“You can talk to me, you know. Whatever it is, I can—“
“You’re right,” he snaps, cutting off my offer of help. “I only want you when you’re full of my cock.”
I gasp at the coldness in his confession, my heart splintering despite the fact that I know that I shouldn’t care.
Whatever this is between us isn’t serious. I’m just not sure I needed such a brutal reminder of that.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” I hiss, forcing as much venom into my tone as possible.
My nails dig into his hand as I fight to drag his fingers from my throat, but he doesn’t move or even attempt to loosen his grip.
Curling my other fist, I slam it into his shoulder as hard as I can.
“I said let go,” I demand.
But he’s not having any of it, and instead of taking a step back, he closes the space between us. Pressing his hard body against the length of mine, he crowds me against the wall, ensuring I can’t focus on anything but him and the anger that radiates from his every pore.
“Nikolas, what are you—”
His lips slam down on mine, stealing my words and my breath.
I resist for as long as I can, but when his tongue sweeps across my bottom lip for the second time, I act on instinct and kiss him back.
It’s not until a growl of desire rumbles deep in his throat that reality hits me.
I sink my teeth into his bottom lip, and he pulls back with a feral look in his eyes.
“We’re done here,” I state, managing to slip out from between him and the wall.
Hitching my bag up on my shoulder, I walk away until there’s a safe distance between us.
“When you’re ready to apologise, or talk, or accept help or… Whatever. You can come and find me. And if I’m in a good mood, then I might just make time for you.”
“You might?” he growls.
“Yeah, because right now, you don’t deserve it.”
I walk away with my head held high despite the fact that my heart is in shreds as the sound of his growl of frustration hits my ears, a beat before a gut-wrenching thud that can only have been his fist colliding with something.
Fuck him. Fuck him and his dark, stubborn, sexy— “Fuck.”
* * *
Iexpected to be woken in the middle of the night by the devil, but when I came to the next morning, I was surprised not to have received a visit.
But there was nothing. No evidence of him letting himself in and doing whatever the hell he does while I’m sleeping. Although the feeling that I had been watched at some point still made my skin prickle, as if I might find him hiding somewhere if I looked hard enough.
Until I stepped into the bathroom, and there, in the shower, exactly where I stood when he walked away from me on Tuesday night was his calling card. The small origami bat.
That’s all I saw of him all day, aside from his back as he walked out of the common room the second I entered, as if he was too scared to look at me, face me.
I want to say that it didn’t hurt, being dismissed quite so coldly. But it did.
I wanted him to talk to me. To confide in me. After all, we were already keeping huge secrets together. What’s a few more between us?
I tried to put it behind me and focus on school, on everything I still needed to do in order to be prepared for my exams, but that’s easier said than done.
“Do you have everything you need, Calli?” Selene asks as she walks into the kitchen, looking as glamorous as ever. If you didn’t know she was the wife of a mob boss, then it wouldn’t be hard to believe.