Page 124 of Wicked Little Darling

Maybe more than a few times. Maybe a hundred times.

His eyes searched mine, and then he asked, “How long have you been thinking about this?”

I tilted my head back and looked up at the ceiling. “Ummm I’m not sure, since the first day we met?”

“You fucking…what?” He was so utterly baffled that when I pressed a quick kiss to his lips, he didn’t even react.

“Yeah. How long have you wanted me?”

Something strange flickered in his eyes, and I felt him tense up. He bit down on his bottom lip, then shrugged.

I pushed away the disappointment and looked down at his legs. At the series of dark marks I’d sucked and bitten into his skin. “You look good with my marks on you,” I told him, brushing my fingers over the tender skin of his thighs.

His tension dissolved, like he was thankful I’d changed the subject, and he traced a reverent finger over the marks he’d made on my neck, his eyes mapping his work, then sliding to mine. “So do you.”

I didn’t think he had any idea how beautiful he truly was. That when he let himself be fully in the present, there was a vibrant happiness that lit his eyes. Gold and green, my favorite colors now.

“I do, don’t I?” I said with a smirk.

He pinched my arm, but when I leaned in and whispered “Kiss me? Please?” all that green and gold blazed with something fierce and resolute.

He moved in close enough that his lips brushed against mine when he said, “Goddamn horny pervert.” His smile melded to mine, buried itself in my soul, and for a moment that felt like an eternity, I thought I knew what love was.

SECOND SEMESTER

23

I GATHERED ALL THE PIECES, JUST TO GIVE TO YOU—AND LOOK WHAT YOU DID WITH THEM

REESE

If winter break was a fairy tale, the start of the second semester was a slap in the face from reality.

A snarledwake up and take a look around you!as it grabbed me by the collar and shook.

A condescending laugh that echoed in my bones, a whispereddid you really think you could have that?

Yeah. For a delusional moment, I really thought I could have that.

I’d let myself dream of something that had been incomprehensible just a few months ago. Something that was only meant for other people, never me.

I really thought there was something there. That maybe I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.

I looked down at the notes I’d scribbled, anger rising and rising the more I read. I resented Dean Voss, despised him for dragging me into this, for making me be this person, for making me lie to Dakota.

But I hated myself most of all for going along with it.

Notes:

9/22 ~Dakota seems to be an ordinary boy so far, if a little annoying. He goes to class, he reads, he sleeps. Nothing of note to report just yet.

11/25 ~ He seems to have some sort of trauma to do with small dark spaces, maybe claustrophobia. Touch helped him.My touch specifically?I think I was wrong about him.

12/1 ~ Dakota is annoying and invasive and relentless. He doesn’t know when to stop, always speaks before thinking, and says the most aggravating things. He’s so fucking annoying with his intense stares and his questions and touching me—wanting me to touch him. He’s so damn irritating, with those stupidly soft lips and those stupidly sexy freckles. Always in my space and in my mind. Literally crawling around my sanity and just—just eating it up. He’s driving me insane.

1/21 ~ WHERE IS HE?? WHERE THE FUCK DID HE GO????

I dropped the pen,then picked it up and threw it across the room with an angry cry.