I don’t think I’ll ever forget that type of horror.
“Oh, but you do.” Asher’s hand travels down until it wraps around my throat. “You fucking do.”
“But—”
He squeezes, cutting off my air supply and my words. “Shut up, don’t talk about that. Not tonight.”
Not tonight? What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Still gripping my neck, his thumb strokes up and down my pulse point as if soothing it, feeling it, making sure it’s there.
There’s something about the way he holds my throat prisoner. Sometimes, it’s harsh, dominant, and meant to prove a point. Other times, like right now, it’s almost…tender, meant to establish a connection.
“You’ll never do shit like that on the balcony again, understood?” He’s not boring his eyes into mine. Instead, his entire attention is on my neck.
What is his problem exactly? He’s acting strangely for someone who’s been actively trying to end my life.
When I don’t answer—partially because he’s barely allowing me air to breathe, let alone talk—he wraps his other hand at the back of my head and forces me to nod, up and down.
“That’s a yes. That’s, I’ll never do it again, Asher. I won’t allow people to see me that way.”
He releases me then, both his hands pulling away from me. A funny type of emptiness prickles on my skin as if I don’t want him gone.
Why the hell do I not want him gone?
He stalks to the foot of the bed and I watch his every move. The word ‘stay’ is at the tip of my tongue, but I don’t say it.
Snap out of it, Reina or Rai or whoever the fuck you are.
I expect him to leave, but he turns around. The dangerous lust on his face takes me by surprise as he reaches for me.
“What—”
Words die at the back of my throat when he grabs both my ankles in his strong, merciless hold and pulls me toward him in one ruthless tug.
The phone falls from my hand, clattering to the ground. My legs fly open and the leather skirt bunches up my thighs, barely covering my butt.
Asher kneels on the ground as both my legs hang helplessly on his broad shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I gasp, my voice breathy and choppy like I’ve been running.
“You had your dinner. It’s time I have mine.”
I hardly process his words as he tugs my skirt up around my waist and yanks my panties down. A gust of air covers my core and my spine jerks.
A groan tears out of him as he widens my legs to watch me closer. “You’re wet. Why the fuck are you soaked, prom queen?”
I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s baffling even to my own brain. Something about me is wired wrong, and I have no idea what it is.
Or maybe I do know, but I don’t want to admit it even to myself.
He runs his middle finger along my slit, ripping a whimper from me. “You were hardly wet before, if ever. You never moaned, either, or shook with desire like you do now.”
The confession doesn’t lessen my reaction. If anything, it makes my limbs shake harder like a leaf in the wind outside the windows.
He slides his middle finger up and down again before he thrusts it inside me and murmurs against my slick folds. “You changed.”
In the beginning, I also thought I’d changed, but now I realize that’s not the case.