Page 27 of Cruel When He Smiles

“You’re fucking desperate for it,” I snarl, letting the words peel off my tongue. “Clingy little brat, starved for attention.”

His lashes flutter just once—almost a flinch—but then he’s smiling again. “There it is,” he moans, his voice dripping with glee. “Come on, Lover. Say it again. Tell me how pathetic I am. Tell me how disgusting it is that I want your attention so badly, I followed you out here like a little bitch in heat.”

My hand tightens around his throat, unintentionally pulling him flush against me. His smirk turns feral.

“You think this is cute?” I snarl, crowding him harder against the car, my knee sliding between his legs without meaning to. “You’re fucking obsessed with being beneath me, aren’t you?”

His breath catches, and I see that tiny twitch in his mouth. That flicker in his eyes. That sick, hungry little glint that tells me he loved it.

Oh, how he loved it.

“I think you like me desperate,” he breathes. “Think you like me filthy. Barely keeping it together. You want me wrecked for you.”

“I want you gone,” I snap, but my other hand is already curling at the waistband of his shorts.

“You say that,” he says, “but you’re the one breathing like I’m already on my knees.”

“Because you want to be.”

He whines softly, arching his back just enough to grind against my thigh. “Yeah. Maybe I do.”

I yank him forward by his waistband, teeth bared. “Then stop pretending you’ve got the upper hand.”

“I don’t need the upper hand,” he whispers. “I just need you fucked up enough to ruin me.”

That pisses me off more than anything else he’s said. This twisted little brat wants to be degraded. Wants to be shoved against a car and told he’s nothing but a pretty hole with a need to be filled. The wild gleam in his eyes that says this is exactly what he wants.

“You’re sick,” I whisper.

His smile widens. “You make me worse, Lover.”

I grab his jaw again, rougher this time, forcing him to hold still. My thumb drags across his bottom lip, and his breath hitches like I’ve punched the air out of him. “You’re so fucking easy for it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he breathes, eyes wide and glazed.

I clench my jaw because I shouldn’t want that answer. I shouldn’t crave it like this. But my hand stays locked around his throat, and my knee stays lodged between his thighs, and the worst part is, I can feel just how much he’s enjoying it. Every twitch. Every grind. Every fucking heartbeat thudding through his pulse, begging to be claimed.

“You like being my mess,” I murmur, dragging the words right across his lips. “That what this is?”

He nods and I trace my thumb over the seam of his mouth, feeling how soft he is right there, right before he opens it to bite. And I don’t stop him. His teeth sink into my thumb—not enough to break skin, but enough to sayfuck youin a way that makes my cock twitch.

I let him. Then I yank his head back, his throat bared, and breath catching like he knows I could break him with one push—and he wants me to. “God, you’re my favorite mistake.”

His hips rock against my thigh again, rutting desperately, and he laughs; breathless and broken. “Then make it again.”

The words hit me in a place I didn’t know was still vulnerable. “You don’t know the kind of fire you’re playing with, Pup,” I say quietly.

He bites his lip. “Then burn me.”

I stare at him, and it’s long enough to find something in his expression I don’t want to see—hope. Just a flicker of it, buried under all the bravado. But it’s there, and that makes me furious.

The last thread of my self control snaps and I kiss him as if I’m trying to bruise it in. Like I’m branding him with my fucking mouth. He moans into it—high, needy, obscene—and I swallow the sound with my tongue, with my teeth, with the groan I don’t mean to let out.

His hands clutch my shirt, white-knuckled. His thigh is wedged between mine now, grinding up just enough to make me snap again. I step back abruptly, releasing him, my hands dropping to my sides, and the cold rush of distance slices through me.

“Go home, Carter,” I say flatly and pull him away from my car, open the door again, and this time I get in.

He watches me drive away, and I don’t look in the mirror. If I do, I’ll stop. And if I stop, I’ll kiss him again.