Her lip pouts and my cock twitches beneath her. I still want to fuck that sweetness out of her and fill her with my darkness. I want to take her until she stops having a heart that beats for anyone but me, until she has no more guilt or regret about the people we kill to keep our hearts beating together.
I grab her chin and kiss her. “How far did he get?” I’ve been afraid to ask because I don’t think I can handle the answer, but I need to know if I’m chopping off the fucker’s hands before I bury him.
She shakes her head. “Just got his hand down my pants.”
That’s one hand I’ll chop off and shove in his ass before I put him in the ground for touching her like that.
Her pussy is mine.
I take a deep breath, stopping my barrage of possessive thoughts. I have to let her go. I have to push back my need to own her before we both end up dead or in prison.
“I know you’re going to fight me about it, tooth and fucking nail, but you can’t stay with me, Selena.” I touch her face. “I know you want to, and I want you to as well, but you can’t. I thought you had to fear the wolf, but there are bigger predators out there than me. Ihaveto keep you safe. It’s the one thing I promised myself I’d do, and it’s theonething I’m not going back on.”
She shakes her head. “Nope, I’m not accepting that bullshit excuse to get rid of me.”
“It’s not a bullshit excuse, rabbit. Bullshit excuses are what I’ve been giving myself to justify keeping you with me. None of this is a fucking game. I can’t see a scenario with a good end for you, and I don’t understand how you can’t see that.”
I ease her off my lap. Even in my anger, I don’t want to hurt her like that. I stand up and tower over her. When I rip my shirt off, I expose a mosaic of mostly prison tattoos—a timeline of violence and hate. I gesture to the bundles of scar tissue on my abdomen and back from the many times I’ve been stabbed. I’m a mess, not just inside but on the outside.
She canseethe evil on my body.
“What more of me do you have to see to know you need to run? This isn’t safe. I’m not safe.” My words bite, but she refuses to recoil.
I grab her by the arm and drag her toward the bedroom. It’s old, but at least it has a bed. I sit her down and she looks up at me with those big eyes of hers.
“What do I have to do to make you hate me?”
“There’s nothing you can do, Lex,” she says in a maddeningly calm tone despite not knowing the full extent of what I’m capable of. She’s seen so much, yet she still seems to forget all she’s seen.
“You need to,” I snarl. I need her to because I can’t hateher. If I could, none of this would be so difficult. She’d be dropped off or killed like she means nothing, and I’d be alone by now.
But she means everything.
She folds her arms across her chest defiantly. “Well, I won’t.”
I climb over her and put a hand to her throat. She whimpers as I squeeze. “What if I took your pussy? What if I tear into you like I’ve wanted to since the moment I saw you?”
She shakes her head. Her lips tighten, and I know I offended her.
I squeeze her throat harder. “What if I fucked your ass and didn’t stop when it made you cry from the pain?”
“No.” She strains to get the word out.
Anger rises through me, lighting my skin on fire. She’s so fucking naïve to think she’d still enjoy being in my presence if I tore through her the way I want to. I give her a final squeeze, cutting off her air. Her cheeks redden as she reaches for my wrists. Flashes of my foster mother replace her face as I keep my hands around her throat. That anger gets out of control, nearly past the point of stopping myself. I only let go of her throat to turn her onto her stomach, and she hardly flails beneath me as I tug down her leggings.
It pisses me off.
“Hate me, rabbit!” I scream as I unzip my jeans and pull out my cock. I lie over her, pressing the heat of my dick against her bare skin. She whimpers. “Fucking. Hate. Me.”
“No,” she strains out beneath my weight.
I wrestle with control when I need it the most. I slam my fist beside her head. “Fine. I’m done trying to make it harder than it needs to be. It ends for you here. You aren’t coming with me. That’s it. There’s no arguing about it. There’s no more trying to make it easier for you to let me go. I’m taking you to a bus stop.” I feel the twist of my stomach with each word.
This is it. For her. For me. For us.
It has to be.
I crawl off her and refuse to look in her eyes. “Get ready to go, Selena.”