Take Me With You(57)

I move my hand so slowly, there are moments I wonder if I'll ever reach him. I wait for him to slap it away and storm out, or to throw me on my stomach and take whatever he wants. But he's frozen as my palm and fingertips rest on his cheeks.

“I don't know what I'm doing,” I confess. “Please tell me you do. Because I'm not supposed to want this, but your face…” I say, dipping close, so my lips graze his. “You terrify me, and yet I could look at you all day long…”

I plant a soft kiss against his pillowy lips. He's stern, and I stiffen, confused by his lack of response.

“No,” he says.

“Oh, I—” I stumble on my words. Feeling embarrassed and exposed. Rejected by the man who stole me. Maybe there is nothing inside of him that craves to be needed like I had hoped.

I pull my hand away but he snatches my wrist. I gasp.

“No—” He yanks me towards him in one sharp movement, so that my body, cool from the damp nightgown presses against his hot chest. His cock is pressed against me, everything about his body is a yes despite his words. “I…don't know what I'm doing,” he confesses.

He grabs my ass so hard I gasp, launching me off of the bed and into his arms. I wrap my legs around him, letting him carry me away from the bed. The smell of man and sex and whiskey overtakes the stench of the old breakfast across the room. The pale walls and floors fade into a blur as the colors of his skin, hair, and eyes sharpen. He kisses me so hard, my lips sting and I kiss back just as hard, trying to return the pain he makes me feel: Agony doused with pleasure. Sin blended with deliverance. Captivity leading to a type of freedom I never had outside of these walls.

I wrap myself around him, touching him, trying to get as close to him as I can, so that I can become a part of him, a part he could never destroy, but at the same time, I want to keep watching him. He's more than the fantasies I imagined when I thought about who would be under that mask. His face tells a story. I want to know it. I want to know him. Then I could make sense of this all.

He thrusts me up against a wall, expelling the breath from my chest, as he bites and sucks on my neck and shoulder. I graze my lips against his lips, his cheek, his temple, the salt of his glimmering summer skin seasoning each kiss. It's messy and desperate, but it's so good to be on his side. When he wants me, he wants me wholly and completely. I thought being loved was the most gratifying feeling. No, it's being obsessed over. It's having someone so infatuated with you that they would risk everything to have you. That is a high that love can't touch. Love is a slow burn, a stockpot simmering to soften the heart. But this—this is a flash flood, it's the smoke billowing when a steak hits a hot pan. It's threatening, but its fierceness is the very thing love dilutes.

He pulls away roughly, taking a sudden breath, like he has just snapped out of a trance.

I give him a questioning look as I catch my breath. But it's not even a second before he is spinning me against the wall and slamming me so hard against it, my cheek throbs from the impact. He's trying to set things back. To before that night in the shower, or just minutes ago when he showed me his face. He's trying to deny this. I have so many times bowed to his will without resistance. I've bent over, sucked, gagged, and braced—a passive participant as his prisoner of lust. I came, I dreamt about it, I waited for it through hours of soul-crushing loneliness. Part of that allowed me to hold on to the old Vesper. I could say that despite it all, he took, and I reluctantly abided. But she's gone now. I want more. I can finally admit that. In order to truly survive, I have to be all in. I have to get past the facade of this entire thing. For him to show me the hand he's been hiding, I'll have to show him mine.

As he peels the damp dress away from my backside, I twist away from the wall, to face him again. I glare into those eyes that are so clear they don't reflect my image. The act of rebellion sets him back just long enough for me to grab him and pull him into me, assailing his lips with mine. He lets out a heavy breath as he reciprocates for a moment, but then he pulls away again. I can feel it—his muscles tensing under my grip, nearly trembling, trying to stop himself from going down the path. The one where we truly see each other.

He turns me again, this time pressing his forearm against my upper back, frantically unbuttoning his jeans with the other hand. But I wrestle his confinement, my slick skin allowing me to slip out, again facing him. I push his arm to the side and weave my hand through his hair, pulling him towards me.

“No—” he says.

I suffocate the word with my mouth. He twists and moans into the kiss before sharply pulling away again. This time, picking me up and throwing me down on the bed, face-down.

I am a woman determined. He'll have to render me unconscious if he wants it this way. I know that inside of him he doesn't. I can taste it in his frantic kisses. I wriggle underneath him and twist onto my back as he tries to pull himself out.

This time, he lets me go, only to give himself enough time to take off his pants, so the next time he comes for me, he'll have two free hands. I struggle onto my feet in those moments. In seconds, he is standing across from me, the bed dividing us. He is completely nude, his tanned, muscled curves, leading to a frustrated erection. This headless body I have seen many times before, seems so different now that it is part of a person. His shining, heaving figure lurks, like a jungle cat waiting to pounce. But this time, instead of waiting on him, I run across the bed at him, pouncing him fearlessly, so that he has no choice but to catch me in his arms. He spins and stumbles back onto the bed, underneath me. I pull off my dress, exposing my already-swollen breasts to him. He sits up, wrapping one hand around me and the other bracing our weight against the bed.