Page 151 of Drown Like Heaven
But when he leaned in, he said exactly the words I was hoping he wouldn’t. “You’ve gotta say it, baby. Own it. Don’t hide from me.”
Dread made my stomach sink, shame twisting around my veins with itchy heat. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Anything to avoid this confession Mason had been trying to tear out of me since the day he met me.
He brushed his thumb over my jaw, gripping the back of my neck with his fingers. He was breathing hard.
My muscles were weak, my body limp in the hot water.
“Don’t fight it,” he murmured. “Give in to me.”
“Mason, no.”
“Why not?”
Because it’s wrong. Once you know this, you’ll know nearly everything.
But I almost want to tell you anyway.
“It’s inevitable, baby. Tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to. It’ll make me happy,” he promised, kissing me again. The desperate way he was holding my face snapped my final thread of restraint. He felt like the only person on Earth I could tell this to. The only person who might actuallyunderstandit.
It was surreal, the feeling of my lips parting, my tongue twisting, my voice creating the sounds of my darkest fantasy, speaking it aloud to him.
“I want you to kill me.”
His eyes seemed to get even darker, if that was possible, pupils expanding. His fingers tightened on the back of my neck.
The look in his stare was aroused, hungry, darklyobsessed,and it made me shake.
Once I’d said it, I couldn’t stop. The rest came spilling out in all its disgusting, shameful glory. Unprovoked now, simply because of how long the idea had been thrashing restlessly inside my skull without means of escape. It was impossible to keep it inside of me any longer.
“With a gun to my head, fucking me hard and brutal, then you pull the trigger the second you come.”
He didn’t speak right away, and panic started rising in my brain, making me nervous.
Is it too much? Am I too much? Is this too dark?
But Mason held the sides of my face and lowered his mouth to mine, pressing a hard kiss to my wet lips in the absence of any verbal response. Relief was swimming in my mind. I grabbed his forearms, just to have something to squeeze, to dig my nails into. He tilted my head, deepening the kiss with his tongue seeking mine.
Lust made my thoughts foggy, a heavy rush in my veins. I pushed up on my knees, wrapping my arms around his warm, strong body, his mouth claiming mine viciously. Every kiss with him felt like drowning, and at at this point, I didn’t care if I stopped breathing. My hair was a dripping curtain down my back, clinging to my shoulders, plastered to my spine before fanning out in the water at my waist.
“So that’s your fantasy?” he panted against my mouth.
I nodded helplessly.
“I’ve got a gun.”
“I know,” I whimpered, thighs clenching. I’d thought about it every night since he showed me, since he laid it on my lap. Mason licked the seam of my lips.
“You want to see me hold it?” He skimmed his lips down my jaw, moving towards my ear. “Use it?” His tongue flicked out to lap a bead of water off my neck before he bit down.
I gasped, pain flaring where his teeth dug into my skin. Nervousness and excitement zapped through my veins.
I envisioned his hand on the black textured grip of his gun, finger curling on the trigger, dark brown eyes locked on mine while he made me more scared than I’d ever been in my life. Morealive. It was ironic, thinking of how alive I’d feel seconds away from my own death. Like my mortality was a tangible thing, glowing in my palms, caught under the press of Mason’s index finger, smashed between the barrel of a gun and my temple.
Fleeting.
