Page 67 of The Cruelest Chaos

“Don’t you?” I ask her softly, gliding the knife back up her arm, under the sleeves of my t-shirt and down again. I can feel her pulse in her wrists, still held in my other hand, my body pressed against hers. “Don’t you belong to me, Ella?”

She shakes her head. “No.” The word is low, like a growl, and her eyes are narrowed, even though I can see it: her fear.

I press the tip of the knife harder against her pale flesh, caressing it up and down her arm. “What would happen,” I ask her, licking my lips, “if I…slipped?”I nod toward the knife.

Her eyes widen. Mouth opens. But she doesn’t answer me.

I feel my dick growing hard and I know she feels it too, against her stomach. I nudge my leg between her thighs. “No one would hear you scream, Ella. Not here.”

She sucks in a breath, her body still frozen, anger replaced completely with fear.

“No one would know you were missing. Not for nearly a week.” I glide the point of the knife up over her collarbone, to just under her chin.

She jerks her head up, flinching. I lay the flat part of the blade at her throat.

“Not until Connor missed you, huh? But Connor doesn’t talk, does he?” I smirk at the anger returning to her face, her features hardening, her jaw tight. “You ever kissed him, Ella?”

She doesn’t answer.

I tip her chin up higher with the knife. “No. Not him then.” I sigh, let her wrists go. With the knife under her chin, she’s not gonna move.

I grab onto her waist instead, fingers digging in. “When you stopped me last night, who was it? Who was it that had hurt you, huh?”

Her pale skin flushes pink.

“Isthatthe worst thing you’ve ever done, baby?” I lean down close, my forehead to hers, the knife still against her throat.

Her hands are against the sink, as if to steady herself.

“Who did you let fuck you in the ass, Ella? IfIown you, andIcan’t, then who could?”

“You don’t own me.” Her words are angry, through gritted teeth. She doesn’t want to open her mouth very wide, doesn’t want this knife to cut her. “And he didn’t either.”

“Who?”

“Fuck you.”

I yank her hair back, tipping her throat up higher so she’s forced to look away from me, forced to stare at the ceiling. “Who?”

She swallows, and I watch her throat bob against the flat side of the blade. The sharp side, though, that’s still angled toward her chin. It would be so easy. So easy to make her bleed.

“Fuckinganswer me, goddammit!”I yell at her, and she flinches, screwing her eyes closed tight. “Tell me why you let me treat you like this.”

Tell me whyIlike to treat you like this.

“Tell me why you want me to hurt you, when your fucking mother does enough of that for you.”

Tell me whyIwant to hurt you.

“Tell me why you’re fuckingstarvingfor attention.”

Tell me why I am, too.

“Tell me why you want to get out of your fucking head, Ella.”

Tell me it’s for the same reasons I do.

“You hate yourself that much, huh?”