My hands wedge between our bodies, traveling up his stomach bulging with muscles to his firm chest. Roughly, I push him away, our lips separating with a loud smack.
“Wait, stop,” I pant, my mind foggy and discombobulated.
“What did I say?” he demands sharply. His mismatched eyes capture my gaze in a drug-inducing hold. It’s hard to look away when I feel like I’m looking into the eyes of a predator.
He is a predator.
“What?” I breathe, still dizzy from the kiss.
“If I catch you, I fuck you,” he repeats slowly, gravel lining his throat.
My mouth opens, but the words are slow to release.
“You’re not fucking me,” I refuse, pushing against his chest harder.
His lips whisper across my cheek, trailing along my jawline before dropping down to my neck.
“Because you’re afraid you’ll like it too much,” he concludes before delivering a sharp nip on my neck. My back arches, goosebumps rising on my skin from the chills. “Because you know that you’ll become as addicted as I am.”
“No,” I deny in a whisper. “Because I don’t want you to.”
He lifts his head, a knowing smirk on his lips.
“So, you’re going to be my bad girl tonight? Lie to my face and act like your pussy isn’t aching to be filled up with my cock.”
I feel the blood rush to my cheeks, a mix of anger and embarrassment.
“Not everything has to come down to physical attraction,” I respond finally. “Maybe my body wants you, but up here”—I tap my temple— “doesn’t.”
He nods his head slowly, his eyes flitting across my face in contemplation. He takes a step back, leaving me bereft and cold.
It feels like a black shroud encasing the sun on a hot summer day—just a sudden, bone-chilling cold.
He grabs my hand and pulls me away from the mirror. He spins me until I’m looking at the countless reflections that surround us, echoing our image from every angle.
I watch him through the mirror. He presses his body back into mine, his warmth soaking into my pores once more. My eyes settle on one mirror, our eyes clashing through the glass.
Slowly, he bends down until his mouth is right at my ear, his eyes never straying from mine.
“You want to know why I love the house of mirrors?” he murmurs in my ear, eliciting sparks throughout my nerve endings. His voice is full of dark promises and dangerous beginnings.
I swallow thickly. “Why?” I whisper.
“Look around you,” he commands softly. Hesitantly, I pull my eyes away from his, dragging my gaze across the dozens of mirrors.
“What you’re seeing now is what I see every day. No matter how far I run, how hard I try to escape you—you’re everywhere I go. You’re everything I see. Loving you is like being trapped in a house of mirrors, little mouse. And I’ve never felt so at home while being so lost inside you.”
My breath hitches, my eyes snapping back to his.
My heart tripped and fell down a flight of stairs the second the word 'love' came out of his mouth. A word he tossed out so casually, I'm not sure if it's a confession or not.
"I don't think you know what love is," I whisper.
He grunts with amusement. "I don't think anyone does, baby. Love is an enigma, and it's redefined every time someone says it."
I frown. All I can feel is disappointment. Not because of what he said, but because of how fucking easy it was for him to accomplish what he set out to do.
Just like he wants, a reckless, impulsive feeling consumes me. All I ache to do is let him have me. So many nights, where he’d sneak into my bed and take advantage of my weakness—whether the weakness was in my body or brain—he used that against me time and time again. But he never took it all the way, and every morsel inside my being has been waiting for this moment. Anticipating it.
I’m dying to deny him, yet I have to fight my body from turning and pulling him into me.
Maybe just this once…
I bite my lip, rolling the bruised and abused lip between my teeth.
He watches me closely, studying every movement like he’s trying to interpret a dead language hidden in the lines of my body.
“Are you only saying that because you think it’ll work?” I ask, my voice husky and uneven.
His mouth is still angled towards my ear, with his eyes locked onto mine. Slowly, he shakes his head, his face severe and gaze intense.
“You’re telling the truth?” I push, my voice hitching with the desperation for him to just lie and tell me no.
“Yes, Adeline,” he whispers.
I close my eyes, resignation seeping from my pores. Sensing the change, his hand travels across my flat stomach. I tense beneath his touch, goosebumps rising on my skin.
His long fingers latch onto the zipper of my hoodie, slowly pulling it down, parting the material at a painful pace. The sound of the metal teeth separating disrupts the sound of my erratic breathing.
“Don’t torture me,” I bite out, anger flashing from his deliberately slow pace.
A wicked smile flashes, and even the mirror can’t lessen the cruelty.
“Poor little mouse,” he taunts. “You’re sadly mistaken if you thought I was going to make this anything but painful.”
Chapter 30
The Manipulator
H
e has the strangest ability to suck the air from my lungs with a simple look. And when his terrifying words accompany the deadly stare, it feels like I don’t have any lungs at all.
The hoodie parts and he slowly pulls it down my arms. The material drops to the floor, where muddy shoes have trekked across a thousand times tonight.
It feels like a cruel metaphor. Along with my clothes, my flesh and soul will be stained tonight.
“Someone could come in here,” I whisper, my voice barely penetrating the tension in the air.
He smiles—a wicked smile that tells me he wouldn’t mind if someone did.
“What do you think they’d do?” he implores as he lifts my shirt, the pads of his fingers grazing my skin. Goosebumps rise, a physical reaction from the electricity dancing across my skin wherever he touches me.
“Do you think they’d watch?” he asks. “Do you think they’d enjoy the sight of your naked flesh on display? Maybe they would get off on seeing your dripping pussy reflected back at them everywhere they look. Or the pretty flush on your chest when you come. I think they’d even enjoy watching your eyes roll to the back of your head when my cock fills you so fully, you can’t fit any more of me inside you.”
A shot of fear injects straight into my heart, forcing the muscle into overdrive. But yet, my body still responds in a much darker way.
Just like his words, I feel my pussy pulsate as my panties gradually dampen until it’s exactly like he said—dripping.
Would I be okay with a stranger watching? I don’t think so. But something about the way he paints the picture makes me wonder if I’d let it happen anyway.