As if he enjoys driving me to the edge with his wicked touch and evil hands.
“So fucking breakable, Lisichka. I love how sensitive you are,” he muses, tone slightly amicable.
I want to drown in it.
I want him to speak to me in that tone forever. The satiated one. While the beastly version from earlier exceeded my fantasies, this is the version I prefer right now.
The caring one.
Well, caring might be an overstatement, but he at least doesn’t sound like he hates me.
Or is annoyed with me.
He sounds like he wants me for me. Not for any other reason than for me being myself.
His touch heightens in intensity, pinching, compressing, squeezing. “You have no idea how much I want to eat you up, bleed your porcelain skin and swallow you whole.”
The rich timbre of his voice sneaks beneath my flesh, drawing out the demented part of me I’ve been keeping under wraps for years.
“I crave your innocence, your fear, and your pain.” He spreads his fingers across the skin of my throat. “I’ve been fantasizing about bruising and marking this skin while you shattered around my cock and screamed and whimpered because it was too much. But here’s the twist. You love it when it gets too much.”
My lips twitch, but no words come out.
I’m caught in a trance by his crude descriptions and unapologetic view.
“I could tell you do. Your green eyes become the color of the forest at night, all dark and needy with dangerous lust. You fought me, but it wasn’t so you could push me away. It was to drag out the beast you saw in me. You hunger for that beast, don’t you, Lisichka?”
His commanding hand hovers over the mark on my neck before he envelops it whole. “That beast hungers for you, too. That’s why I couldn’t control it earlier or control me. I fucked you like an animal because I felt like one. I wanted to overpower and claim you. To bruise, bite, choke, and mark this translucent skin. My blood boiled and my beast yearned for it, which is why I didn’t use a condom. I needed to feel your blood coating my cock as I claimed your innocence. And I’ve never fucked without a condom before. That’s a first for both of us.”
My skin bursts into hot lava of overwhelming sensations at his hypnotic words, at my reaction to said words.
At the need for more.
His thumb toys with the cut on my nipple. “If you can hear me, wake up. I’m not done with you.”
He’s not?
A thrill of suppressed emotions rises to the surface and fills me with inexplicable determination.
“I’ll fuck you again, Cecily,” he announces with authoritative firmness. “I’ll take your cunt over and over until there’s nothing left for that motherfucker Landon.”
I shake my head—or try to. I’m not sure if it’s visible as I mutter, “Lan…” is the last thing on my mind right now.
But the words get stuck on my numb tongue.
Silence stakes claim around me, but it’s not the calm type.
Tension grows thick and heavy with every moment. And then the hand that was torturing and sending waves of pleasure through me squeezes my throat.
The motion is so sudden and harsh that my whole body jerks. I reach up out of instinct to loosen his grip, but he doesn’t budge.
My air is stolen, and my head swims in chaos as my lungs burn.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
Then just like that, the deathly grip disappears as suddenly as it appeared.
And so does Jeremy’s presence.
It vanishes in a fog of smoke.
It’s been three days since the cottage.
Three days of me questioning if maybe something is wrong with me.
Not only because I enjoyed what happened on the deck a bit too much and fell into every bit of the depravity Jeremy offered, but also because I’ve been on edge since.
After he nearly choked me to death—and I’m sure he did, considering the angry red marks I found around my neck when I woke up—he disappeared.
Back then, I was disoriented, not sure what was real and what was a hallucination. When I was lucid enough, I found myself lying on a sofa in front of that cozy fire in the cottage. A pair of men’s sweatpants and a hoodie were folded on the coffee table. There was also a first aid kit and some painkillers.
But there was no sign of Jeremy.
My chest still hurts thinking about how he disappeared into the night without a word. Not even a note or a text.
And I hate those emotions.
I, of all people, should know that Jeremy and I aren’t supposed to be anything.
It’s not like he was courting me for a relationship or offering me some form of a fairy tale. It was a simple arrangement to satisfy both our needs, and I have no right to feel so hurt about it.
Besides, I don’t even like Jeremy.
Behind the beautiful fa?ade lurks a devil with a taste for blood.
Literally.
The cut on my nipple has been healing, but the one on my neck is still purple and angry, and I have to wear turtleneck tops to hide it.
The fact remains, I’ve now satisfied my curiosity and we can both move on with our lives, right?
Wrong.
I can’t help feeling that something went awry in the whole situation. Why would he have wiped me clean, massaged my sore pussy, and touched me so tenderly just so he’d nearly choke me to death after?
Because he’s dangerous and you should stay away from him, is what my mind has been telling me.
But here’s the thing—Jeremy isn’t impulsive. I know he plots things to a fault, has a methodical character, and wouldn’t have turned murderous on me just because it was on the spur of the moment.
So it doesn’t make sense for him to do that out of the blue. Especially after the way he spoke to me, provoked my darkest parts, and said he wasn’t done with me.
That one was a blatant lie.
The day after, I pretended nothing happened.
The second day, I went through his Instagram, developing unhealthy habits.
The third day, I sent him a text.
Did you take one of my mangas when you came into my room?
It was an excuse, and yes, he did take one from my boys’ love collection, and I was too embarrassed to ask for it back in the beginning.
Embarrassment was the last thing I could think of the last couple of days, though, which is why I sent that text.
Jeremy ignored me.
And I refuse to put a name on the feeling that flooded my system afterward.
Turns out, he was actually done with me, and now, I should get over it and move on.
I tuck a drunk Ava into bed after listening to her mumble everything and nothing, and once I’m sure she’s asleep, I leave and close her door. Then I cover Glyn with a blanket since she’s fallen asleep in the living room sofa. I go to check on Annika, but I recall that she’s spending the night at her brother’s mansion.
The dull ache from earlier comes back at the mere thought of him, but I ignore it and slip into my room.
I don’t want to sleep. The thought of black invisible hands, a heavy weight on my chest, and gruesome nightmares has made me terrified of closing my eyes.
Instead, I opt to study.