Page 127 of See Me

His hands tighten on my hips, halting my efforts. “I just gave you all of me, Princess.” He winces. “Sorry. Can I still call you that?”

I bite my lip and nod. “You can.”

He grins and lays a soft kiss on my lips. “Good, demon just doesn’t have the same ring to it.” He tosses me off his lap and scoots to the top of the bed.

I scoff at the end of the bed. “Why did you do that?

“Because my restraint is about to snap and if you keep touching me and grinding in my lap, you won’t be able to talk anymore.”

I smile and crawl toward him. “I kinda like the sound of that.”

He puts his hand on my face and pushes me back with a laugh. “Down, Princess.” He folds his arms across his chest. “Go on, then.”

I huff and sit cross-legged next to him. “Eh, well, you know I grew up an only child. No siblings, no friends. There was never a place I fit in. My parents tolerated me, the staff looked after me, but only because they were paid to.” I pick up a pillow and cradle it in my lap, as a shield, I guess? I don’t know. There’s a heaviness in my chest at the thought of being so vulnerable and open. At exposing my weakness to someone who can flat out destroy me with it.

But he just gave me a piece of himself that damn near broke him. So, I can, at the least, show him this piece of me that surely I shouldn’t have let continue this long. It will show him just how weak I am, how easily I can be manipulated and controlled. And what he does with the information will show a lot more about him than it does about me. For all I know, he can take this little tidbit ofEllaand file it away for future use.

“You ever use a navigation system in your car and then you make a wrong turn and the voice redirects you and you can’t help but think they’re laughing at you and thinking you’re a complete idiot that can’t even function with step-by-step instructions so how can you survive life unsupervised?”

He furrows his brow in confusion. “It’s a computer, Princess. There’s no one there.” He laughs and the smile slides off his face when he looks at me. “What does that mean?”

“It means there was a time in my life when I would do anything to fit in. To please someone else if it meant I couldget even a tiny bit of attention, and I got burned for it. It’s conditioned me to question everyone’s intentions to the point that now if I think for one second I’ve inconvenienced anyone, even a computer-generated navigation system, I feel judged, I feel inadequate. It’s hard for me to trust people are genuine. I feel like everyone will use me for a purpose, a short amount of time, and discard me when they’re done. I let it define me, control me. Even now. I still go by Ella, even after all these years.” I shake my head, shame sitting like a solid rock in my gut.

“Tell me how it started.” He grabs my hand and pulls me into his side.

I snuggle into him, tracing my finger over his chest. I swallow hard, hating the picture I’m about to paint. No amount of colorful wording can make this picture anything other than grotesque. “I was in elementary school. There was this group of girls, the popular ones. Prissy, rich, all the things.” I flutter my hand wildly in front of me. “The leader of the group asked me to sit at their lunch table one day.Ella, come sit with us.Then they all laughed. I went and sat with them. Told them my name was Ellie or Elliot.That’s stupid, I’m not calling you that. If you want to sit with us, your name is Ella. It’s pretty at least; prettier than you.”

I feel Luca’s arm stiffen around my back and he huffs a long breath out of his nose.

“I was seven. I didn’t have anyone else. No one to talk to. No one that even looked at me. Except this one teacher. She cared, at least I think so. Always made a point to ask how I was. Talked to me like I was a person, not a tool or accessory, like my parents. She drew her own conclusion when they never showed up for conferences or returned any correspondenceever.Part of me wonders if she just felt sorry for me, but the way she looked at me when I walked back into class that day and toldher to call me Ella. Her face fell. She looked behind me at the girls snickering at my back.

“I can still remember the look in her eyes. She was disappointed in me. I let my need to fit in cheapen my self-worth.Changed my name.” I sigh. “But she painted on a smile and nodded.Okay, Ella, see you tomorrow.I don’t know if it was the fact she knew I didn’t have anyone else and desperately needed a friend or what. But she never looked at me the same after that. Where before there was always compassion and enthusiasm, after that it was pity. She knew before I did what I’d set myself up for. I spent the next ten years with frenemies. They would invite me to parties and stuff, but only to embarrass me. Making me do awful things just to stay friends with them. And I did. I did it all. Any attention was better than none.”

He pulls me up to straddle his lap. “That’s why you wanted to be a teacher?”

I nod. “I know if she thought it was the right thing to do, she would’ve stepped in. But she knew it would make things harder on me and I had a long way to go. At least the way things happened, I hadsomefriends. When the ring leader wasn’t around, the other girls were nice to me.”

He grits his teeth. “What’s her name?”

I laugh at the same question I asked him earlier. Knowing he needed to know just as badly as I needed a name for his story. “Gwendilyn.”

“That’s why she did it.” He brushed a stray hair off my forehead. “She did it because she hated herself. She also hated how strong you were so she set out to break you.”

“I wasn’t strong. I changed my freaking name in less than five minutes just to have a friend.”

“That doesn’t make you weak. Everyone craves acceptance. You were starved of affection. It means you weredesperate, backed into a corner. She would’ve made your life hell if you’d said no.”

“She made it hell, anyway.” I chew on my lip. “And here I am, a whole-ass adult still going by Ella.”

“You don’t have to change for me.”

My eyes drop from his face to his chest, my cheeks heating with embarrassment. Ashamed to admit I’m still that weak little girl begging for someone to look at her. “I already did. I became who you wanted. The aloof vixen who just wanted sex.” A sad smile pulls at my lips.

“For the record, that isn’t who I wanted. It was the bits in between I fell for. The little snippets of the real you. Your drive to teach, your obsession with fancy pens, your smartass comebacks. And I know for a fact you can’t eat all the food I was packing you, but your bag still came back empty every night. You’re helping someone and it makes me love you even more. Because I was that kid. For a while, anyway. Before Gram.” He strokes his hands up and down my thighs. “And I may have pulled the vixen out of you, but she was already in there. You didn’t fake that, Princess.”

My hands glide from his abs up his tight chest. “It was fun being her.”

He circles an arm around my back and flips me underneath him. “Youareher.” My legs circle his waist and he grinds his hips, dragging his length along my core. “Look at you.” He runs a hand from my hip up my side and it settles at the nape of my neck. He tightens his grip on my hair and I close my eyes and moan, grinding my hips. “So fucking beautiful. Look at me.”

---