I never thought Clay’s life was gold just because she’s rich and beautiful. Happy people don’t act how she did.
She kept up the façade for a long time, though. Resisting me.
“Why did you finally let it happen?” I ask, nearly brushing her nose and gazing at her mouth that I want so badly.
She kisses me softly. “Because for four years, if I wasn’t sleeping, I was thinking of you,” she murmurs. “And even then sometimes, in my dreams.”
Her mouth lingers on my cheek, and I know now what the tattoo means. The one on the inside of her finger and what she meant at the theater earlier when she didn’t think I heard her. Within this inch, I’m free.
It’s a paraphrase of a quote from V for Vendetta. A part of us that we’ll never sell—a small piece we keep to ourselves and covet and hold tightly for dear life, because it’s the only place inside of us we truly live.
Just an inch. But it’s ours.
“I wanted to be alone with you and touch you and smell you and talk to you with every part of my body, except my voice,” she says.
My eyelids flutter closed, and I understand. After years of her treatment, my pride is dented, because I should’ve told her to go to hell, but… There was always more. Almost as if I knew we’d be here eventually.
She bites my jaw gently, the heat and wet of her mouth sending tingles spiraling down to my stomach.
“Do you hear that?” she asks. And then kisses me where she bit. “And that?”
I nod. I hear you.
“Take me to your room,” I tell her.
“You should call home.” She continues to peck on my jaw. “Tell them you won’t be home tonight.”
“Later.”
Macon tracks my phone, so he never really worries.
She pulls me, backing up toward her bedroom as I pull the door closed behind me and follow. Her mouth covers mine, her moans sinking down my throat as we nearly trip over our feet.
I work my ponytail out, my long locks falling down around me, and Clay pushes me up against her desk, closing her door and locking it.
“You’re so beautiful.” She kisses me again and again, lifting my shirt over my head. “Especially on stage. God, you blew my mind tonight. I loved watching you.”
We keep the lights off, and I forget to even to look around to see if my predictions of either a white or pink color scheme are correct.
“I know someday everyone will be watching you,” she says, biting my ear. “As you play…” She pauses, thinking. “Mad Max surrendering to the animal inside you as you navigate the barren wasteland of Earth to avenge the death of your wife and child.”
I laugh, but she’s kissing and biting everything—my ear, my neck—and my head drops back, my eyes closing.
“Or maybe, you’ll be her love interest,” Clay teases. “A damsel in distress?”
Never. I’m always in charge.
But then I hear a click and feel something cold and sharp between my legs.
I go still, a jolt of surprise hitting me. Maybe I’m not always in charge, after all. “Clay?”
And just then, I register my blade missing from where it was hooked onto my skirt.
She holds it drawn, between my legs, as she glides her mouth up my neck and paws my breast with her other hand.
“You’re so pretty, Liv,” she breathes out. “You know you’re never getting away from me, right?”
Clay Collins presses her body into mine, kneading me—squeezing what’s hers—and inhaling my scent as she nibbles my neck.
“Say ‘yes, I know’,” she orders me.
“Yes.”
Holding the knife, she peels down my underwear. “You know you’re mine. Say yes.”
“Yes.”
My knees quiver, and I’m turned on but a little scared too, because her voice is more of a warning than a comfort. Like no matter how much I think I’ll stand up for myself and fight back, she’ll always have power over me.
Like she knows that she’ll be Mrs. Ames someday, and I’ll be working for her, part of my job taking place in her bed when her husband’s not around.
“Clay…”
But she releases my breast and grips my neck, instead. I gasp. “You’re never getting away from me, Jaeger,” she whispers and drags her tongue across my collarbone to my shoulder where she bites my bra strap. “Take it off.”
And at the moment, I want nothing more than to do everything she tells me to. I reach behind me and unhook my bra, the cool air caressing my nipples, and Clay’s warm hand covering one.
But before I know what’s happening, she’s swiping her arm across her desktop, sending everything crashing to the floor and bending me over the top of it.
I plant my hands on the desk on both sides of my head, sucking in air like I can’t catch my breath. She yanks my underwear, tearing them from my body, and then she lifts my skirt and spreads my legs.