Page 91 of The Cruelest Chaos

“Maverick,” she gasps, and I don’t stop as she says it over and over again.

Not until she lies back down, until her juices flood my mouth. I lick her all the way down one last time, loving the way her thighs tremble and then I pick my head up, my eyes on her dark green ones.

“Maverick,” she sighs again, spent.

“Ella.”

“Maverick… I think…”

My chest tightens. I don’t know if I want her to say what she’s going to say next, but I don’t look away from her, even with her thighs spread beneath me, my hand on her knee as I watch her struggle for the right words.

“Maverick I…” She bites her lip. “I think I love you.”

I close my eyes, lay my head against her stomach. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to hear that. This isn’t that. This is not love. This is…wrong. This is toxic. Fun for now, but in the long run, it’ll be fucking terrible for the both of us.

No.

I keep my eyes closed, listening to her breathing. Waiting for my response.

“You don’t, baby. You don’t love me.”

Chapter Eighteen

I take her home.

There’s nothing else to be done, and she won’t talk to me. Besides that, I need to find Ria. So I take Ella home, and even when I see that her fucking mother is there, I don’t go inside.

She gets out without a word, slams the door of the Audi shut.

I still wait for her to get inside, but she doesn’t look back. Just slams her front door, too, leaving the screen door a little more crooked than it already was.

I call Ria, but then remember I took her fucking phone.

I go to her apartment. No one is there, and I would know because I broke in.

Nothing.

I don’t go to her family, because I’m not that desperate or that stupid. Not yet. I think about driving to Sanctum. I even think about going to my parents’ house, but I don’t.

And I don’t tell anyone.

I sit inside my house, curtains drawn closed, and wonder what the fuck I’m doing with my miserable goddamn life.

And I keep sitting there as day fades to night. As my stomach growls, and my head hurts and my stomach is twisted up in knots.

I think about all the things I don’t let myself think about until I’m ready to get fucked in the head all over again.

I think about Malachi.

About the nanny.

About the blood.

Her head.

I think about all of it.

I think about my brother.