“Don’t, Kat,” I growl. “You don’t know what—I don't know what I’ll do to you. Just don’t.”
“What would you do to me, Heath?” she spits at me with venom.
“My anger is at a boiling point. I’m too filled with hate,” I tell her.
“You don’t hate me, Heath. You might want to, but you never could. Just like I could never hate you. You can’t hate your own heart, even if you want to.”
I clamp my hands around her wrists, yanking her arms up and pinning them above her head. My fingers dig into her soft, supple flesh.
“My heart turned to ash the day you told me to leave. Not only can I hate my own heart, but I can tear it out with my bare hands if it hurts me too much.”
“You don’t think it killed me inside, too, saying those things to you?”
“No, Princess, I don’t. I think you meant what you said. Playing poor was fun for a while, but once you realized it might have consequences, you chose the safe and easy path, the one that had been laid out before you. Part of me hates you, and another part doesn’t blame you for doing what you did. I had nothing to offer you. Only my heart, and what’s a rich girl going to do with some young gun’s heart on a plate? I couldn’t offer you shit, Kat. I had nothing. Sandcastles in the fucking sky when you could get a real palace just down the street.”
“That would have been enough. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“I would have vowed to spend the rest of my fucking life loving you.”
She searches my eyes with so much emotion and pain that it makes my blood roar in my veins.
My eyes focus on the pulse of her neck, the blue veins in the swell of her pale chest. She swallows the words she wants to say to me. I know she’ll offer me nothing but more lies that will spill effortlessly from her full, rose-tinted lips. I gaze into the cornflower blue of her bright eyes that used to twinkle with joy. She holds so much ice around her heart that I know, deep down, I’ll never excavate the truth.
Five years ago, I would have given anything to hear her say those words. To have her run after me, say it was all a lie, and welcome me back in her arms. But maybe her rejection was a blessing in disguise. Maybe it saved me from the eventual pain and humiliation I’d inevitably encounter down the line when she realized wealth and power were what made her world go round, and that our idealistic fantasy of true love wasn’t all it was chalked up to be. Money doesn’t buy you happiness but love sure as hell isn’t free either.
I finger the locket around her neck, the one that belonged to my mother. “You put this on for me?”
“I never take it off.”
“You playing fucking games with me, Kat?” My voice shakes with the pure force of adrenaline coursing through my veins. I grab her face and squeeze her cheeks hard, yanking her to look right at me.
“I never stopped loving you—”
“LIES!”
I grasp her throat with one hand while I tug down my wet pants with the other to unleash my cock. I’ve been hard as steel for her from the moment my fingers brushed hers on the beach. The weight of her body in my arms was like an element, the most necessary matter to hold onto in this world—like my very survival depended on it.
“Why don’t you put that smart mouth of yours to use for something other than spewing bullshit?”
Her eyes round, and when she opens her mouth to speak, I spit in it. “Whores don’t get to talk. You pay them for their silence. Isn’t that what you are, Kat, a whore? Selling yourself to the highest bidder. You’ll switch cocks and bounce that sweet pussy on the fattest wallet. How much does a fuck go for out here these days?”
I push harder on her throat, letting her know I’m the one with control now. I want her to know she’s nothing to me. It doesn't matter if it’s a lie. I want her to feel the feeling what I felt—that her life is in my hands, and if I squeeze a little more, she’ll be dead by those same hands.
I reach over to the nightstand and grab my black leather wallet, pull out five hundred dollars and toss it toward her face while I straddle her.
“This is enough for a blow job? I assume the rates around here are steeper than the Bronx. Or maybe not, you tell me.”
“Fuck you,” she squeaks, her voice strained under the force of my hand.
“Nah, baby doll. You’ve fucked me enough in my life. It’s time I fuck you.”