Page 96 of Jensen

I don’t need his assurances. I need the flip side. Hands tangled in his pants, I lift my head to meet his eyes.

“Call me a bitch,” I beg.

He leans in, mouth grazing mine. “You want me to make you feel small, baby?”

“Yes.” I’m practically panting.

Leland made me feel so small, but not the way Jensen can. With my ex-husband, I was nothing but a body to use, astory told over and over again. A man who gets what he wants and the body he gets off in when the day is done. But when Jensen turns his pale eyes onme, I feel like I’m in the sun.

Beautiful, degraded, free to be depraved.

He takes me by the hair and shoves my face back into his lap. My lips part,and I take the Ruger all the way to the back of my throat.

“You hit my thigh if you need out. Understand?”

I nod, choking around the head of his cock.

“Then suck, you dirty bitch,” he breathes.

My pussy throbs, the seam of my jeans pushing against myachingclit. There’s a darkness in me,and I think Leland put it there.It’s ahungry, raw pit that knows what it’s like to die of slow decayand fights back hard.

On my tongue, I taste the salt spilling from his body.

He’s so alive.

The taste of his cock in my mouth is the underbelly of him. Rough, sexual, violent, but never to me.It’s a force of life, flowing from him to the deadness in my veins.

I push deeper, feeling the head press against the back of my throat. But I don’t gag,because I’ve done this before, many times. It’s a small victory I learned how to deepthroat because Leland made me, but Jensen is the first man to letme enjoy it. Leland is a jealous man, and if he knew what I was doing right now, he’d be beyond furious.

A chill goes down my spine. Jensentakes me by the hair and pumps my mouth up and down his length. My breath cuts off. I swim in darkness before it floods back.

“Fucking whore,” he breathes.

I moan around his cock, lickingthe underside with my tongue. This is my fuck-you to the man who destroyed me. He took my innocence. He made my womanhood come all at once until I no longer recognized myself. I didn’t understand life before it had me by the throat and all my choices had been made for me.

I was a child, I think, when Leland came.

But with Jensen, I am a woman of my own making.

BEFORE

My mother leaves before the sun is up. She says she needs groceries, but I know why she’s going. Last night, Leland asked to stay. She said he could if he slept on the couch. He promised to, but after she was in bed, my door opened.

He’s a shadow. My window is open and the room isairy and pleasant. I wonder if he notices that, or if he only knows my room is so much less than what he’s used to.

“Della,” he breathes, weight sinking the bed.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” I whisper.

He pulls the covers up over us. Hot breath touches my neck. My spine prickles—is this what arousal feels like? Kisses follow it up my throat. He pulls my nightgown down and exposes my breasts.

Mama said that’s a sin, but does it count if the lights are off?

I don’t have time to figure it out,because he reaches between us,and his zipper hisses. Then, there’s a spark of pain, asecond where I gasp out loud. Then, his body rocks,and all I can think about is how strange the concept of sex is when I really turn it over in my head.

He leaves very early. I’m stiff the next morning when I go out into the living room, expecting Mama to start yelling at me, but she’s gone. There’s a note on the table saying she’s getting groceries.

Cold all over, I go back into the bedroom. My quilt is pushed back,and my sheet has a pale crimson stain. I sit down and touch it. The fabric is stiff. I lean over and look in the laundry basket I use for a trash can. At the bottom of the bag sits a condom, tied in the middle.