Page 181 of Drown Like Heaven
“Not about that, baby. I want to know why you’rehere. Why you’rewith him.” I stared at her, watching the way the moonlight created soft shadows on her face. “He’s your professor, isn’t he?” A muscle flinched in my jaw as I thought about it.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
Actually, it does. Actually, you have zero clue how tangled the spiderweb you’re walking into is. Actually, you don’t know just how many years of history you’re getting caught in the middle of. You don’t know how old I am, or that I’m not even human.
“It concerns me that you’re fucking another man. You said you were mine. Do you remember that? I’m not with anyone else.”
She hesitated, lips slightly parted, like she couldn’t figure out which lie to tell to best appease me. But I didn’t want her to lie to me, so I pressed my thumb against her lips, stopping her from speaking. I didn’t really want the truth, either; I wanted to go back to before Micah stole her from me. Back to when she was just a pretty girl alone on the beach, wading into the ocean, trying to save my life.
I need you. I need you so much.
Let me have you, or at least let me pretend I do.
“It only counts if you wanted it, right? Isn’t that how this works?” I leaned down, running my lips over her cheek, feeling her shiver when my breath tickled her ear. There was relief in her body language, gratefulness that I was still awful and I wouldn’t make her tell me why she was having sex with her professor. Subtly, she tilted her head to the side, exposing her neck for me. “It’s not cheating if you didn’t consent, right?”
“Fuck. Stop,” she whimpered, her arms looping around my neck, nails digging into my back. “Don’t say things like that. You’re really sick, Mason.”
“Just as sick as you.” I pressed my mouth against her neck, her pulse fluttering fast under my tongue as I licked along the hollow of her throat. Goosebumps scattered across her skin and she arched into me just a tiny bit, enough to still give herself plausible deniability. It was dark in the house, and anything could be happening in the dark. She could blame me for thewhole thing, tell him I forced her for all I cared. I just wanted her to be mine again. Now.
Micah hadn’t said anything to me, nor was he acting like he knew Dakota and I had fucked, but…he wasn’t like me. He could control himself, lie even better than I could, and get away with it for as long as he wanted.
I couldn’t read him.
“It’ll be easier in the dark, baby,” I murmured, my hands coming to her waist, Micah’s t-shirt bunching under my palms. “Yeah?”
“No,” she breathed, barely audible. “It’s never easy with you.”
And it never will be.
She didn’t need to say the words, but we both heard them all the same. A panicked feeling clawed at my throat, desperation choking me while I tried to breathe through every awful memory ripping up my mind. She wasn’t Micah, though. She didn’t think the way he thought.
Dakota waslike me.
Maybe that was a bad thing in the long run but for now, the thought soothed me. People like us didn’t geteasy, but we didn’t crave it, either. We lived for the hurt.
I grabbed her jaw and kissed her.
She melted into me almost instantly, parting her lips and letting me push my tongue into her mouth. Kissing Dakota felt like slowly bleeding out. She tasted so sweet, so deliciously innocent, that I almost could make myself forget the truth of where we were.
I ground my erection against her stomach, threading my fingers through her hair as her tongue flicked against mine.
“If you’re going to cheat on him, might as well make it worth it. Let me fuck you.”
She didn’t resist me. She didn’t tell meno.
It was all I needed.
I turned her to face away from me, pushing her hips against the edge of the counter as I yanked her panties down. She pushed up on her tiptoes, laying her chest on the cold surface of the countertop, not looking at me. My fingers dug into the flesh of her ass, my other hand tugging down my own pants enough to free my cock.
“And you don’t get to pretend I’m him,” I said, low and rough. “You don’t get to ignore who it is that’s actually shoving his dick into you. It’sme. Say my name.”
“Mason,” she whimpered, keeping her voice soft.
“Eyes on me. Watch me.”
I gripped the base of my cock, prodding her entrance. She was trembling, looking at me over her shoulder with her lower lip trapped between her teeth.
She felt so small, so tight.
