Page 38 of A Wreck, You Make Me

I stop breathing. I really do. It really feels like he’s done his job. He’s choked me out and crushed my heart and I… I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t… All I can do is blink up at him with foggy vision as I whisper, “How do you… How do you know about my debt?”

He takes his time answering, his eyes sweeping over my face. “You sleep with your window open.”

I blink. “My window.”

“If you knew the kind of assholes walking around these days, you’d lock it and you’d lock it tight so no one gets in.”

“B-but it’s really hot at night and I don’t have… an AC.”

Anger flickers through his features like he hates the fact I have to sleep without an AC. Then, “Well, it’s a good thing then I snuck in through your open window and entered your shitty fucking life like a breeze of cool air then.”

My eyes widen and my stomach bottoms out as I realize what he’s saying. “You… You were in my… You came into my house. You?—”

Something eats up my words then. Something that I feel.

His hand, on my thigh.

Super high up.

I look down to find that my skirt has ridden up and my panties are showing. White lacy ones, and his hand—the one that was on my tummy—is now on my upper thigh. Extremely close to their seam.

I get déjà vu from yesterday then. When he was touching me on my date. Except yesterday, his hand wasn’t so high up that if he decides to inch up his fingers, it won’t take a lot for him to hit the fabric covering me. Plus at the restaurant, his hand was under the table so I had no clue how it looked against my skin, but I do now. The lighting is dim and reddish but even so, I can tell. That his hand on me looks like it belongs. His rough, chafed fingers belong on my soft, unblemished skin.

But… But he was at my house. Myhouse,while I was sleeping. Isn’t that what he meant? I was sleeping and my window was open and he…

He gives me a squeeze then. A hard one. So hard that I have to arch. I have to let go of his arm and reach up to his jaw. I haveto widen my legs even more and all on my own. Like suddenly I can control my body, but only for his advantage. Only so he gets to touch me even more. I want to tell him to wait, to stop, but he squeezes me again. And again, I arch up, my hip undulating, my hand on his jaw moving up and gripping his rich, thick, soft hair.

“Definitely my favorite pastime. Making you dance,” he rasps, kneading my flesh even more, making me twist and twist my hips.

“But you were at my…at my house. In my r-room,” I say, knowing my voice shouldn’t be this breathy and I should be doing more to push him away.

“Yeah,” he says, without shame, without remorse. “Saw you sleeping in the moonlight. All warm and flushed. For a second I thought I was imagining it. I thought no one could ever be that.”

“Be what?”

“So fucking luminous.” Another squeeze, his thumb going up and down my skin. “So fucking soft.”

I pull at his hair as I twist my hips into his touch. “I…”

“Like a flower.”

“A rose,” I can’t help but say.

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh.” I nod, twisting and twisting. “Because they call you the Thorn.”

His chest shudders. “You know what a thorn does, don’t you?”

“Wrecks the roses?”

“Makes them bleed.”

“Yeah.”

“But then again, you already know I’m worse than a thorn,” he says, as if reminding me.

“You have teeth,” I agree.