Page 23 of Monster's Naughty List
The lies had been exposed, and now it was up to us to decide how to move forward.
Did we continue the cycle of shoving everything under the rug, denial clouding our judgment, or did we grow some balls and admit that something needed to change?
My eyes widened in shock as he closed the small distance between us, a new emotion shining in those pulsating green orbs: hunger.
His hand grabbed the nape of my neck. On instinct, I tilted my head up to look at his face moments before his lips crashed down to mine. It wasn’t sensual or loving. It was pure aggression and anger, fueled by the sexual tension between us.
He hated that he wanted me right now, and I had to admit I felt the same.
He had just exposed me down to the deepest part of my core, and it fucking hurt. It made me face the fact that my mother--and many others I loved--didn’t love me the way I deserved to be loved. The people who should have encouraged me to blossom on a path of my choosing were the very ones that had expected me to conform to their own ideas of who and what I should be.
They had failed me as badly as I'd failed myself by not opening my eyes enough to see them for what they were. Just because they were my family--my blood-- didn’t mean they'd earned a place in my life if they weren’t going to have a positive impact.
Our tongues clashed in a fury of desperate need to bury the raw emotions in something else. Something that drowned it out: lust.
I bit down hard on his lip, making his grip around my neck tighten, but I kept biting until I drew blood from him, needing to prove something animalistic that I couldn’t quite place.
He hissed and pulled back, breathing heavily as his eyes traced every detail of my face. A few seconds later, he graced me with a genuine smile for the first time and raised his thumb to wipe at the blood trailing down his chin.
“I knew you weren’t fragile, Vixen. I just needed you to see that in yourself and believe it.”
Chapter Twelve
TINSLEY
“What?” I asked, shocked by the dynamic change in his personality. It was like being splashed in the face with a bucket of cold water. “You don’t get to just change your tune on me like that!”
My body was still pumping with the adrenaline of being angry, so I felt off kilter to have him suddenly smiling and praising me.
And men think women are confusing. As if.
Sticking his blood-slicked thumb into his mouth, he licked it, cleaning the skin and smirking at me, “I can do whatever the fuck I need to, in order to get you to face the truth.”
That should not have been hot, seeing him lick his own blood away, but it absolutely was.
We stood there, both of us refusing to make the first move, but with no space between us, it was damn hard. The tension that vibrated between us was palpable, licking at my skin in a teasing caress, begging me to just…
A loud bang sounded outside my room, drawing our attention and ruining the moment. My eyes narrowed as I stalked from the room to figure out who the hell was interrupting this. I had a feeling it wasn’t Rez or Oz, and as I rounded the corner and saw them standing in the middle of my living room, eyes focused on the front door with their claws extended and the spikes on the back of their legs protruding, I knew I was right.
They were poised to attack an enemy.
Stomping past them, I said, “Get out of view. Whoever it is can’t see you.”
The last thing I needed was a neighbor calling the police because they'd seen three monsters standing behind me in my apartment. I’d put an end to this swiftly because I still had a fucking bone to pick with Del, and my anger hadn’t subsided. It was making my skin prick like I was itching to climb out of my own skin.
As I reached my front door, whoever was on the other side pounded once more. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure the Algeah had done as I asked and tucked themselves out of sight, I took a deep breath and tugged the door open.
Of fucking course.I should have guessed this was who would be here.
Doris stood there with a miserable scowl on her wrinkled face, rollers in her hair, and her fist poised to bang again.
Patience was clearly not a virtue of hers.
She wasted no time in berating me. “I’m going to call the police if you don’t quiet down, young lady! You are so selfish, banging around up here like you’re doing a workout in the middle of the night when everyone else is trying to sleep.”
She tried to walk past me, as if she thought she was allowed to come into my apartment, but the second her white slipper crossed the threshold of my door, I put a hand to her shoulder, preventing her from entering. “I refuse to be physical with an old woman,” I warned, my eyes burning with pent up rage at how she had treated me for so long. “But if you don’t back the hell up, I’ll be calling the police myself for trespassing.”
Her jaw dropped, and she spluttered, “Trespassing! I’m doing no such thing. You clearly need a lesson on etiquette, and I’m going to give it to you, since your mother didn’t!”
