Page 78 of Drown Like Heaven
I could feel my pulse in each one of my fingertips, pressed against the rough surface, my head tilted back and my face turned to the sky. Allowing my eyes to slide shut, I took deep inhales, breathing salt-scented air into the bottoms of my lungs while tears stung below my eyelids.
Footsteps approached after a little while. I felt Mason lean over me, still keeping my eyes closed.
“I found you,” he said.
“I knew you would.”
“Why have you been distant?” he asked, gripping my jaw hard. It felt horrible. My eyes popped open.
“Because you’re fucking crazy and you tried to drown me.”
“And how crazy are you forliking it?”
“Fuck off.”
He bent down, pressing his lips to mine so viciously I couldn’t think of anything other than how good this violence tasted. The first raindrop hit my forehead and I twisted away from Mason, looking up at the sky as it began to open over us.
“I don’t like not seeing you,” he said. “I fucking hate it, actually.”
With the clouds swirling behind him and the rain falling, darkening the sand on the beach around us, with the promise of thunder and lightning sizzling in the atmosphere, those words felt a lot like care. And I needed it. I needed it so bad.
Raindrops pattered down onto my face, wetting my cheeks and hair, leaving dark spots on my clothes.
“How do you feel about it?” he asked.
“I love not seeing you,” I lied.
“It makes me hard when you lie to me, baby.”
Mason laid his body over mine, covering me with his weight. I spread my legs, allowing his hips to come between them, my heels digging into his ass. His palm slipped under my head so my skull was no longer on the rock.
I kissed him, the rain cold and slick between us, his tongue hot in my mouth.
My hand slid around the back of his neck, up into his damp hair, dark and thick against my fingers. Heat blossomed low in my stomach.
“Do you want me to fuck you right here?” he gritted out, pushing his hips against my center, the rough surface of the rock aching on my spine. One of his hands slid up to palm my breast.
I wanted it.Ruin me. Fuck me up.
Make me regret ever meeting you.
Make me feel something other than rejection and shame.
Hurt me.
Force me.
Show me how you care so much about me, how you want me so badly, that you’ll take me, even if I don’t want you to.
He was the tide, and I was begging to drown. Hurting myself with Mason was the realest thing in my life.
“Does it matter what I want?” I panted.
Mason bracketed my throat with his hand, thumb pressed to my windpipe. My mouth fell open, eyes rolling back, choked gasps tumbling past my lips.
“I already know what you want, because you told me. But I know you didn’t tell me the whole truth, the worst of it. Quit letting yourself believe I won’t understand you if you open up to me, when you know I will. You know I’m like you, so show me your darkness.”
Opening up to Mason didn’t feel like a choice. He’d find a way totearme open if I didn’t do it myself, reach his hands through my ribs and take out everything I hid from him there.
