My thighs clench. “My b-blood.”
The vein on the side of his neck pops out and pulses. “You bled, didn’t you?”
I claw my fingers on the dresser. “Yes.”
I did.
I hadn’t noticed it until I got back to the dorm. There were red spots on my cream panties, the hem of my ivory dress. On my thighs too, super high, just by my core, and God, I saved it.
I saved the dress.
Like some lovesick fool, I put it in the back of my drawer, never to be looked at but never to be thrown away either.
Reed’s face blanches for a second at my answer and I almost put my hands on him. I almost soothe the tight lines but I stop myself at the last second.
I stop myself from touching him. Even though my fingers are starving.
“I made you bleed,” he says roughly. “I hurt you. You made me hurt you with your lies.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” I blurt out.
He scoffs. “I felt you, Fae. I felt how tight you were. I’ve been jerking off to it. Like an asshole, I’ve been blowing my load all over my bedsheets for three goddamn weeks to how tight you were. How I made you cry with my first stroke.”
“I —”
“Because you did, didn’t you? You cried. So yeah, I hurt you. I hurt her. I hurt your fairy pussy that hasn’t had anything inside her. Has she?”
“No.”
“No,” he rasps, his eyes flicking over my features. “Not a single thing, huh?”
I swallow again, blush burning my cheeks. “My fingers. Sometimes. And a t-tampon.”
I don’t know why I say it.
Why I tell him that, but I couldn’t not.
With the way he’s watching me. With the way he’s depending on my answer like that, hanging on it.
At my reply, an additional vein on his temple makes its appearance and pulses. “A tampon. So you made me feed my fat dick to a pussy that’s only known a tampon. You know my cock is fat and big, don’t you? You felt it.”
I curl my toes inside my flats as a phantom throb starts up between my thighs. “Yes.”
“And you lied to a guy like that. You lied to me.” He grinds his jaw. “You pissed me the fuck off with your made-up stories and —”
“I wasn’t making up stories,” I tell him, craning my neck up. “Toby was real. He did kiss —”
“Shut up,” he snaps. “Shut the fuck up right now, Fae. You don’t want to finish that sentence. You don’t want to finish it when it’s been killing me.”
“Killing you?”
“Yeah, it’s been killing me that I hurt you and I didn’t even get to make it better.”
“But you did make it better, remember? You hugged me and you —”
“Not like that.”
“Then how?”
I feel him shake the dresser again, the biggest shake yet I think. I notice his chest heaving, expanding under his t-shirt, those veins pulsing, beating like the heart he doesn’t have as he says, “It’s killing me that I made her cry and I didn’t get to lick her tears off. I didn’t get to soothe her with my tongue. She must’ve been all sore and puffy. Swollen and red. After the way I abused her. After the way I beat her up with my cock and I didn’t even get to suck that soreness away. I didn’t even get to make nice with her with my mouth. I didn’t even get to tell her that my dick, the thing that hurt her, he’s a horny bastard. He wants to hurt her again and again. He wants to use her up but I won’t let him. I won’t. Not until I take away her pain. Not until I kiss it all better. It’s killing me, Fae.”
I was wrong.
The shake that I feel when he finishes is the biggest one yet and I lose the battle with myself.
I touch him.
I touch the furious lines of his features, rub my thumbs over his arched cheekbones and the hollows of his face. I even touch him with my body, crash my softness against his harsh surfaces, his hard and heated muscles.
He shudders and I can’t stop the undeniable relief that floods through my veins at getting to touch him when I thought that I never would.
Going up on my tiptoes, I tell him, “It’s okay, Reed. I swear I was fine. I swear —”
“Was she though?” he asks, cutting me off. “Was she all red and puffy?”
That throb in my core grows and becomes a current, strong and thrumming. “A little. But —”
“Was she swollen too? All bruised up.”
“Reed —”
“Was she?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
I press my hand on his face even harder, press my body into his as I answer, “A couple of days. I couldn’t…”
“You couldn’t what?”
“I couldn’t sit in class,” I whisper.
His nostrils flare and his jaw jerks under my palm. “You couldn’t —”
“But it was fine. I promise. I went to the nurse and I got medication.”
“You got medication.”
I nod. “For the pain, and so it was fine.”
I did.
I kept throbbing between my legs so I went to the nurse and told them I had a headache. Which wasn’t that far from the truth anyway. Every part of my body was hurting back then.
I didn’t mind the soreness between my legs though.
During all those miserable days, that soreness was the one thing I didn’t wish away. And now that it’s gone, I wish it back.
I want it to come back, that fullness, that delicious stretch, that hurt, so he can make it better. Because for all my hate and anger at him, I can’t see him like this.
I can’t see him regret our night, what we did, what I wanted to happen.
“I took care of myself, see?” I continue, looking into his eyes, reassuring him. “I told you. You don’t have to protect me all the time. It’s not your job.”
