Page 24 of Revenge At Raleigh High
“Alex! Fuck, Alex! Oh my god!”
I draw back, and then slam myself into her, my synapses firing, every part of me out of control—but no, there it is. I feel it: one tiny, tenuous strand of restraint, pulled taut in the back of my head, warning me not to go too far. So long as that single strand exists, I know I’ll be able to keep myself in check. We’re balancing on a knife’s edge, though. I don’t want to mark her. I don’t want to bruise her…
But then Silver’s hand is winding its way into my hair, pulling hard, and she’s issuing an order through her bared teeth. “Bite me, Alex. Fuck, bite me. I want your teeth on me. Make me scream.”
I do it. I bite down on the tender skin of her shoulder close to her collar bone, and Silver lets out breathless, wordless scream that catches me off guard. I clamp my hand over her mouth grinding my teeth together as I growl into her skin, knowing it’s already too late. Too late for everything. Her father probably heard her. I’m too close to coming now to stop, and so is she. We cling to each other, hands digging into each other’s flesh, both of us possessed, rapt, maddened by the sensation of our bodies moving against one another in time, seconds away from diving headfirst into a black, dizzying decent.
The shockwave hits me like a hammer to the back of my head. It’s pleasure, but not like any other kind of pleasure I’ve experienced before. This is almost panicked, chaotic pleasure, cutting the tendons in the backs of my legs and my arms, rendering me useless as I thrust into her one final time. Silver’s thighs tighten around my waist, squeezing hard enough to make me see fucking stars, her head thrown back, her face a rictus of oblivion.
“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”She chants the words over and over, her cheeks flushed with blood, crimson from the exertion and the savagery with which we took one another.
I hold onto her, muttering sweet things into her damp hair, a sated weight lying heavy in the center of my chest, knowing full well that this is what that it must feel like to lose your mind.
Our breathing eventually slows, and when I pull back, looking down at Silver, she looks up at me with dazed eyes, pupils swallowing her irises, contentment etched into the features of her face. It’s only when I allow myself to look down and I see the smear of dark red against the paleness of her skin that I understand what I just did.
I bit her so hard that I drew blood.
“Fuck!” I shove myself up, reeling away from the evidence of my own stupidity. “God, I’m sorry,Argento. I didn’t mean to...”
She frowns, looking down at herself, straining to see why I’m so horrified. She touches her fingers to her shoulder, her brows knotting together when they come away red. “Oh.”
If the pleasure I felt a moment ago when I was still inside her was great, then the guilt that follows is inconceivable. I can’t wrap my head around it. “Where’s…fuck, where’s your first aid kit. Let me find something to—”
Quickly, Silver sits up, placing her hands against my bare chest. “No! No, Alex, stop. Don’t freak out. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“NO! IT’S—”I stop myself, trapping the words behind my teeth. Shouting’s the worst possible thing I can do right now; it’ll only make things worse. Taking a deep breath, and then another, I sit back onto my heels, covering my face with one hand. “It’snotokay,” I force out. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Her hands brush over my shoulders—soothing, placating circles that should make me feel better but don’t. “Alex,please. Don’t do that. Really, I’m fine. I asked you to do it. Itoldyou to. It turned me on, for fuck’s sake. I just wanted you so badly. I needed it to hurt.”
I needed it to hurt.
Christ.
I let her pull my hand away from my face, even though I’m still stumbling over the fact that I made her fucking bleed.
“Alex, look at me, okay.I love you.It’s what I wanted. You’re being silly. It’s a tiny little graze. There’s barely even a mark. Now, please…will you just hold me? I wanna lie on your chest for a second before I have to go back upstairs.”
I do look at her. I look deep into her eyes, trying to find some sort of hurt or disturbance there, but there’s nothing. She seems totally…normal. The knot of distress that’s cinched tight around my heart loosens a little, but it doesn’t disappear altogether.
I’m vibrating, full of nervous energy as I lie back down on the bed beside her and she wriggles her way into my side, resting her head over my heart. My erratic pulse doesn’t slow until I feel her fall slack against me and she passes out.
I wait until I’m sure she’s well and truly out for the count before I carefully pick her up from the bed and carry her up the stairs to her own room.
8
SILVER
The wind howls and moans all day Saturday, rattling at the windows, and great curtains of snow sweep across the Walker Forest, shrouding the Sitka, larch, and the mountain hemlock in shawls of white. Dad manages to speak to Mom and Max in the morning, making sure they’re safe, and when the power goes out again around three in the afternoon, he descends into the basement to turn on the new generator he purchased from Home Depot with a gravely smug look on his face.
If my father heard any of the noise I made last night when I paid a visit to Alex’s room, then he doesn’t say anything about it. Honestly, I doubt he knows I snuck out of my room and tiptoed down the hallway, past his room, and down the stairs. When Kacey and I were still thick as thieves, I used to sneak out of the house every other night and I never got caught once. I know precisely where every creaky floorboard is in this house. I also know just how deep my father sleeps.
Alex spends an inordinate amount of time doing push-ups and sit-ups without his shirt on. I sit and peer at him over the top of the book I’m pretending to read, enjoying the view, but also slightly worried. He’s tense. Agitated. Pulled taut as a bowstring, ready to snap any second, and I know why. I pushed him into doing something he was uncomfortable with, and now he just can’t seem to make peace with himself. He paces in front of the bay window in the living room with his hands on his hips, huffing and blowing like a horse that’s been ridden too hard. It’s painfully clear that he wants out of the house. He's trapped, and it hurts like hell that he wants to get away so badly. I do understand, though.
I barely recognized myself last night. I have no idea what possessed me to ask him to be so rough with me. I’d been laying there in bed, every single, messed up text I’ve received over the past few weeks repeating themselves in my mind, and I’d wanted to feel like I was in control for just one second. I knew what I needed to make myself feel better, and I was right. It made me feel electric, alive, and I don’t regret it for a second—even if I did wake up with a very obvious bite mark just below my collar bone. I’m not planning on showing it off, of course. The round-necked sweater I pulled out of the back of my closet hides it well enough without looking too obvious. Alex isn’t stupid, though. He took one look at me in the sweater when he stumbled into this kitchen earlier, hair all over the place, and a deeply unhappy scowl darkened his handsome face.
Things are slightly better on Sunday. The storm subsides and the sun even makes an appearance. I spend the afternoon sporadically checking on the Raleigh High Portal, waiting to see the dreaded blue box at the top of the screen, announcing that school will be back in session tomorrow. It’s nearly dusk by the time the site’s updated and the box appears, confirming that life will be continuing on as normal in the morning. When I see it, I’m struck by a nauseating wave of nerves. I haven’t received another text message since the one that came in on Friday morning, but walking through the doors of Raleigh High is still going to be stressful. I’m going to be walking down through the halls, staring into the other student’s faces, wondering which one of them told me to fucking kill myself.
I still haven’t told Alex about that, or any of the other messages. Iamgoing to. I know it isn’t smart to keep something like this from him, but…I just need a moment. He’s going to flip the fuck out when I show him the texts, and I want to pretend for just one more day that thingscanbe normal for us.
