Legacy (Sociopath Series Book 2)(25)

“I’m not asking you to.” I wrap my arms around myself. God, I’m tired of feeling powerless; not that I’d feel any better with a gun in my hand. That’s as much a sign of weakness as anything else. “I just…I have to know.”

“Know what?”

I lower my voice. “About what happened with your mother. Whether you planned it.”

“Oh. I see. That makes a difference, does it? A crime of passion makes everything better?” Now his volume escalates, the veins of his throat growing taut in anger. “My whole f*cking life is a crime of passion. There. Are you happy?”

“Oh, come off it. You plan almost everything.”

“You’re not going to forgive me—I get it, I do. But you have to stop thinking that you need to. There’s a fine f*cking line between love and hate, Leo. I like the line. We’ll be the line. Okay?”

“Now you’re just avoiding the subject,” I retort. “You haven’t answered the question—”

“And I won’t!” he shouts. “Do you want out of this? Is that what you want?”

“No!” The word tumbles out, splinters, and hits the ground in a streak of gasoline. Then I don’t know whether I have a mouthful of smoke or of him, but I’m falling, plummeting, hitting the floor with all the impact of a bomb going off and the taste in my mouth isn’t stale coffee or bitter metal or silent despair. It’s just him. Him, over me, him, heavy on top of me, him, kissing me like for a moment, he truly panicked that I’d leave.

“No,” I manage in a weaker tone, my cheeks stinging from his stubble. “Never.”

“Then shut up.”

We descend into a war of buttons and zippers, ravenous on the hunt for bare skin. In the end, he gives up wrestling with my skirt and just tugs it up over my hips in a tight band; my shirt is open, my bra suddenly feels like sandpaper, and his fingers are rough as they yank my underwear down. You know when you’re so wet you barely feel it? I only notice because he has to practically peel the fabric from me, sodden lace turning cold the moment it hits the air. Then he’s back over me, his eyes cutting into mine as he pulls his pants open, tugs himself out. His cock lands hot on the inside of my thigh before thumping bluntly against my clit, and he slows to do this over and over, still watching me. I arch up, panting, mumbling curses into his shoulder, where the scents of fresh laundry and sea salt soap blur with the faint odor of nervous sweat.

Sometimes, I’m still dumbstruck that he isn’t a hologram—all those nights I spent staring at photos of him, brooding over TV clips and articles, worrying and plotting and refusing to cry. This is Aeron Lore in all three dimensions, his smell, his taste, the bulk of him bearing down on me. I didn’t want to want this. I didn’t plan to fall, but the mountain…the mountain was so high, and I was walking in the dark, and in the end, aren’t we all made to falter?

He shoves into me. “Fuck. Fuck.”

There’s nothing but the thick stretch of him, the way it makes me ache. And ebb. And ache. That first exhale when he’s fully inside me, it’s an orgasm all of its own, and I chase it with sighs and yelps that grow louder as he picks up speed.

This makes me feel powerful. This is why he won’t get rid of me, why he hangs on and calls it love; he’s not capable of much beyond lust or contempt, but in this moment, I pretend he sees more than flesh and blood in pleasing composition, more than everything I’ve become in his scarlet grip. He sees the girl I was before all of this. He sees me.

“Leo.” His voice is strained, his cheeks flushed. He scoops my buttocks up, holds me so he can f*ck down deeper until my hips are sore with the friction. “Leo, I couldn’t end you. I don’t want you dead.”

“Dirty talker,” I gasp, wincing.

“I mean it.” He bends, finds my mouth, and presses hot kisses at passion-skewed angles. “I’ll give you a thousand little deaths, but not an end. I could never…I could never want a girl who didn’t bleed.”

At that—I should have guessed, but who has time for guessing, so full of a savage man?—a sharp pain explodes in my left side, raw and acidic. It drags. Salt. Cinnamon. I’m screaming, I think. I don’t really recognize the gurgling sounds.

Then there’s a thrust. My body responds to it, and oh God, he’s still inside me and I’m so close, and I don’t know how. There’s red trickling from my side, warm and sticky; it seems to come from his fist at first, but then I spy the blurry chopstick, its pale shape flickering as my vision fades.

“Don’t panic, sweetheart.” His tone is a perverted lullaby, meandering through blossom and blade. “Just a scratch. That’s all it is. That’s all…”

I don’t panic. I’m beyond panic. But I do wail, and there’s sorrow there, misery and need and desire. He drops the chopstick to pin my hands above my head, so deep inside me now that I feel bruises buckling on delicate tissues.

“That was for hiring me that assistant, by the way.”

Any other man would be lying, trying to hide the fact he felt threatened by my outburst. My questions. My lack of trust. But not Aeron. For him, those things are more like the screwed up icing on the cake.

Fuck his cake and the tray it rode in on.

My wail grows in volume, boiling until it becomes a growl. I twist in his grip, convulsing despite the pain in my side, but he just bursts into breathless, feral laughter, even when I lunge up and sink my teeth into the meat of his shoulder. I hate him.