The Danger You Know
Page 25
“That you’re mine,” I answer with a smirk. “That you’re here. And that you’re not leaving.”
“Fuck you,” she growls before ducking left to sneak around me, my body turning slowly to watch her storm across the penthouse to the hallway. “I’m leaving.”
Adeline marches down the hall, barefoot and in only a t-shirt, a violent stabbing at the elevator call button clickclickclickclicking so fast that I have to bite my cheek to keep from laughing.
I don’t bother following her, just lean my back against the glass and wait for her to give up.
She storms back, runs at the window as if to break through it and bounces off so hard that she falls on her ass.
It was funny before, but now she might hurt herself.
I step over her, one foot on either side of her body, staring down with every threat of spanking her ass.
“Attempt to break my shit again and I’ll bend you over my knee for it. And what the fuck were you going to do anyway? Fall thirty-five stories to your death? That would have really shown me, huh?”
Furious eyes glare up at me. “I would rather be a stain on the fucking pavement than spend another hour with you.”
She’s lost her fucking mind. Not that she had the best grip on reality as it was, but fuck.
Lincoln is right. She is a little psychopath.
My fist grips her shirt, pulling her up from the floor, her feet scrambling for purchase as I lift her higher.
Head falling back, she keeps glaring, her hands locking over my wrists, nails stabbing me, but it won’t do her a bit of good. I’m too pissed to care about the pain.
“I’ve spent too many years chasing your crazy little ass around just for you to break yourself in my house. You would have never made it through that window to fall since they’re built to withstand impact, but now you’ll have a nice bruise on your ass that I didn’t put there. So never try to break my shit again.”
She understands then. I don’t care about the window. I see her as my property, and I’ll be damned to let her destroy it.
Through gritted teeth, she says, “I’ll do whatever the hell I want.”
Oh, the fuck no she won’t.
“You want a bruise on your ass? I’ll give you one.”
Catching her wrists with my free hand, I tug them from the one gripping her shirt. She weighs practically nothing as I yank her to her feet, catch her around the waist and force her a few feet back to the leather couch.
A squeak bursts from her lips as I drop both our bodies down, maneuvering her so that her stomach falls across my knees, the hem of her shirt bunching at her hips.
She’s still fighting, still angry as a spitting cat, so I lock one hand down over the back of her neck to keep her from rearing up and catching my nose with the back of her skull. The other, I use to lift her shirt just before my palm slaps the firm flesh of her pale ass.
Another small shriek at the sting, but she stops moving, the threat firmly in place now that I have her pinned and exposed.
Leaning over her, I speak softly, my voice cold and controlled while she’s hot with fury. “Stop fighting me. I’ve already won.”
“Like hell you have.”
Another slap and she flinches over my knees. “I won when you went on that walk in the cemetery with me. I won when you chose me over your vows. I won when you told me you were getting engaged as if begging me to stop you. And I won so many other times you don’t know about or remember.”
Adeline’s body becomes motionless, my palm rubbing away the sting on her skin, slow circles that warn I will slap her again.
She can lie and pretend that she hates me, but her body thinks differently. It always has.
This is pushing the line a bit far to even admit it, but I’m dying to see her reaction.
Whispering against her ear, I reveal one of her truths she thinks nobody knows.
“If somebody was strong enough, I think they could own me. It would take a lot. I’m stubborn, I know that. But I know there has to be a man out there who can break me, who can understand me, who can seduce me by matching me toe for toe while somehow seeing all my parts and accepting them for who I am. He’ll be stronger, obviously, faster. But he would conquer. How messed up is that? I’m not looking for the type of love that makes a person feel warm. I’m looking for someone who will fight a battle, not to hurt me, but to show me I’ve met my match. I don’t think he exists. He can’t exist. They never do.”
Her body goes rigid as I recite a journal entry I’d found in one of the beat up books she’d stuffed full and tossed aside. I’d ripped the page out back then, kept it, read it so many times that I’d memorized every word until the paper was thinning.
My voice softens even more, the deep vibration of it moving over my lips to the shell of her ear. “He exists, Adeline. And you’re pissing him off.”
No response. She doesn’t give up her thoughts by accusing me of stealing her private confessions, by yelling that I let her go, by demanding answers. Adeline is disturbingly silent, her body frozen in place, her eyes hidden by the fall of her dark hair.
