Page 102 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
Still, with the driver’s blue gaze on me, I slink down a little in the cracked seats, despite the fact the windows are tinted.
The Jameson bottle is between my thighs, the bag I packed and Sullen saved in the floorboard between him and I. He takes up so much space in here with his far bigger build, his head is tipped forward, so it doesn’t touch the headliner. I’m extremely aware of him but act as if I’m not.
I rest my head against the door, the potholes we roll over jostling me every few feet, but I just close my eyes and deal with it.
Sullen found a place near the original hotel we’re going to walk from, so the driver doesn’t know our exact drop-off location in case he’s questioned later. Sullen used Cosmo’s phone I’d stolen to check, then I threw the thing in the alleyway where I heard it clatter against the bricks before dropping to the pavement.
I don’t feel bad. Cosmo pissed me off, too, and I do know he had a right to be angry at me for betraying him, but I don’t care about examining any of this fairly right now. I think our friendship has disintegrated.
“How long?” Sullen asks, his jagged voice sharp in the quiet of the car.
When I snap open my eyes, I see the cabbie’s gaze shifting from me, to Sullen, then quickly toward the road like he’s frightened. We’re currently stopped at a red light and his fingers tap dance on the steering wheel out of what I think are nerves.
“GPS says half an hour. On the outskirts of the city.” The cabbie swallows hard after he speaks. Everyone seems a little scared of Sullen Rule.I’m not.I suppose he is intimidating. But to me, he’s everything I ever wanted, wrapped up in barbed wire.
I glance at him. “What? You don’t have enough money?” I joke, knowing I personally put the fat wad of cash he stole in a sock of mine at the bottom of our green bag.
He slants his eyes to mine, turning his head a little, hood still up, fabric of his sweatshirt soaked from the storm and clinging to his body much like my shirt is doing with me. I realize my nipples are hard at the same moment he does, his gaze dipping. I remember Cosmo dismissing me as nothing more than a body to fuck.
I cross my arms over my chest and Sullen looks at me once more.
“I don’t think you should worry about my money, Karia. But youshouldhide while you can,” he says softly, glancing at my chest again. “There will be no one there to save you.”
“You don’t know that,” I counter, keeping my voice low. “And we’ve been saving each other’s lives for days now. Drop the monstrous act. I’m unafraid.” Then, in a brave bit of daring bolstered by the Jameson in my veins, I carefully set the bottle down, tuck it between the base of the middle seat and our bag, then shift over closer to him. I never put my seatbelt on and it makes maneuvering easier. I pull my knees to my chest and lean in toward him, hooking one arm through his bigger one as I smile up at him, watching him glower. “Tell me why you threaten me,” I whisper, keeping my voice down. “Tell me what you don’t want me to see.”
The driver must not be too keen on overhearing my words because he turns on the music as the light shifts to green, “Slow Down” by Chase Atlantic, and it’s at such a high volume I know he won’t be able to hear anything happening in his backseat.
I rest my head on Sullen’s arm, just to feel his body stiffen like I disgust him. He even shifts in his seat, turning slightly to glance out the tinted window.
“You didn’t act like this at the Emporium. I felt how hard you were,” I whisper, murmuring against the soft fabric of his hoodie.
“Karia,” he says through his teeth.
“You touched me then. You touch me when I’m strapped down. Why do you act like I repulse you now?”
He’s quiet a moment, every muscle in his body tense. Then, still looking away from me, he gives me one of his very first truths. Not his father’s, not Writhe’s, buthis.“I am not used to anyone touching me in want. Of course I desire you.” He scoffs, like anything less than that is unthinkable, and he still isn’t looking at me. “But I do not know what it means to be wanted back.” He says it quietly, without a trace of self-pity. Then he slowly turns to look down at me. “I don’t know how to handle you, when you are likethis.”
This? All over him? “You seemed to handle it fine at the Emporium.”
“Yes,” he says, gaze dropping to my mouth. “Because they all needed to know the truth. You’re fucking mine.”
I feel my cheeks flush with those words, and the pain along my palm, in my shoulder, it all fades away as I hold his eyes with mine. “Tell me why you said you would murder me, in front of everyone else.” My thoughts flicker to Maude, to Sullen between her and Alivia and I feel that strange flush of heat well up in my belly.
You’re mine, too, you sensitive asshole.
But until that single second of truth moments ago, he won’t speak of anything except what Stein has done to him and only that when I can’t run away. When he has some physical or medical hold over me. And he doesn’t answer me this time either, locking up again.
“Yeah,” I say bitterly, hiccupping a little and not caring as his eyes flicker to mine and he lifts his brows as if to call me out on it. “You’re shutting down now, aren’t you? You can’t speak to me at all without your gadgets or your strength. You don’t scare me, Monster Boy.” I hug his arm tighter anyway, a false smile stretching my lips. “And good luck next time, getting me strapped down to a table or a chair. I won’t make it so easy for you anymore.” I start to slide away from him, unthreading my arm from his, but he reaches out and yanks me closer, his fingers biting into my upper arm.
I’m half-sitting in his lap, my hips atop his thigh, the way he has me pulled in so near to him, and his grip is painful, strong and unyielding.
I don’t try to get away as he stares at me with narrowed eyes, his brows furrowed, those swollen lips pushed together.
For a moment, he just looks at me.
Then he only says, “I think I’ll like it even better when it isn’t easy, Little Sun.”
I shrug out of his grip, and he actually laughs, a low, rough sound that sends that warmth flaring lower in my belly. But I don’t move away from him as he mocks me. I just reach down, grabbing the Jameson, and without looking at the cabbie or thinking it through, I screw off the top and take another drink, letting it burn down my throat.
