Page 111 of Watch Me Burn
My face burns, the remembered humiliation spreading like poison through my veins. I lift my head. Force myself to look at him, to hold his gaze even though everything in me wants to look away.
“Why wasn’t I good enough for your bare skin? Why was my mouth good enough to fuck but not to kiss? Like some whore you used in the dark.”
“Don’t.” His voice turns deadly quiet, his eyes burning with fury that steals the air from my lungs. He takes a predatory step toward the couch. “Don’t you ever fucking call yourself a whore again, or I swear to God, Luna, I’ll bend you over this couch and fuck your ass raw.”
The crude threat should repel me, but instead it sends a shock of heat through my system. Even now, even in the middle of this devastating confrontation, my body betrays me again. I scramble to my feet. Shadow follows and puts himself between us.
“Then answer me!” I shout, refusing to be intimidated. “Tell me why you denied me!”
He turns and paces away, boots thudding against my floor, all coiled energy and barely restrained violence. A caged predator looking for an exit. When he wheels back around, grief carves itself into every line of his face. His mouth opens and closes as if the truth is choking him.
“Because I knew the second I kissed you, the second I let that part of my mask slip, I’d be lost. There’d be no coming back from it.”
The width of my living room separates us, but it might as well be a canyon. Every muscle in his body screams with the effort it takes to stand there and bleed the truth out in front of me.
“It would’ve destroyed me.” His voice drops to a whisper. He’s stopped pacing, standing motionless, looking almost lost. “Opening myself up like that. Lettingyou see everything and then having you reject it.” His hands dive into his hair, fingers tangling in the strands. “I wanted all those things. Fuck, Luna, I wanted to kiss you until you forgot your own name. Wanted your skin on mine with nothing between us. Wanted to make love to you with the lights on instead of just taking you in the dark.” He drags a hand down his face. “But I’m a brutal asshole who takes what he wants and kills who he wants. I’ll never deserve you.”
The confession fills the space between us, more intimate than anything we’ve shared in the darkness of my bedroom.
“I didn’t plan to kiss you that night after dinner.” His jaw works, teeth grinding. “But I couldn’t stop myself. You were so beautiful, so perfect, and I’d been starving for you. And it was exactly what I feared.” He takes a step toward me. “One touch of your lips. One taste. That’s all it took to ruin me.”
My feet move before I decide to let them, closing the distance between us even as my brain screams warnings. Each step feels inevitable, like falling. Like gravity.
“But why pursue me that way at all?”
“Because those few hours at night were no longer enough. I wanted more than just your body, Luna.”
“You could’ve had it.” My voice breaks, shattering the composure I’m trying to hold. “I offered you more of me so many times, and you always rejected me. But then you’d show up during the day as Damien. Bringing me coffee and making me laugh like some kind of…”
“Some kind of what?”
“Some kind of normal man who wanted something real with me.” Tears burn my eyes, but I still refuse to let them fall. “Was any of it real? Or was I just some elaborate game to you?”
“All of it was real.” His eyes search mine, black and bottomless. Desperation bleeds through his composure. Fear, too. Raw and unmistakable, as his chest rises and falls too fast. “Everything between us was real, and that’s what’s fucking destroyed me.”
I want to believe him. The wanting aches in my chest. But I can’t afford to trust anymore. I step back, widening the gap between us.
“What was your endgame? Did you think I’d never figure it out? That I’d sleep with Damien and not recognize you? Not know exactly how you feel inside me? How you move? How you fuck?”
His hands flex at his sides, and his throat works around the words he’s trying to force out. When they finally come, they sound like they’ve been dragged over broken glass.
“I thought I could keep them separate. Have you both ways. Have you the way we are in the dark and still have what I crave in the light.”
“And what is that, Damien? What is it you crave?”
“You.” The word explodes out like he’s been holding it back too long. He eliminates the last of the space between us in two strides, and then he’s there, so close the heat and scent of him wrap around me. “Your smile. Your laugh. How alive you get when you talk about your animals. I want to be the man who makes you happy, not just the one who fucks you until you’re sobbing. I want to be the man who fulfills every dark fantasy you have and every dream you’ll ever have. I fucking want to be both.”
The honesty in his words guts me. I stagger back, pressing my hand to my chest. Beneath it, my heart pounds, wild and chaotic.
“So, you fed me lies on both sides.”
“What the fuck was I supposed to do?” His voice rises, anger sharpening the words. “You think I planned this? You think I wanted to fall in love with you?”
“Fall in love with me? Is that what this is? Love? Because it feels a lot more like manipulation.”
His expression darkens. For a second, I see the dangerous man underneath. The killer who wears the mask.
“Don’t do that, Luna. Don’t twist this into something it’s not.”
