“If you can get through the night, you’ll see the sun again,” I said, repeating the words he’d told me back then. “Keep chasing the next sunrise.” I closed my eyes as I exhaled. “The night feels really fucking dark, Manson, but I’m still chasing sunrises.”
He squeezed my arm, leaning his head over to press againstmine. “Yeah. Shit has gotten a little darker lately than I’d like.”
A few minutes passed in silence before he said, “We need to get out of town for a few days. Go somewhere else, give ourselves a break. Give my a dad a chance to fuck off.”
“Yeah? I could go for that. Vincent’s parents could watch the dogs.” I couldn’t remember the last time we’d taken a vacation, even a small one. It felt like we’d moved into that big house and had been working ourselves to the bone every day since. “What about Jess? It feels weird to leave her.”
“We won’t leave her,” he said, his tone thoughtful as his lips curved into a smile. “I’ve got plans for her.”
“I love it when you grin like that,” I said. That sadist’s smile on his face meant only trouble, and I was ready for it. “What’s the plan?”
“She told me about her ultimate fantasy,” he said, scratching his thumb over his chin. “She talked about how she wants to be stolen away, made to submit, to have all her worries and cares disappear. I say we make that fantasy come true.”
A shiver went over my back at the thought of it. “Oh, fuck yeah. Snatch up our pretty little toy and take her away all for ourselves? Sounds exactly like the vacation I need.”
It wasn’t just lust that had me excited. The need to pull Jess close and never let her go, no matter how completely mad she drove me, was growing more intense by the day. I had some fucked up abandonment issues, and I didn’t know what the hell Jess felt about us, but knowing that was her ultimate fantasy made a ridiculous burst of hope explode in my chest.
She wanted something we could give her. An escape, an outlet for her darkness, a safe place she could fulfill all her filthy desires. Iwantedto give her that. I wanted to show her that regardless of her fears, she could have everything she wanted and more.
I needed it to be different this time. I’d break every damn rulenecessary to win, to claim a prize that had been dangling in front of our faces for years.
This wasourgame, and I didn’t care what it took to make her ours in the end.