Page 190 of Wicked Minds
“Not until you finish all of it.”
Ugh, whatever.I am hungry so it’s no hardship to eat it all before balling the bag up and dropping it into the trash can.
“Thank you. You can go now.”
“Such a charmer,” Grayson retorts, showing no signs of leaving as he gets comfortable in a chair at the desk beside mine.
“I mean it, Grayson. I’m not doing this with you.”
“Doing what? I thought we were studying.”
“Not together, we’re not. We are not friends, Grayson. We don’t even like each other. You feel bad because of our past, and you think you need to have some sort of a relationship with me in order to have one with Aurora—which isn’t true.”
Grayson’s features have tightened into a familiar hard mask. “Tell me more about how I feel, Riley.”
“How about you tell me how you feel,” I counter. “‘Cause if you think I’m buying this whole,I’m fineact, you’re wrong. A lot of shit has gone down the past week, and it’s been a good distraction, but that’s all it’s been. Eventually, you’re going to have to face your dad. Face who he is. What he’s done.”
His bark is caustic. “You think I don’t fucking realize that? My dad is getting released in sixty-eight days, and you’re not the only one who has to come to terms with that.”
“So talk to me about it,” I snap. “We’re in this together.”
Shaking his head, he pushes to his feet, hands planted on the desk as he leans over it. “So what?” he snarls. “You can fix me? Newsflash, Riley, I’m not fixable. And frankly, the notion of you being the one to do it is laughable.” His laugh scrapes along my skin, harsh and bitter. “I kidnapped you. Chained you to a stripper pole in my house. Made you dance for us and ordered you to give Royce a blowjob. Yet you’re offering tofixme? I hurt you! Be angry, for fuck’s sake!”
As if his words light a spark, something inside me snaps. I don’t need to take this shit—take any more ofhisshit. I thought we could have an adult conversation about this, but silly me.I knew the Grayson I was catching glimpses of—the one who looked at me with awe after our phone call with Aurora. The one who helped me through a panic attacktwice—wasn’t here to stay permanently because I recognize the Grayson in front of me as the self-sabotaging version I was tormented by over winter break.
“There she is,” he purrs, a smug smirk on his disgustingly handsome face.
“Fuck you, Grayson,” I snarl before marching toward my table, starting to throw my things into my bag.
“That’s it, Riley. Walk away.”
I freeze, hands fisting before I whirl to face him, a murderous expression on my face.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” I hiss. “I’m not walking away. You’re the one pushing me.” My head cocks, and there is a mocking edge to my tone as I say, “Poor little Grayson with his confusing feelings that are too big for him to control. It’s far easier to hate on me than confront how you’re feeling, right, Grayson?”
His body is strung tight before he leaps out from behind the desk. He’s before me in the blink of an eye, hand fisting the front of my sweater as he drags me into his chest. “You have no ideawhatI’m feeling,” he growls before spinning me around and shoving me down on the desk. My hands come up, bracing myself before my face can collide with the wood.
I feel his solid presence at my back, his warm breath dancing along the skin behind my ear before he whispers, “You wanna know how I’mfeeling, Riley?” I shiver against his warning, his body pressing down on mine. “I’m so fucking angry. Disorientated. I’m a lost fucking mess, and I don’t know how to control any of it. I don’twantto control it. I’m fucking drowning in it all, and if I don’t let it out, I think it’s going to suffocate me.”
His hand slides into my hair, tangling the strands around his fingers before he fists them and tugs. My head is wrenched back, causing my back to arch. My chest presses into the table, and my ass… my ass slides along the hard bulge in Grayson’s pants. His nose skims up the column of my neck, eliciting goosebumps in its wake. “The only time any of it stops is when you’re quivering beneath me.”
“So let it out,” I rasp, mentally noting that this moment right here is where I lost whatever sanity I had.
He goes rigid behind me, nothing but the steady rise and fall of his chest and the warm puff of his breath on my skin.
I wait, my pulse pounding in my ears, and I can feel the irregular stutters of his breathing against the side of my neck. I’m expecting him to rip my clothes from me, which is his usual MO when we’re both angry and pressed together, but he surprises me when his hand lowers to the waistband of my skirt and stops.
“I don’t know any other way to make it stop.” His voice breaks over the words, fracturing my heart in the process, and I give him the consent he seems to be waiting for.
Pushing my hips back, I rub my ass over the hard length in his pants. “Make it stop.”
It’s an order… but it’s also a plea. Because of that standstill he’s referring to, I feel it, too, when we’re together. It’s why I went to him the morning after Ben’s attack.
Shoving his hand beneath the waistband, he slips beneath my tights and into my panties. His fingers instantly find me soaking wet, and the groan that comes from the back of his throat has my knees growing weak.
Nothing except our breathing infiltrates the air as his fingers slip inside, and I go slack as pleasure rolls through me.
“Why did you have to come back and stir up all these feelings? Make me crave you,” Grayson rasps, voice somehowsounding both angry and awed as he slowly pumps his fingers into me. “I can’t get enough, and yet I know I should stop.”