It’s a prick move on my part, telling her what I know about her, admitting that I’ve spent years studying her and examining her life when she didn’t know I was there.
But I’m not done.
Stupid. It’s fucking stupid of me to want her to know the truth of it. To want to punish her for trapping me in a spell she didn’t know she’d cast.
Just like that first night she cried and forced me to turn around, her silence now is forcing my hand until I’ve lost my mind.
My fingers flex on the back of her neck, a small grunt of discomfort over her lips as I pull her up, lock her back against my chest and shove her legs open so she’s straddling my lap. Her plump ass sits over my hardening dick, her hair falls over my shoulder, and I grip a hand over her knee before slowly dragging my fingertips up.
Red lines form in her skin from the hard path my fingers take, up higher until I’m tugging the bottom of her shirt up her body and yanking it from her arms.
Her tits bounce over her chest as her arms drop back to her sides, my arm locking around her waist like a steel vice to hold her back tight to my body, to scoot her ass even more over the rigid line of my cock.
Still, she gives me no response, a fucking pathetic rag doll who will take what I do to her without question or complaint.
It’s a defense mechanism, the same thing she did when Grant stripped her of personality, and I won’t accept it. I don’t want it. I want the aggravating girl she’d once been, the monster who pissed me off at every turn.
So, I remind her of that girl. Even if it means I’m admitting things that will push us too close to the truth of why I know her.
Adeline is mine.
She’s here.
And I finally get to play with her for as long as I want.
White cotton panties still cover her hips and cunt, but I want those on for now, want that tiny bit of modesty, that thin shred of fabric that lets her think I don’t have her completely naked and bared to me.
Except, she’s wrong in that.
Any man can strip a woman of her clothes and make her stand naked before him. But even then she’s not truly naked. It’s child’s play. Brute force. But he still can’t see all of her. And that’s where he loses. Not if her thoughts are still locked away in a mind he can’t have. Not unless she gives it to him.
I have Adeline’s mind. Her private thoughts. Her memories. All her successes and shames, triumphs and losses. Every single one. I was there watching them. Reading about them in her journals. Looking through her room at all the photos of her life before me, her life after.
I have it all. Body and mind.
And she still doesn’t know the first thing about me.
If that’s not winning, I don’t know what is.
Adeline can keep the panties for now.
Because I already see the parts of her that no other man has seen before.
Adeline
I’ve felt fear before in my life. Tons of it. Enough to break even the strongest person. Enough to sink anybody beneath the surface of water and drown them in the consequences of life.
I felt it when my mother got sick and was dying. When I heard the gunshot on the night my father died. When I knew I was alone in a house filled with ghosts, and when I lost control of myself in the years that followed.
Fear and I are well acquainted. It’s been delivered by men who’ve hit me. By assholes who thought they could control me. By the days and nights I felt everything I loved being stripped away while I watched helpless from the sidelines.
I know fear. I’ve lived it. Slept with it. Cuddled up to it when a man beat me senseless because I’d broken my vows.
But this fear. What Ari is doing to me now. It sinks deeper, cuts sharper, the jagged lines of it fissuring through my mind and body while he holds me in place and admits all the secrets he knows.
His chest is a blanket of heat against my back, the soft cotton of his shirt rubbing against my skin, his scent, that musky, masculine spice of him, is seducing me into compliance.
The familiarity is startling, memories rushing back. Flashes of shadow I’d dismissed, the way my hair would stand on end when it felt like someone was watching.
We all feel it, that presence, those eyes on us, exploring and touching, examining and judging.
Deep down we know someone is watching, but we brush it off.
I shouldn’t have dismissed it as many times as I did.
Fingertips softly brushing up the top of my thigh, he tightens his arm around my waist and holds me still. I can feel every breath he takes, every steady beat of his heart, even though my pulse is chaotic and fractured, a trapped bird frantic to escape the confines of my ribs.
My body trembles as his lips brush my ear, as his fingertips climb higher on my leg. A sweep of his thumb over my panties and I shiver, my spine going straight.
“Four months before you turned seventeen, you started dating Kyle Warner. He was two years older than you, just graduated high school, a pencil dick nobody that you happily grasped onto because you stopped caring by then.”
My eyes close at the memory. I was only with Kyle for a few weeks. A flash in time when I let myself believe love at first sight existed.
Ari’s fingers trace the edge of my panties, a teasing touch as they slide down, sweep up, a barely there pressure that causes my hips to buck.
