Page 51 of The Catcher

I stared at the text from my friend. Or, really, my former friend. What could I fucking say to that?

You know I really need the money

I have loans

The messages seared their way into my brain.

I have loans too,I wanted to write. But I didn’t. So that’s what our friendship was worth to her.

When Tanner came back, I was still staring at the screen and his presence seemed to shatter the last remnants of my resolve to be cold and aloof. There really wasn’t anywhere to go, but as soon as I saw him, I shot out of bed and bolted for the other exit. He immediately gave chase, catching me before I made it to the door, his arms hard around me, pulling me back onto his chest so his body encircled mine.

Surrounding me, trapping me, pulling me so close his harsh heavy breathing felt like my own.

“How long are you going to be like this?” Tanner snarled.

“Like what?” I snapped.

“Fighting me,” he said.

“Forever,” I retorted, more boldly than I felt.

Tanner gritted his teeth audibly together and he shoved me belly-first onto the bed and climbed over me so that his thighs were clamped around my shoulders. I heard the rustling of bags and a box getting ripped open, then something clattering noisily.

“What are youdoing?” I shrieked, trying madly to wiggle out from under him, but he had me pinned tight.

“Ovulation test,” he growled, sticking a little glass slide in my face. “Spit on this.”

“What is this, high school A&P?” I cried. “I’m not doing that.”

But he put one hand on my braid, yanking my head up. “Get your tongue out, Em,” he growled, shoving one of the slides in my face. I kept my lips tightly closed together.

No way. I was not going to participate in his obsessive breeding. No fucking way. He kept shoving it in my face and finally I rubbed my nose over the slide to ruin it. He hissed angrily, and he threw the slide so it shattered in the corner.

“I’m not fucking playing, Em.” He fisted my braid, yanking my hair up even tighter. With his other hand, he turned and knocked my thighs open. Then he reached down and gave my tilted-up pussy a sharp hard slap. I was only wearing a thin pair of leggings and it fuckinghurt.He tore open another slide with his teeth, squeezing my shoulders so painfully that I yelped with alarm.

“Do it,” he said, holding out the next slide in front of me. My eyes were prickling from how tightly he was holding my hair and my pussy was kind of throbbing now. I put my tongue out and licked the slide.

“Good girl,” he growled in satisfaction, turning to give my ass a stinging slap this time. I saw him reach over and put a fuckingmicroscopeon his bedside table. He placed the slide on it and then let my hair go as he crawled off to me to look at it. I lay furiously stewing on the bed.

For a few minutes he fiddled with the knobs and magnifiers, then I heard his sharp intake of breath, and he desperately grabbed for the instructional pamphlet. There were another several tense seconds of silence and then his growl was low and feral.

“It’s afern, a fucking fern,” he said, his voice exulting.

“What’s that mean?” I asked, looking unwillingly over at him. He was bent over the microscope, staring like he’d never seen anything so good in his life.

“Your spit forms a fern-shaped pattern when you near ovulation,” he said, straightening up. Then he raised his big arms and pulled his T-shirt off with one lean, fluid motion. His chest was sculptured like a Greek god, all corded muscles and tense, coiled power.

I felt my cunt make a sharp, traitorous anticipatory pulse, and I sat up, suddenly scrambling away from him like a crab until my back hit the wall. But there was no escape from Tanner.When he grasped my ankles and yanked my legs down to him, I knew he would never let me go. I turned away, focusing on the haze of the city laid out in front of me in the big glass window of the hotel suite.

He learned over me, and I could smell everything I remembered—heat and smoke and musk and wild sharp obsession.

“You know I don’t like you not looking at me,” he said warningly.

“Go away, Tanner,” I said angrily, turning away from him.

I heard him make a guttural noise in his throat and he grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him.

“What’s it going to take, Em?” he snarled. “What do you want?”

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