Page 119 of A Wreck, You Make Me

Crazily, I think that’s impressive. But I shut down my wayward thoughts and focus on him. His eyes are shining with a strange, almost manic light. His mouth is parted with the force of his breaths, and his arms and fingers are bloody where the glass has managed to cut him. He looks dangerous. He looks threatening. He looks unhinged.

He looks like a wrecking ball, with barely any grip on sanity, as he walks,prowlstoward me.

And I’ve never felt what I’m feeling in this moment. I feel like I want him to. I want him to lose that little grip on his sanity before he gets to me. I want him to teach me a lesson for lockinghim out, ruin me for saying I was done with him when I’m not. And I never will be.

There’s something wrong with me, isn’t it? There’s something wrong with him too. There’s something wrong with both of us, but I really don’t give a shit.

I’m shaking by the time he reaches me. I’m shaking harder when he leans in and puts his hands on the door by my head, caging me in, his palms splayed wide, his elbows settling beside my body as well, looking like he’s about to do a push up.

“You…” I swallow, looking into his dark, glittering eyes. “You b-broke your window.”

He licks his parted mouth. “Yeah.”

His voice is so rough that I have to squeeze my thighs as it passes through me. Then, glancing over to the fresh blood streaking his corded arms, I add, “You’re b-bleeding.”

“Good.”

My eyes snap back to his. “You s-said… that was the only way to keep you out. Locking it.”

His bloody biceps strain as if literally repelling the words from his body. “There’s nothing that’ll keep me out if I want in.”

I squeeze my thighs again and ask, uselessly, “So you lied?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t wanna scare you.”

“You’re scaring me now.”

“I know.”

“How?”

He keeps our gazes locked. “Because your thighs are shaking.”

“I—”

“And that vein on your neck”—he licks his lips again, as if thinking about tasting it, or maybealreadytasting it on histongue—“the one that goes crazy when I’m close and the one that has my teeth marks on it, is fluttering really fucking hard.”

I know. I can feel it. I can also feel his teeth marks on my neck. I’ve felt them on and off ever since he left them on me two nights ago. I’ve been lamenting the fact he didn’t break skin. That he didn’t make me bleed from the neck like he did from my pussy. If he had, his bruise would last longer. As it is, it’s fading away too quickly for me to hold on to it. And that’s all I had, see. For the last two days, because for some reason, I didn’t have him.

“Why does it…” My heart thuds and cracks a little bit and I claw my nails into the door. “Why does it feel like that night at the club?”

It does, doesn’t it? And not only because we’ve just had the exact same conversation as that night. Before he told me to take off my clothes and made me crawl naked toward him. And then he made me ride his boot like a horny slut. There’s something in the air, some dangerous spark like before. Some edge that I can’t see but feel right in the center of my being. Right in the core, because I’m just as wet as I was that night. In fact, I’m wetter because now I know how it feels. I know howhefeels inside of me. Big, throbbing, threatening, whispering sweet and dirty nothings in my ear.

“Because it is,” he whispers, again in a low, rough tone, and my core pulses so hard I flinch. I feel a thick drop of my juice sliding down my thigh.

“It is?”

“Yeah, only this time,” he goes on, his eyes penetrating, his cheeks flushed and hard, “instead of you riding my boot, I’ll be the one licking it.”

I go still. “What?”

He roves his eyes over my features and it’s insane to call the way he does it…tenderly,when everything about him is sointense, so brutal, too brutal to bear without going to pieces myself. But that’s what his look is. It’s tender, like a wound that hurts but also feels so good I could weep. His look is how he made me feel when he took my virginity, all torn apart, but somehow that pain fed into the pleasure that came later and did actually make me weep.

“I disappeared,” he says, his biceps straining again, bloody, corded, his chest pushing into mine with his long but hitched breath. “For two days. When you needed me the most. For two fucking days, I had my head up my ass when I should’ve been there for you. When I should’ve taken care of you, pampered you. I should’ve cherished you, cherished the gift you gave me and made you feel special because that’s what you are. You’re special to me, Strawberry. You’reso fucking specialyou make my chest hurt. You make my fucking heart skip a beat. You tug at my heartstrings. You tug at my soul, but I…”