Page 39 of Drown Like Heaven
“I believe you.”
There was something vulnerable in my tone; I hated it.
I couldn’t afford to be vulnerable with someone who scared me the way Mason did. He would take every opportunity to work his way deeper into my bones, infiltrating me so completely I’d never get him out. But maybe the worst parts of me wanted to do that to him too. Wreckhim. Drownhim.
Fuck him up.
Could I do that?
Mason’s large hand slid up to cup my jaw, and I knew he was going to turn my head to face his, maybe kiss me, and I was nervous for it. My pulse raced. My head spun. I licked my lips, his fingers digging into my jaw like I owed him something. He angled my face towards his.
His free hand was already disappearing under my sweater, fingertips running along my skin. Under the waistband of my jeans, feathering over the curve of my waist, scattering goosebumps over my flesh.
His features were gorgeous. Overwhelming, now that he was so close.
The brown of his irises was so deep I could get lost in it, his eyebrows dark and pulled down, like he was focusing. His gaze slid to my mouth, his eyelashes sweeping downward.
“Give me a secret.”
“No,” I whimpered as his palm moved to my throat, his fingers circling my neck. His grip was too tight.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to own every little terrible thought you hide from the world. Every bad thing you’ve done or wanted to do. I still feel that way.”
“I can’t give them to you.” My voice was hardly a whisper, barely rising above the wind. “I don’t know you.”
“That’s bullshit.” His thumb was pressing into the side of my throat, my pulse flying fast beneath it. “You don’t need to know me how you think you do, not when your soul has been tormenting mine for years.”
He sounded strangely serious when he said it.
So serious that I almost believed him.
His eyes flicked upwards, colliding with mine and igniting a steady burn deep inside of me. I was dizzy with the pressure of his grip on my neck, with the feeling of all his attention directly on me. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my brain. He pulled me closer.
My hand landed flat on the rock, fingers splayed, my body leaning into him.
It was so hard to resist him. I almost didn’t want to.
Why not abandon what remained of my sanity and dive in headfirst?
I had a feeling I’d be destroyed by him in the end, so what was the point in delaying the inevitable? I couldn’t donormal. My brain didn’t work that way. I hungered for reckless obsession, thirsted for sickening devotion, craved life-ruining toxicity.
“What do you want me to say?” I breathed, desperation coating my words. My chest began rising and falling quicker when he squeezed my throat even harder; maybe hard enough to bruise.
Do you want to bruise my flesh like you bruised my mind? Give me something to remember you by every time I look in the mirror? Maybe my professor will see these bruises too. I wonder what he’d think about you if he knew you gave them to me.
“What’s your oldest memory?” Mason asked, studying me. His hand under my sweater was warm on my skin, caressing me, mapping the shape of my waist and the divots between my ribs.
“Seeing a deer in my backyard, through the window. I had to be on my tiptoes to look out.”
“Just one?” He tilted his head, shifting his grip to brush his thumb over my lower lip, tugging it down a little. A chill dripped down my spine.
“Just one,” I confirmed. “A doe.”
“Why do you think you remembered that?”
“Because I thought she was pretty,” I said, pulling the shadowy image back into my mind. The fading white spots on the doe’s tawny coat, my small fingers gripping the windowsill. “And she was holding so still. I didn’t know why she was that still back then. Maybe I was scared, too.”
“Scared of the deer?”
