I chuckle. “Don’t go denying it too strongly.” I lean over her, pushing her down onto the bed, my lips running across hers. “Now, where were we?” My big toe bumps into something, causing a stinging pain to zing up my foot. “Shit!”
I pull back and use my foot to feel out what I hit. My toes catch onto the edge of what feels like a frame. Rising up on my straightened arms, I curl my toes around the object and drag it out from beneath the bed.
“Brayden? What are you doing?” Kira stares up at me with those beautiful, confused hazel eyes.
I tilt my head and look down at the ground.
The world shifts in an eerily familiar way.
Silence comes next, the type of silence that comes from deep within. I can’t move as my eyes take in the picture at my feet.
A picture that’s shredded, only bits and pieces of it hanging onto the frame.
It’s the picture I bought her for her sixteenth birthday. The one I picked out after wandering around the mall like a lovesick fool, missing her so damn bad that I could barely breathe from it.
She sliced it up. Ruined it. And it wasn’t something done in a single moment of destructive rage.
This was deliberate. The slice patterns are too cohesive not to be premeditated.
I don’t know how long she’s been cutting that picture up for, but she’s done it many, many times.
Kira hasn’t budged, nor has she tried to see what it is that I’m staring down at.
I have a feeling she knows very well what it is.
We’re quiet for a few minutes. I can sense her staring at me while I continue to look at her handiwork.
“What?” Her tone is low but hard as stone, and there’s a hint of mockery in it. “Don’t tell me that upsets you.”
“It does,” I admit, looking up into her eyes. “But not because you did it.”
“Why, then?” She’s trying to keep her expression neutral.
“I did this, okay?” I motion at the floor. “You think I don’t know what this is?”
Kira sits up a little straighter, almost like she’s trying to get away from me.
I finally move, my hand snapping around her ankle to keep her in place.
She huffs, but doesn’t try to break my hold. “In your opinion, what is this?”
“That’s what I did to you.”
The comment lays heavy in the air between us. I don’t have to explain what it means. It’s so damn obvious that that picture might as well be a visual metaphor.
She cut that thing up just like I’d cut her up over the years. Systematically. One beautiful piece at a time.
I don’t know what she sees in my expression, but sympathy flashes in her eyes. “Brayden . . .”
I attack.
There’s no real thought behind the movement. Just this overwhelming ache in my balls, heart, my mind and my soul. This all-consuming need to imprint how much I love her into every part of her mind. I need to get this girl to a point where she feels how much I adore her so she’ll never doubt it again.
Covering Kira’s body with mine, I jerk her face in my direction and kiss her. I kiss her like the maddened, agonized animal I am.
At first, she tries to resist me, refusing to open up her mouth.
I’m not the only one that’s been brutally reminded of all the pain I caused her.
I don’t ease up, determination a heavy presence beating through my body. Softly, I suck on her lips, tease them with my tongue, all the while keeping her pinned on the bed by my much larger body. My hips start to rock in circles into her, a primal, instinctual movement that I have no control over.
Kira whimpers into my mouth, her lips falling open.
Groaning, I slide my tongue in, my eyes rolling back in my fucking head at the feel of her tongue. She lets me kiss her, but there’s a restraint in her. She’s holding back, refusing to give me everything she can.
Refusing to truly let me in.
I climb fully up on the bed and have to practically manhandle her legs open to make room for my hips. She doesn’t fight me as viciously as I know she can, but she isn’t making this easy for me either.
Fine. I’ll fight for this just like I’m willing to fight for everything else.
Four swifts moves, and I have her bathing suit on the floor.
I jack off the bed long enough to get my trunks off, then climb back on the bed.
She’s glaring at me, ready to strike, spit venom at me, and run away, but the moment I’m over her, there’s a flicker in her eyes, giving me an opening. I cup the back of her head, fisting her hair as my other hand wraps around her waist, gluing her body to mine.
There’s nowhere for her to go. No escape.
Nothing to do but take all that I have to give.
“Keep fighting me, because I’m not going to stop fighting for you.” Her eyes narrow, full of hate, but that other emotion is also there. The one I saw outside.
It’s the same emotion I’ve been seeing more and more of lately.
There’s too much going on inside me. Feeling like I’m about to explode, I lean down and bite into the side of her tit roughly, desperate for an outlet.
I need relief. From this onslaught, from the choking frustration of not owning the woman I love the way I want to.