Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
“You loved it,” he says, his voice low.
“What?”
His chest moves again, but this time it’s more from a large breath than from the tremors of his emotions. And then he widens his stance and flexes his grip, his arm around my waist and his fist in my hair. It’s as if that breath was him coming back to life, him building up his defenses and shutting everything and everyone out. It’s okay though. It’s fine. He can’t hide himself from me anymore. I’ve seen him, all of him, so I won’t let him. But that’s for later. For now, I’m going to fucking be his, even if it kills me.
He pulls my head back and rasps, his eyes all dark and dangerous now, “You loved it. What I did to you.” I nod without shame, without any reservations. “All those things, mean and degrading. Things meant to wreck you to pieces.”
I lick my lips, and he pulls at my hair harder. “I felt like… I felt like I wasn’t really mine in that moment. I felt like I was yours. My body, my heart, my soul. My will. And it felt like you’d keep them safe. All my organs, all the pieces that make me. You’ll keep the fabric of my soul safe.”
By the time I finish, his jaw is pulsing. There’s a flash in his eyes, bright and full of unknown things. Things that should give me pause, should make me shiver. They do make me shiver, but they don’t make me want to pause. They make me want to jump headlong into the unknown.
“You shouldn’t have told me that,” he says, his fingers flexing.
My heart pounds. “Why n-not?”
He licks his lips and says gruffly, “Because I’m hungry.”
“What?”
“And I wanna eat.” My thighs flex at his low, intense tone. “I wanna eat and eat and fucking eat everything you gave me. That night.” My eyes go wide and my mouth parts, but he keeps going, “It means that I wanna eat your tears. I wanna eat your whimpers. I wanna eat the way you light up for me when I call you my whore, the way you moan when I squeeze your throat a little too tight. I wanna eat your shame and your lust, your desire for me, your desperation. It means, baby, that I wanna eat you. Because I might have wanted it to just be about revenge, I might have wanted it to just be about hurting you the way you hurt me, but it wasn’t. The moment I walked in the door and saw you across the room, everything became about you.”
I blink. “Me?”
“Yeah,” he rumbles. “So I want you to know I won’t turn you away. I won’t tell you this is a bad fucking idea. Because if given the chance, I’ll eat you up. I’ll eat all of you until there’s nothing left. Until you’re lying on the ground, your heart bleeding out and dying. Until every part of you is ruined and wrecked. Do you understand? So don’t ask me to kiss you if you aren’t ready for that.”
I stare at him for a few moments, noticing every line of his face, committing it to memory, the way he looks right now, on the edge, at the tipping point, before inching closer. Closer and closer until our lips are grazing against each other and I whisper, “I’ve been ready for years.”
And then, closing my eyes, I put my mouth on him and jump to my death.
Chapter Twenty-Two
There’s a thing about kissing someone you’ve loved for years that they don’t tell you.
They don’t describe it in books or show it in movies. They don’t talk about it in school hallways. Or maybe they do, but I never knew it. Or maybe I knew it, but I don’t remember it in this moment, and so you don’t realize that when you kiss someone that you’ve wanted to kiss for ages, you never stop.
You can’t stop, because you lose all control. Every bit of it.
And it may be an exaggeration, because it’s probably only been five seconds since I put my mouth on his, since he realized that I’m not going to back off no matter what he told me, and so he decided to give in—thank fucking God—and kiss me back. But it’s no less true.
The moment our mouths touch, things ignite.
Stars explode in the sky. The moon is set on fire. The moment I realize how hot and wet and soft his mouth is—as soft as the rest of his body is hard—my heart practically bangs against my chest at a bruising rhythm. And I think it’s because the moment our lips touch, after ages and centuries of waiting and longing and dreaming and wishing, he takes over. He steals my control, my will and me from myself.