Anger ripples through his features then.
As if like ‘save,’ the word ‘protect’ is his trigger as well. As if he hates that he doesn’t get to do that for me.
“Not my job,” he pushes out before glancing down.
At my belly, and I suck in a breath.
I pull my hands away from him. I pull myself away and go back down on the floor.
He lifts his eyes and I have to press my spine against the dresser again. Because that possessive light is back. It’s dark and bright and hot and it makes flutters move inside my belly.
It makes me think that he knows.
He knows.
“For the last three weeks, I’ve been trying to track you down,” he says, his gaze coming back up. “I’ve been waiting by the side of the road. I even went to your fucking fence, wanting to scale it. I’ve been going to your favorite places. To your pink cupcake shop, and I talked to the most boring people I’ve ever met in my entire life. Just so I can ask them about you. Because —”
And then I have to ask him, how can I not, “What boring people?”
“I don’t know. Some waitress.”
“Teresa,” I breathe out.
“What?”
“Her name is Teresa. The waitress you were talking to.”
His eyes narrow. “How the fuck do you know?”
“Because I was there,” I confess, lowering my eyes. “I saw you. I thought you’d moved on or something. And when I saw you with her, I —”
“You ran.”
I look up at him through my lashes, at the anger in his expression, and nod. “And I know about the fence too. I-I was there last night. I hid behind a tree.” He grinds his jaw as I go on. “I didn’t want to see you. After… you know.”
His jaw tics for a few seconds. “Yeah, I do know. Good thing though I found you here. Because I’m done fucking around. I’m done being played with. Because if I hadn’t found you here, this time when I went to your fence, I was about to climb up. I was about to hunt down your dorm room. And make no mistake, I would’ve found you. I would’ve woke
n up your whole fucking school to find you. I would’ve broken into your dorm and carried you out of there on my shoulders, you understand? Because I’m running out of patience now and we’ve got things to talk about.”
I know.
I know.
I know we do.
But he has to understand that I don’t know how. I don’t know how to tell him that…
I take a few fearful breaths as my stomach churns. Bile rises up my throat but I somehow manage to whisper a lone word. “I’m…”
Before I trail off.
Before I have to swallow and breathe out.
I can’t say it. I can’t. I can’t.
I…
And he breathes out too.
As he studies my face, as he probably studies the fear on my features.
He grinds his jaw again before exhaling a resigned breath and filling the silence. “First, I want you to know that I’m clean. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
It takes me a few seconds to really get his meaning.
When I do, my cheeks get even more heated because I didn’t think of that.
In everything, I didn’t think of that at all.
“Yes,” I whisper.
A grave look enters his eyes. “I mean it. I’m clean. I haven’t had sex in a long time. I wasn’t lying when I said…”
“You said what?”
Another tic of his jaw. “When I said you haunt me. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve tried. But I…” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t. Mostly because I spent a lot of time in the past two years, either drunk or angry. At the shitty job, at my fucking father. So yeah.”
My heart twists at the shitty job.
The thing he has to do because he made a deal with his dad. For me.
God, what a sad, awful pair we make.
“So you… d-didn’t?” I whisper, the only thing I can do at his big revelation.
He swallows. “No.”
Oh God.
He didn’t.
He couldn’t. Like me and I…
"I –"
He doesn’t let me speak though. “If I wasn’t clean, if I didn’t know that I was clean, I never would’ve fucked you raw. Nothing you could’ve said to make me do that. To put you at risk like that. I want you to know that.”
I nod. “I know. I know you wouldn’t have.”
I absolutely do know.
I know his crazy protectiveness. His crazy need to keep me safe.
Which has been the biggest irony of my life ever since I met him.
Ever since he made me dance for him in the woods.
The villain I fell in love with somehow acts like a hero.
And maybe that’s why it didn’t occur to me. That he’d put me in jeopardy like that.
As soon as I realize this, I realize something else too.
I realize that he pulled out in the end.
I mean, I knew that. I remember that. I felt him come outside of my body but I hadn’t grasped the real importance of it. The true importance of him pulling out.
It was smart, yes, but more than that, he did it to protect me.
He did it to keep me safe.
Even after I asked him not to, he protected me that night in so many ways.
As if he knows what I’m thinking about, he says, “Not that it did much good, did it?”
Before he glances down again and my belly feels warm at his comment.
Heated and alive.
“Reed,” I say, and he looks up.
Thank God.
I don’t want him looking at my belly.
Not right now.
Not yet.
“You know what else happened that night, don’t you?” he asks, studying me. “Besides me taking your virginity.”
The quickening in my belly grows.
It grows to epic proportions and I feel this absolute stark need to touch it.
To cradle my flat belly.
Just because he’s watching it.
Just because he’s waiting for me to say something. When I don’t, he asks, “Is there something you want to tell me?”
My chest starts to heave and the craving to touch my belly reaches the sky.
