in response.
“Say it,” he snaps. His eyes wide and wild, like an uncaged animal. A predator with his prey in his grasp, ready to consume it alive.
Hot tears roll down my cheeks, and I can’t choke out any actual words. They are stuck in my chest, buried beneath more than a decade of rubble. Slowing his pace, he leans forward, nuzzling his face into the crook of my neck, pressing soft, fluttering kisses against my collarbone.
“Fucking. Say. It,” each word is punctuated with a deliberate, violently hard thrust.
“Yours,” I manage to cry.
Tears of pleasure. Tears of pain. Tears because everything that I had lost, just fell into my lap, shaking up life as I’ve come to know it, and I don’t know what any of it means.
“Come for me little runaway,” he whispers as he licks the tears from my cheek in one long, languid stroke.
Something about the way that he consumes my pain, pushes me over the edge. He slides in and out of me and I spasm around his cock. My pussy clenches, creating a vise grip around him as I come so hard the room spins.
“That’s my fucking girl,” he groans in my ear as he releases inside of me, and my heart thrashes around my chest, on the verge of exploding, because he called me his.
Our bodies slow and still together, suspended for a brief moment in time. Neither of us dare to move for fear of shattering this moment where only we exist.