Page 23 of Boy of Ruin
Ria: Don’t let him suck the life from you. He doesn’t deserve you.
I wish I believed that, but as I set my phone down and roll onto my back, staring at the fan whirring high overhead in the dark, I think we might deserve each other.
I close my eyes, and don’t sleep. But I think about him, and it’s almost like dreaming.
“You want to fuck him, again, is that it? You didn’t get enough the first time he put a fucking belt around your throat?” I grab her arm, yanking her away from the door she just walked in through.
It’s still dark out, and she smells like him. Like fucking marijuana and leather and all the things she should never smell like again because… She’s. Fucking. Mine.
She puts her palms out, flat against my bare chest, and even though I’m fucking pissed and sometimes I think I really do hate her, her touch is electric. It ignites something in me, and I have to hold onto it. The anger. If I didn’t, I’d let her walk all over me.
I already have.
Not anymore.
Not after I just caught her in the middle of the fucking night walking back from Maverick’s house.
“Huh? Fucking answer me, Lilith.”
She grits her teeth, her silver eyes full of hurt and anger and…exhaustion. She hasn’t been sleeping well. She’s barely sleeping at all. And even though she’s carrying my baby, she’s so…frail.
She needs to take better care of herself.
I need to take better care of her.
“What the fuck were you doing over there?” I ask her, getting in her face. She concedes a step, her back against the door. “You fucking smell like him. It’s disgusting.”
I can’t stand it.
I just can’t fucking stand thinking of her with someone else. Ever since that night she was dressed as Lilith for Halloween and I met her at that intersection, she’s been just that to me. My other fucking half. I wish she felt the same about me. It’s why I was with that girl at Liber on New Year’s Eve. I never really would have touched her. And even when Mav had Ella over, her in his lap, her thighs spread, her pussy there, so close to me I could fucking smell her…even then, I would have never done it.
I would never cheat on my wife.
But I’d tell her all about the times I almost did, because she seems to forget. While she pushes me away, confides in everyone but me, looks at me like she’s scared of me or some shit, she forgets other women want me.
They fucking adore me.
I would never hurt her by having a goddamn affair, but I just want her to notice me. Love me like I love her.
I put one hand on her chest, keeping her flat against the door. My other is still wrapped around her arm, and she’s taking shallow breaths, her breasts rising and falling rapidly beneath my palm. I can feel her pulse under my fingers, flying like she’s terrified.
Or pissed.
“Lucifer,” she says, her voice low, that one word—my goddamn name—on her tongue, and I start to deflate. I feel like I’m coming undone when she speaks my name. I feel like I’m losing my mind most of the time around her, being with someone who doesn’t really want to be with me. But when she says my name…everything is just so much…better. I force myself to loosen my grip on her arm and she takes the first deep breath she’s taken since she walked in here. Her silver eyes search mine beneath her long lashes. Goddamn, she’s fucking beautiful.
“Are you high right now?” she asks me, and the expression on her face…it fucking hurts.
It hurts, and it breaks me.
I swallow hard, thinking about the line I bumped before I came downstairs looking for her. If she was up, I was going to be up. If she needed me, I’d be there.
I didn’t expect her to be fucking gone.
I look down between us, her in her combat boots, me in black socks. I’d been about to put on my shoes and go looking for her. If I’d seen her actually in his house, I’d probably have killed him.
I take a breath.
I feel my own pulse racing, from anger, from hurt, from…fucking blow.
