Tragic Beauty (Beauty & The Darkness #1)(17)

His words are so loud and so harsh, they feel like a sharp slap across my face. Tears fill my eyes, and I rise onto shaky legs.

So close.

After everything that’s happened tonight—so damn close, but he won’t have me. “Coward,” I hiss, then storm for the door.

A dark flash of something closes in from the side and I’m suddenly whirled around and shoved into the wall with strong, angry hands. “What’d you call me?”

I meet his menacing eyes head on. “A coward.”

“I’m a coward because I’m trying to protect you?”

“I don’t need your protection.” I need you.

“So you want to be hurt, is that it? Because that’s what I’ll do, Ava. That’s what gets me off.” I blink and he closes in, sensing weakness. “You know what else will get me off? Pushing you. Pushing you to your limits. Pushing until you can’t take anymore. You’ll beg me to stop. Hopefully even cry. And you know what I’ll do?”

I swallow and shake my head.

He leans in, brushing his lips against my ear, and whispers, “I’ll push you some more.”

I gasp. His voice. The way it sounds. The cruelty behind it. The coldness. I thought he was a different kind of beast. But—I was wrong.

All my courage is gone, vaporized into oblivion. I push past him, staggering backwards as a sob breaks, all my hopes shattered…again. He watches me with an odd sort of detachment, as I tear through the door and flee.

“Ava, wait. I’m—”

His words are cut off when I enter my room and slam the door, locking it behind me. I crumble against it, trying hard to keep my voice down, keep my sobs quiet. I slide to the bottom and hug myself tight, thinking of all the ways tonight has failed. Then there’s the future, and all it holds. The despair stabs me like a knife, over and over. I curl myself up tighter, hoping I can ball myself up so small, I’ll just disappear.

A soft knock sounds. “Ava?”

I don’t answer, just squeeze my eyes shut, trying to drown him out.

“Ava, please—”

I hear the faint sound of the latch being tried, then he sighs. There’s a grating slide of something against the door. When he speaks again, he sounds like he’s down on the ground, at my level. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was trying to scare you.”

I have nothing to say. No words to offer.

A silence settles in, broken only by my muffled weeping.

How long we sit there, I’m not sure. It’s a strange sort of intimacy, with him on the other side of the door, separated by only a couple inches of wood, and yet it feels like he’s still so far away.

Eventually, I hear his voice. “I wasn’t prepared for you, Ava.”

My throat tightens and I find myself struggling to reconcile this man with the beast in that room. I turn around and lay my hand flat against the door, as though I can touch him from here. My tears have settled, my breath has quieted, but my head is still sorting through it all.

I swallow and ask the question burning my tongue. “Were you telling the truth?”

It’s quiet on the other side of the door, and I think perhaps he isn’t going to answer, but then…“Yes.”

His words echo in my mind.

I’ll push you to your limits.

You’ll beg me to stop.

Hopefully even cry.

“Why?” I ask.

“That’s just the way I’m made, Ava. The way life shaped me.”

I press forward, not willing or able to give up on him. “And the women you’re with—they like it?”

“The type of woman I choose to be with, yes, they like it.”

“What type is that?”

A sigh drifts through the door. “The type that can survive me.”

I think of Candace then. So beautiful, but so cruel, and so cold.

There’s a shift against the door and I can tell when he speaks again, that he’s standing now. “I won’t keep you any longer. I just wanted to say I’m sorry and…to thank you. You brought…” He pauses for a long moment. “You brought light to an otherwise dark place. Thank you, Ava.”

My body warms, pumping with renewed blood. There are no more doubts. No more fears. I’m up and out the door.

“Gavin, wait.”

He pauses in the darkened hallway, a few steps from his bedroom. His head hangs low, his body stands still.

I walk towards him, not stopping until I’m so close my nipples graze his skin.

He shakes his head and closes his eyes. “You test my control, Ava.”

I wonder if he’ll send me away again. But then…“One night,” he whispers, looking at me now. “One night only. Understand?”

A light suddenly appears at the end of what has been a very long, dark tunnel.

I nod.

He reaches out and slides a fingertip across my cheek. I close my eyes, cherishing his touch. It’s so delicate, so thoughtful, but I know it won’t last. Not after all he’s just revealed. His hand falls away and I open my eyes to see him extend his arm towards the bedroom, a darkness brewing in his gaze. “After you.”

I walk into the moonlit room and hear the click of the door behind me. A heartbeat later his presence is at my back. He stands there, hovering, the only contact the heat that simmers off his body onto mine. Then I feel it—a fingertip, or perhaps the back of his finger, moving slowly up and down my spine.