Page 26 of Make Me Bleed
My heart is hammering against my sternum, and its beat is so strong and erratic, I can feel it pressing into my throat, threatening to choke me with each breath I take. Abel’s skin is soft, and his bones are hard and delicate, and I want to fucking break them.
I want to breakhim.
Crush him and mutilate him for what he did.
Because who the fuck does that? Who just leaves someone broken and alone and?—
“Peris…”
“Don’t say my name,” I snap, hating the sound of his voice as much as I need it. Andfuckhave I needed it. Raspier and lower than it used to be, but still exactly the fucking same as it vibrates through me and melts me from the inside out, twisting my organs around each other.
“What else am I supposed to call you?” he whispers, and I hate how insecure he sounds.
“What is wrong with you?” I ask as the elevator jerks to a stop and the doors open to reveal a couple cozied up together. I meet their eyes accidentally and look away quickly, wincing at the sight of them loving each other. When they catch sight of me and Abel, they also look away and shuffle to the side, letting us off before entering and pressing their own button to descend.
“Nothing is wrong with me,” he hisses, and I frown as I walk down the hallway, dragging him along with me. He stumbles a few times as I jerk him around, but otherwise doesn’t complain.
“You’re acting fucking weird with me, and I don’t like it,” I growl.
“How do you want me to act with you?” he asks softly. So softly, my footsteps falter, and I stop to look down at him. His lashes are dark with mascara, fanning his cheekbones as he stares up at me, blinking owlishly and making my heart hammer. Thefucker.
I take a step forward, relishing in the bob of his throat. The way his sharp Adam’s apple dips before rolling back up. His chest hitches with his breath, and I can’t help the way my eyes linger over all of the tattoos covering his exposed skin—and there’s a lot of it.
His body is a work of art—his expression of who he truly is, and I missed the process of it, and that pisses me off, too.
I manage to tear my eyes away from his body to bounce them back and forth between his molten irises. “I want you to act like you,” I snap.
“I’ll be whoever you want me to be, baby. You want your puppy back? I can be that for you.” He juts his bottom lip out and gives me a flash of his pierced tongue andfuck.His words make my cock stir for the first time in what feels like years. Shit, it probably has been, at this rate.
I slowly back him against the wall with each step I take. “Don’t play with me, Abel,” I say roughly, jaw clenched tightly. My arm reaches up of its own volition, and my fingers find the sharp line of his jaw, tracing the skin there and finding it rough from shaving—another new piece of him.
My fingers wrap around his jaw and tilt his head backward until his skullthunksagainst the wall. I use my hold on him to slowly tug his mouth open until I can see his pierced tongue and every crooked tooth inside his wide mouth. And it takes everything in me not to shove my thumb in and feel himsuck.
“Fuck, Abel. Where the hell have you been?” I mutter to myself in a harsh whisper, dropping my head against his, eyes fluttering closed as the realness of it all hits me like a cement block to the chest.
“I’ve been right here,” he says right back, his breath tasting of tequila, and Ihate it.Because his words make my eyes burn and my chest twist in a way I haven’t felt since that night because he’s nothing but a fuckingliar.
“You’re a fucking liar,” I say softly against his forehead, the words a kiss against his skin.
“I know,” he breathes after a moment, and then, it’s nothing but silence and our breath mingling in the stifling air for endless minutes.
He feels like the worst nightmare I’ve ever had.
And I can’t let him go.
Even if it really does kill me this time.
My fingers tighten on Abel’s jaw, making his breath catch—and the hitch of his breath, that sharp intake of air, so soft and so sharp, is what does me in.
My hand clamps around the back of his neck as I yank him close, his front plastered against mine. I feel every ridge of his small body against mine lined up perfectly, just like it’s always meant to be, and it makes me sick.
“Peris.”
“Don’t say my name.”
“I can’t…”
“I don’t care.”
