Page 212 of Swallow Your Sorries

“That I own you. That we belong to each other.”

Each other…

“In the auditorium, you called me a wild animal. And I showed you just how wild animals mark their territory.”

I swallow, finally coming back to reality, back to an animated state again as I remember just whose arms I’m really in.

“Gant—” I struggle to pull away from him, but he twirls my ponytail around his wrist before I can blink and forces me to tip my head back.

“Ineedto mark you again, this time not as my target but as my everything, and it only seems fitting that I do it publicly. Again. So that there’s no mistake.”

“Gant!” I strike at his ribs, but he only squeezes me tighter.

“Open your mouth.”

I gaze down at his zipper, at his hard cock stabbing my stomach.

“I’llneverforgive you.”

“You still don’t get it after all this time…Everything I did, everything I’ll do, is to keep you with me. Right by my side where you belong. Now be a good baby and open for me.”

Why do I love the word‘good’so much? Why does it do something to my insides every time he utters it, like a hypnotising force that wants me to be just that? Good.For him. Only him.

He’s asking, but he grips my chin, forces my lips to part and spits directly onto my tongue and as the wetness of his spit coats it, a rush of wet heat does the same between my thighs.

“Fucking hell!” Hale hisses again.

“Swallow it,” Gant orders, squeezing my throat, and I don’t think. I don’t resist.

I do it and the second I do, he’s leaning down to kiss me possessively and yet so softly that after a few seconds, I forget about his crassness. I forget about the crowd. I forget about everything but his massaging tongue, and his rock-hard cock that I suddenly want to stab me somewhere else.

When he finally pulls away and I peer up into his glazed eyes, I can see nothing but lust and pure satisfaction at my backfired plan.

“See,” he whispers. “You like it. You like people watching. People knowing.” He pulls me into him again, cradling my head against his neck, against his pulse that’s just as erratic as mine.

“Listen up,” He says, addressing the crowd I’d forgotten about all over again. “From now on, only I can touch Elle. Only I fuck with her. For everyone else, she doesn’t exist. Don’t look at her. Don’t talk to her. She’s mine and only mine.Understood?”

The silence that follows seems to stretch on for fucking eternity until Gant grows impatient.

“Got it?It’s done. The war is over.”

The declaration brings everyone out of their stupor.

‘What?’

‘You can’t be fucking serious.’

‘He’s seriously claiming that raggedy bitch as his?’

‘His what exactly?’

“What about what she did?” Rin asks, breaking the trance Gant’s casting over me. She’s at the next table over, beside Kesia. “You blamed her for your mother’s death this whole time. Have you suddenly forgotten all about that?”

Damn, she was playing her role of an innocent sheep a little too well.

“Have you suddenly forgotten who the fuck you’re speaking to?” Gant lifts a brow, his voice icy and clear. Rin actually shrinks back, looking stunned before her eyes flit to Étienne as if expecting him to speak up on her behalf. But Étienne only feeds Aria another mouthful of pasta.

Were they back on good terms again?