Page 197 of Soul So Dark

And now I want his rich, brown eyes on me forever. Now, I’d rather him go blind than look upon anyone but me.

“Did you ever find yourself a sweet little slut?” I ask, hooking my fingers over his belt buckle and pulling him closer. “Did you fuck her good like you wanted?”

Alex takes a long, deep breath and clenches my hair at the base of my skull. He’s so serious now, it’s like getting to know him all over again.

“No,” he murmurs, the severity in his eyes unwavering. “I couldn’t find any I liked.”

I start untucking his shirt, slowly pushing it up to reveal a thick layer of muscle beneath his tan skin. I should’ve known it was him, that I was looking at him for three fucking years. It wasn’t just wishful thinking buried deep in the recesses of my mind.

Alex takes the shirt from me and whisks it over his head. When he does, a bolt of electricity shoots through my chest.

My eyes are immediately drawn to the black ink covering his left pec. It’s a portrait with striking black waves woven with grey shadow and intricate detail. A woman with big, piercing eyes peers through thick waves of black hair.

Me.

Slowly, I reach up and gently trace the stark black swirls down his chest until they fade at his ribs, where my fingers brush over the scar that matches mine.

“I told everyone I was looking for a woman with long black hair, killer curves, and eyes the color of the Pacific. I showed her picture to everyone, but no one knew who she was.”

I look up at him. “You saidfour years,it’s been six. What if I’d left, dropped out, gone to school somewhere else?”

“You know what happens when you die, Dal?”

I give a slight shake of my head.

“Whether due to increased gamma waves or oxygen deprivation that triggers a surge of neurotransmitters, the amygdala prioritizes your most emotionally charged memories, creating a veritable playback of your life at the moment of death.”

I stare at him, eyes wide, as he rattles off this knowledge in a sharp, quick, monotone voice like he’s responding to a commanding order.

“Theoretically,” he adds with a shrug. “So, when my corpse was laying in the back of a truck, I heard my mom’s voice, my dad’s, my brothers’, Aiden’s, Mason’s, Colson’s…” he hesitates, bringing his voice back down, “but the last one, and the loudest one that brought me back to life, was yours. And you were asking me to stay with you. I knew you’d still be here,” he smirks, “dressed as the Tomb Raider, no less.”

I let out an unexpected laugh. “The boots were real this year,” I mumble, “the prop guns still need an upgrade.”

Alex glances over his shoulder and then crosses the room, disappearing inside the closet. There’s a faint shuffling, and then he reemerges, carrying a large handgun at his side. He grabs his shirt and wipes it down before pulling the slide. After a few snaps and clicks, he points it at the floor and pulls the trigger over and over to confirm it’s unloaded.

When he reaches the bed, he holds it out to me. “Try a real one.”

I take the gun from him, assessing the weight as I turn it over in my hands. “Yours won’t fit in my holster.” It’s larger than both my hands put together.

Alex cocks his head, dragging his eyes down my body. “I think it will,” he replies, lingering at my knees spread beneath me.

He reaches for the gun and slowly crouches down, resting his elbows on the edge of the bed in front of me. Then he lays his arm across the mattress, holding the gun between my knees, high on the grip so the barrel is pointing to the ceiling.

“Ride it,” he commands. “Ride my gun like you’re going to make it come.”

I swallow hard, my eyes shifting from the gun, to Alex, and back again.

He senses by apprehension. “Don’t worry,Angelína,I’ll be nice to the girl with the gun.”

The longer I gaze at the gun’s smooth, yet formidable barrel, the more I fight the violent images threatening to break through—the car, the screams, the pain. But when I blink, all I see is Alex’s face in front of me, the same face who watched me for three years and I never knew it, the one who always finds me in the dark.

I still want him to watch me.

I slide one knee forward, and then the other. Grasping one of his shoulders, I raise up and reach for the gun between my legs. I take the barrel and slowly guide it between my thighs until it slides over the wettest part. There’s barely any resistance as I gently sink down around the cold metal. I dig my nails into his shoulder, taking it deeper as my muscles relax around it.

Air hisses through my nose and my jaw drops at the foreign sensation stretching me more with each inch. I grab his other shoulder and begin slowly rolling my hips, fucking his weapon just inches from his face. With every breath, I go deeper, imagining him, and the camera, and the torturous vibrations that I wished were him pushing me over the edge.

“Take it,” he commands.