Page 25 of Make Me Bleed
Ican’t.
“Peris,” he acknowledges me after what feels like forever… and I guess it has been.
I can’t stand the sight of him. It’s all wrong and so right and fuck! My skin is crawling. I glance down, and my eyes catch on his exposed midriff. On the thick line of blonde hair I distinctly remember being matted with cum. Mine and his. And tasting so fuckinggood.
By the time my eyes make it back up to his face, that signature brow—now pierced with a silver bar—is perfectly poised. “What are you doing here?” I bite out, hating myself for my wayward thoughts.
“Working,” is all he says, not giving into my anger. In fact, he’s as cold as ever.
“What do you meanworking?”
That brow waggles slightly as his lips twitch, like he can’t help it. My own furrow in confusion before it all comes crashing back around me.
A different hotel room on a different night. But the same two boys playing the same fucking game.
“It’ll never end, will it?” I ask, the words falling from my lips unbidden.
He seems to roll his words around on his tongue for a while, and oh, how I ache to taste them.
“Not likely.” And then, his phone buzzes on the bar top, making him tense. He glances down at the screen and then back at me. I watch as something falls from his lips, but I can’t quite make it out. Then, “I have to go. Goodbye, Peris.” He stands, and now, we’re chest to chest, and my breath is gone, and what is happening?
“Wait,” I reach out, snatching his wrist on instinct alone. He hisses and yanks away as if repulsed. My stomach clenches, and heat blooms on my cheeks. Whether it’s shame or indignation, I don’t know.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
His eyebrows reach his bright pink hairline. “You lost the right to tell me what to do a long time ago, Peris,” he hisses in a sneer.
My lips curl inward. “You need?—”
“I need to… What? Listen to you? Yeah, fuck that.” He whirls around, and as I watch that skirt flutter in the air, I lose my shit. At the possibility of losing him all over again.
My fists clench at my side, nails biting into calloused flesh. “How much?” I swallow grit.
He turns slowly. So. Fucking. Slowly. “Excuse me?”
I rake my fingers through my hair and sigh loudly. “Come on, Abel,” I spit out. “Don’t fuck around. I know you cost a pretty penny. So how. Fucking. Much?”
He regards me for a moment, and then, his puffy lips twist to the side in a smirk I haven’t seen in years—one I never thought I’d see again. I don’t think I missed it as much as I thought I did. “Depends on what you want.”
“I want everything,” I blurt the words without thinking. “And I’ve got enough. So, let’s go.” And this time, when I grab his wrist, he doesn’t pull back, only stumbles slightly as I drag him away from that fucking bar.
“You can’t just manhandle me,” he mutters as he tries to pull away. And I panic. I tighten my fingers, relishing in the feel of his skin against mine again, knowing it’s going to bruise in the pattern of my fingertips. Just like it should.
“Yeah, baby. I can. I just fucking paid to do whatever it is I wanna do.”
He snorts. “You haven’t paid shit yet.”
“You know I’m good for it.”
A long pause as I drag Abel through the lobby. A thought I never thought I’d have in my life.
“I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Guess that makes two of us,” I mutter under my breath as I slam my finger against the button for the elevator. My skin is buzzing, and I have no idea what I’m doing. I can’t believe what’s happening. That he’s here.
My eyes keep dropping down, catching him in my line of sight, even though my fingers haven’t left his wrist and he hasn’t pulled away again. My grip is tight enough for me to feel his bones grinding together, but still, Abel doesn’t say a word. He just silently clambers onto the elevator with me and lets me take him to my floor.
The silence between us is pregnant with years apart and everything left between us. I don’t know what to say—or what to do. All I know is he’s here now, and I’m sure as fuck not letting him go.
