“Do you really want me to die so badly?” I respond, sighing.
“Yes,” she says with such conviction that it feels like a stab wound. I don’t know why it gets to me the way it does. Why everything she says to me hurts like a fucking brick to the face.
I look deep in her eyes, searching for something … anything … that can make me stop feeling this way. This haunted by the pain in her soul.
Despite hating her so badly, I want to fix her too. I want to break her and then build her up again. I want to ruin her and then make her mine.
Fuck.
“Look into my eyes, Dixie,” I murmur, forcing her to stay still by sitting on top of her and pinning her firmly to the ground. “Look at me and tell me what you see.”
A single tear rolls down her cheeks. “The eyes of a killer.”
“The eyes of a man who regrets everything … everything he ever did,” I say in a single breath. “Except you.”
Her lips part, but no sound comes out. Her chest stops moving, and for a moment, she stops fighting me.
“What do you mean?” she mutters.
“I need to hate you to stay sane, but fuck me, you make it difficult,” I growl.
She licks her lips in such a delicious way that it captures my full attention. I wish I could have a taste. I wish I could kiss her without feeling the guilt flow through me.
My father deserves better from me.
But so did she.
I close my eyes and sigh. “I’m sorry.”
It’s the first time in ages that I’ve admitted I did something wrong.
That I made a mistake.
In my pain, I retaliated in the worst of ways, and it killed her love for me along with her soul. I never wanted to do that to her, despite the fact she burned whatever was left of my heart.
Maybe that’s why I feel such a need to inflict the pain I feel onto her. Because it’s a catharsis to me.
“Wha—” she mumbles.
Instead of answering her, I press my lips onto hers.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brandon
I needed to kiss her. I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I had to remember what she tasted like before … before all this.
In light of what’s happened, this is the most horrible thing I’ve done to her. Not the tying up, not the threats, not almost shooting her … this.
Because I can see it in her eyes. The passionate, bitter rage seething from them.
I deserve it all.
Yet she doesn’t push back. She lets me kiss her right here on the dirt in the middle of fucking nowhere. So I keep going, kissing her as hard as I can, savoring every single inch of her skin. However, the moment my lips move slightly off hers, she panics and bites me instead.
“What the fuck?!”
She frees herself from my grasp and a slap follows.
Dazed, I stare at her and touch the burning sting on my face. “Fuck. Do you really wanna hurt me that badly?”
“Like you hurt me? Fuck yes,” she says, trying to slap me again.
I pin her down to the ground again, her hair filling with dust as she squirms underneath me. “I hurt you because you hurt me.”
“Stop acting like you’re the one who lost everything,” she hisses.
“You don’t know what I lost,” I spit back. I don’t want to tell her about my papa. It’s my only weakness, and I’m not about to hand it to her on a platter. Not when she’s still trying to get to me. “It doesn’t fucking matter. You and I are both in this together.”
“Why? Why did you even save me, huh? You could’ve just left me there,” she says. “Stop pretending you’re some kind of hero.”
“I’m no fucking hero, and I never pretended to be one,” I growl. “I’m only here for my own fucking interest.”
“And what is that, huh?” she asks, gazing at her own wrists which I still have pinned down. “Me? My body? My tits? My pussy?” A filthy, dirty smile appears on her lips the moment she looks at me. Do I give it away that easily? Shit.
“Take me then. Use me. I don’t give a damn. Just kill me after it’s over so it’s done.”
My cock hardens from her words. That’s what she does to me. Her stubbornness is such a fucking turn-on to me, always has been. It’s the single thing that can turn me into a monster in the blink of an eye.
And it’s happening again … I can feel it.
“Do it,” she whispers, leaning up. “Kiss me. Fuck me. Ruin me.”
Her shallow breath is enough to consume me, and I fall into her, claiming her mouth as if it always belonged to me. This woman, she’ll be my undoing. But first, I’ll have my way with her.
I bury my tongue in her mouth, toying with hers, and I lick the roof of her mouth. She parts her lips and allows me in, despite her words saying otherwise. I ravage her completely, not allowing her one second to breathe. I don’t even give a damn whether she knows just how much I want her body. I’m taking it, end of story.
My hands move to her tits, and I rip off the shirt she was wearing. Buttons fly everywhere, and she shrieks in surprise, but I immediately cover her mouth with mine to silence her. I play with her nipples, which peak under my command.
I know how to play her body to make her sing. Soon, she’s moaning, whether she wants to or not. I’ll find all the sensitive spots she wants to keep secret from me, and I’ll own them all.
Every blush. Every moan. Every fucking breath.
And she will scream my name.
“Fuck,” she whispers as I slide my tongue along her neck and jawline.
“Oh yeah, I’m gonna fuck you, all right,” I groan.
My mouth reaches her tits, and I grab a fistful in one hand and suck on the other. She moans out loud, unable to hold back her excitement. I know she wants this even though she might say she doesn’t. She’s not fighting back anymore. Her body has turned to mush below me, and goose bumps scatter across her skin. I grin as she grasps my hair while my tongue twirls around her nipple. Tonight, here in the desert, I will take what should have been mine long ago.
But as I move down her body, she leans up, reaches into my pocket, and takes out my gun.
*
Dixie