Page 210 of Ominous: Part 1
“You’ve been avoiding me tonight,” he says against my ear. “I don’t like it.”
“I’m here,” I tell him, the anxiety flaring under my skin again.
His index finger taps against the column of my throat, and he wraps his arm around my waist, tugging me back into him. “What’s wrong?” He shifts his hips against me, and I feel how much he wants me.
I don’t want to talk about Winslet. All the things I learned tonight in Dom’s breakdown. I don’t want to face what Eli could be capable of. Instead, I say, “Remember… I’m on my period.” My cheeks are warm, and the medicine wasn’t enough. It leaves plenty of room for my heart to beat too fast in my chest.
Eli smiles against my skin, just under my ear. “Remember, I don’t fucking care.”
“I do.” I don’t want to care, not right now, but I still do.
He splays his fingers over my hip. My breath hitches, and he kisses the sensitive spot between my ear and my neck, an open-mouthed kiss. I shiver beneath him, my throat pulled taut because of the hold he has on me.
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid.” He kisses me again, and my next words are shakier than the last. “I just don’t want to do it.”
“You don’t trust me?”
I roll my eyes, looking up at the dark ceiling. “It has nothing to do with trust. You wouldn’t understand. You’re a boy.”
“Aboy,huh?”
“Shut up.”
His grip around my throat tightens in a warning.
I freeze, holding my breath.
“Thosefuckingwords,” he says. “Do you want me to slap you, like you slapped Dom?” He bites my ear lobe, hard, tugging at my piercings as he does, the little hairs all over my body standing on end. “It was hot. But it’d be hotter if I did it to you.”
The physical manifestation of his desire for me, hot and hard against my back, makes me feel weak, and his words unfurl some sort of sick need in me to please him. To say yes to his question.
I can’t.
I’ve never been slapped before. I’ve watched it in porn, I’ve circled my fingers around my own throat trying to hurt myself when I get off alone, but I’ve never actually done whatwe’rediscussing.
My body trembles, and I don’t know if it’s from fear or want. I wonder if something was broken in my brain that day Sebastian’s friend got into my room, or if I would have always craved dangerous things. I want them in spurts, I want to let go at different times. Like, maybe… now.
Eli bites my neck, bringing me back here, to the most dangerous thing of all. And it isn’t him. It’s how I feel about him. How, if he had decided to sink that knife into Dominic’s heart, I would have done everything I could to cover for him.
Dangerous.
“Answer me.”
My throat feels tight, and not from his hand wrapped around it. “What if I said no?”
He bites me again, a pinprick of pain among a promise of pleasure. “You’d want me to hit the shit out of you anyway, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t want me to respect you, would you?”
You’d want me to force you to do anything I want.
“Eli, seriously.” I try to think logically, which is very hard to do when he’s behind me, asking if I want him to hurt me, to fuck me, to punish me. “I don’t… It’ll be a mess, okay?”
“You think I care about a mess?”
I take a deep breath. From downstairs, we hear someone laughing again, high-pitched, followed by a playful scream. “Are they staying here all night?”
“Whatever you want, I’ll do it for you. If you want them to leave, I’ll make them leave.”
