Page 26 of Deception

The view is spectacular. Teardrop tits tremble as she fists my wrists, pinning them to the bed. A flush skitters across her skin while she watches me with those bejewelled eyes that glimmer with more emotions than she can bear. The frustration of it all burgeoning inside her is tangible, sending frissons of adrenaline through me as I wait for her to blow.

“Look at me,” Red snaps with a bitten wince when she adjusts her legs on either side of my torso. She may be avoiding my cock, but her breasts are hitched over my face while she looks down her body at me. “Look at my fucking eyes!”

The waver of her voice betrays the tears she’s holding back. It’s hard not to meet her gaze, impossible to ignore her screaming thoughts as she levels me with all the indignation she has for me and growls, “One day…one fucking day…you mark my words…”

With a deep gasp of breath, she puffs up her chest, squeezing my wrists tighter.

“I’m going to be the death of you.”

I could bite back, but that would give her the power she’s looking for. Red is more cunning than I thought. I found her weakness, and now she’s looking for mine. I’ll never give it to her. She’ll never pry it from me because it’s the one thing I’ve been taught to protect all my life. I protect it from my enemies and my foes. I protect it from outsiders, and at times like these, I protect it from myself.

Pushing off the bed, she crawls backwards. When she’s back on her feet, Red limps over to the antique armoire that takes up most of the wall to the side of the bedroom door. If it wasn’t for the scratches and grazes on her skin, she could blend into the ivory wood.

I sit up on the edge of the bed and watch her watching me intently while she pulls another cotton nightdress from a pink silk hanger. Holding it in front of her, she stumbles to the bathroom.

Her foot.

I need to fix it and get the fuck out of here before my control finally gives and we’ll both end up watching each other bleed by another’s hand. The girl is right—naïve or not. I’m good at foreseeing these things. Always have been. And as God as my witness—as I get up, picking up the shit I dropped earlier before standing in the bathroom doorway, watching her slip her nightdress on—I know that if I don’t put distance between us, her words will be a curse on us both. My Little Red will be the death of me, but I will drag her with me.

Peering at me in the mirror, she levels me with one of her icy, stoic stares. If our warfare wasn’t so familiar, it might unnerve me. As is, the magnetism between us pulls me closer until I’m standing behind her, my hands grasping the edge of the marble vanity at either side of her hips after I put the medical supplies down.

“Turn around,” I tell her, and before she argues backs, I spin her to face me.

Surprisingly, she doesn’t push back, allowing me to sit her on the counter and get a better look at her foot. It’s small and soft, even though it’s grazed in parts from the rough mulchy ground of the woods.

After I’ve dabbed a generous amount of the numbing cream on her toe, I check over the other lighter injuries to give it time to take effect. It’s not advisable to put it on broken skin, but pulling what’s left of her nail off will be a lot easier if she’s numbed to the pain a little.

“I don’t need you to patch me up. I can do it myself,” she grumbles, a shiver wracking through her as I trace my fingertips up her leg, making sure that the minor cuts are nothing but superficial scratches that require nothing more than the antiseptic cream.

Once I’ve taken care of those, I go back to her toe. There’s no point in warning her of what I’m about to do. Instead, I do exactly what Mama used to do with Band-Aids when I was little. Pinching the loose nail, I pull it free in one hard tug that makes her scream. The sound echoes around the room as I throw the bloody nail into the sink and rinse my fingers before cleaning up the bleeding wound it’s left behind.

“This won’t change anything,” she tells me in a hushed, contrary tone as I cap her toe with a bandage and wrap a plaster around it.

It will last until tomorrow when Niko can see to it properly.

“It may take months and years…I don’t care if it takes forever, but when all is said and done, I’ll be standing over your body, watching you fucking bleed.”

“Yeah?” I release her foot, trailing a hand up the inside of her ankle to her calf. The higher my hand roves, the tenser she becomes. “When they trained you to kill me, they should’ve taught you not to bother with empty threats. They only put you at a disadvantage.”

“Empty threats,” she scoffs, bunching the fabric of her nightdress at her knees when I reach halfway up her thigh, stopping it from hitching up.

“You’re full of them…you’ll kill me. You’ll watch me bleed.” Stroking higher up, I step closer. My blood heats as her breathing becomes shorter, punctuating my erratic heart. “Cut me open. Put a bullet in me…”

Although I can’t bear to look at her right now, my eyes flicker to hers when my knuckles graze her slit, and she gasps, “Stop.”

It’s the kind of sound that drives insanity, beckoning me to break all the rules. Step over hard lines and tear down every fucking wall between us. Contrary to the confusion and guilt narrowing her gaze and the fear that clenches her jaw, her pupils grow, darkening with the same wanton desire that’s pulsing through my veins, throbbing in my fingers and wrenching at my insides.

“Anything else, Red?” The words rasp from my lips, scorching the little air that’s left around us.

Cupping the swell of her thigh between the V of my hand, I press the length of my thumb to her pussy. An audible swallow tightens her throat, and despite all her control, her body quivers, opening for me.

“You said that you were going to hurt me…torture me… Didn’t you?” she spits at me, her hands grasping my wrist. The ferocity of her touch ignites every strand of my fading control. “Didn’t you promise to break me and make me beg you to kill me?”

Red holds my hand still, mouth gaping with trembling breaths. In her lustful conflict, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Truly spectacular with all that pent-up anger she tries to control ticking and ticking.

Stroking my fingers higher, I fan them over the flat between her hips while my other hand grasps the back of her knee. Hitching her leg higher, I nudge my thumb deeper until it finds her wet entrance. The urge to thrust inside her knots around my bones, coiling through my muscles and twisting every thought I’ve ever had about her.

“Don’t,” Red growls, clawing her short nails into my arm while pulling further back on the vanity.

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