The answer to his question almost bursts out of my mouth and shocks me. I didn’t think that this would be my answer. I swear I didn’t.
I didn’t think my answer would be yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
There is something that I want to tell him.
There is.
For all my running and hiding and denying, I never thought that when he asked me point blank, when he looked at me with those possessive eyes, the urge to tell him would be this strong. That I would have to stop myself from saying it.
That I would have to tighten my body and clench my teeth to keep this thing a secret.
But I have to.
“I’m on the pill,” I blurt out.
I’m not.
I tried once, for my bad periods. But it messed me up so much, my hormones and made me throw up so badly that I had to get off it.
“Yeah?”
I jerk out a nod. “Yes.”
He licks his lips. “That’s an excellent lie, Fae. And it would work on me, if I hadn’t bought you dozens of your fucking cupcakes when you get your periods. Because those are the only things that make you feel better. Because you can’t even take a pill for it, can you?”
Oh God.
I didn’t… I didn’t think of that. I’d forgotten that he knows me so well, that he has seen me on my periods and I can’t tell him.
Not yet.
I have so many things to figure out. So many things to think about.
All I’ve figured out so far is that somehow that night wasn’t the end. No matter how much I wanted it to be.
That’s all.
And I need to think.
I need space. I need…
“One week.”
His words break my frantic thoughts. “What?”
Reed’s eyes circle my features, study my wide eyes and trembling lips before he takes his arms off the dresser. Before he lets the abused furniture go and opens the muscular cage that he was trapping me in.
He steps back and my sweaty palms slip on the dresser.
“You have a week,” he explains, all tall and unapproachable now.
“For what?”
“To come to me and tell me. And this time, Fae, you can’t run. You can’t hide. Because I need to know.” He glances down at my belly again for a second before looking up. “I have to.”
With that, he leaves and I sag in relief.
I take my first full breath and all the tightness leaves my body because I have time. He gave it to me.
To figure things out first.
My mother was eighteen when she had my brother Conrad.
She was a senior in high school and absolutely in love with my dad. When they found out she was pregnant, my mother dropped out and my dad got a job at a local construction company.
I think that company was owned by the Jacksons. Because everything in Bardstown is owned by them.
But anyway, they both dropped out and got married. My mom got a job as a waitress in a local diner and they both promised that they would do everything that they could to love their child and give him a good life.
And then slowly over the years, they had more kids.
With more kids came more jobs, more responsibilities.
Until they had me.
I was an accident. They planned on stopping after Ledger. And I think the fact that I was unplanned — the second unplanned baby after Conrad — made my father decide that he’d had enough.
And so he left.
I’ve never seen my dad. All I know is that his name was Jeffrey Thorne and he had golden brown hair and blue eyes. Conrad and me, we take after him. The rest of my brothers take after Mom, dark hair and brown eyes.
I guess when I was little, since no other father figure was ever around and since Con has always been there for me, I thought he was my dad. I think I even used to call him that, Daddy. I don’t remember doing any of this but my brothers tell me.
And then Con told me the truth one day when I was old enough to know it; by then my mom had already died.
He told me about our dad leaving right after I was born.
When I asked him if it was me who made him go, he hugged me and he said that no, it wasn’t me. That Dad was going to leave anyway. When I asked him if he was going to leave too, he looked me in the eyes, the color of his slightly darker than mine, and said that nothing on this earth would ever make him leave me, nothing at all.
So I guess I never really wondered about my dad because I had Con and the rest of my brothers.
But I have wondered about my mom, Cora.
Over the years, I have dug out her old recipe books, her old clothes that my brothers never threw away. She was the one who always baked and who always knitted sweaters and mittens. I found tons of her knitting books in our attic.
I have wondered about how it would feel to have a mother.
In my head it feels like the most fun ever.
Someone to talk to, someone to gossip with, someone to giggle with. Someone to watch all the chick flicks with, eat ice cream with, talk boy troubles with.
It feels like heaven.
And hell at the same time, because I’ll never ever get to experience it.
I’m wondering about my mother now.
I’ve been wondering about her for the past few days. I’ve been wondering what she would tell me, how she would react. If she’d be disappointed in me.
That I’m following in her footsteps.
Or if she’d be supportive. If she’d lend a hand and guide me. If she’d be there for me.
Like my friends have. Wyn and Salem and Poe.
I told them. I had to.
I mean, they would’ve figured it out on their own. I’ve been throwing up a lot more this week than I was the previous week. And right now, as of this moment, I hate all kinds of meat.
I hate its smell. I hate when I accidentally see it on someone’s plate in the cafeteria. I hate when someone even says bacon cheeseburger.
So yes, I’ve been throwing up.
And not only in the mornings. At nights too.
The only good thing is that miraculously, somehow I make it through classes and so no one else, other than my girls, knows what is up.
A Gorgeous Villain Page 31