I feel him smile against my cheek, and all I want to do is turn to see it. But when I try, his hand comes up to lock over my throat, to hold me in place. Then sweeps down to rub soft circles over my nipple, enticing the flesh to tighten and bud.
“Two days and he convinced you to give him your virginity, and although you had an empty house, a clean bed, a place where he could take his time teaching you to accept his dick, you seduced him in the back of a car instead.”
His fingers pinch my nipple, twist it, his thumb flicking it before he palms my tit with fierce possession.
My mind races to the back of that car, to the way Kyle fumbled and was too eager. To the pain of him shoving inside me without knowing how to make me wet.
Ari’s hand slides down my body again, teasing the waistband of my panties before his fingertips slide beneath it. He pushes down until he’s just above my clit. His hand stops, and I want to complain, want him to keep going, but he doesn’t.
“Your face on that night, I watched every expression. You wanted so badly to get off, to experience an orgasm caused by somebody else’s hand. And I stood back and watched. A silent presence. My cock was so hard, but I wouldn’t touch it. Wouldn’t relieve the pressure building because of a girl who was way too fucking young.”
Teeth nipping my ear, he drops his hand lower, the pad of his finger grazing my clit. But when I move to rub against him, his arm locks on me tighter, reminds me to be still.
“We both walked away in pain that night. Unsatisfied. Unfulfilled. Kyle got what he wanted within the first three sloppy minutes. But we didn’t.”
His dick is a rigid line along the crease of my ass, every twitch a reminder of what he can give. But the man has such aggravating patience that my teeth slam together, my body a live wire he’s plucking sparks from with every teasing touch.
“So, you left Kyle, didn’t you? And moved on to the next. Benjamin Carter. Now he was a fucking loser. I was a little let down by the choice, but he was the first to spread these pretty legs and introduce you to a man’s tongue.”
He flicks my clit, a quick movement that sends a jolt of need through me. God, I’m so swollen for more, my panties feel wet.
“Except even that didn’t get you off. I saw your face. You fought for it to be enough. But the little prick had no idea what the fuck he was doing.”
Another flick and I want to scream for him to rub hard, to pinch, to slide his hand down farther and shove his fingers inside.
“But you moaned like he got you off. Pretended. Lied. Another two days and you’d sent him off. I’ll give you that much, Adeline. You never wasted too much time on them. Not back then, at least.”
I remembered the disappointment of that one time with Ben. Ari was making me relive it now by refusing to touch me the way I needed.
Ari’s hips move just enough to rub his cock against my ass. A taunt. A tease. A promise.
My body shudders so damn hard because he’s opening me up. Not physically, not in the way he touches me. But my thoughts, my emotions, my dirty little secrets that he toys with like pawns.
He’s right. I can’t hide from him, and for some fucked up reason, it turns me on more. I feel so exposed. So bare. So vulnerable.
And that sick side of me likes it. Not because he’s taken without asking. But because he’s giving me permission to reveal all my ugly parts without fear he’ll run from them.
He likes the ugly parts most.
He already knows them.
“Then you moved on to the next, and the next, and the next. Each time so let down by their failures that you were spiraling out of control. And what you didn’t know was that a man watched from the shadows, one who could give you the pleasure you sought. One who loved every filthy thing about you.”
His hand sinks lower and his fingertips brush over my opening. He circles the muscle, presses down just enough to make me squirm.
“I finally let myself wrap my hand over my cock and pump away at the sight of you when you sucked a man’s dick for the first time. You were horrible at it, all spit and no rhythm. But for some weird reason, it got me off.”
A single fingertip pushes inside me, my muscles gripping tight, needing it. But Ari has more self-control than me. He takes his time.
His voice is a hiss of sound, a warning, a threat.
“Do you have any idea how many times I wanted to steal you away from the little pricks you were fucking and show you how a real man gets you off?”
I shake my head, and he chuckles, clearly amused by my struggle.
“Do you want me to show you now?”
Knowing I shouldn’t want this, knowing I should hate him for the years he’d intruded into my life, I nod my head regardless, so needy and disjointed that the room with all the things about me disappears in that moment.
He’s all that exists. Just like he said he would be. Just like he shouldn’t be.
Ari isn’t just playing a game, I realize. He designed the board, carved the pieces and painted the dots on the dice.
It wasn’t good enough to linger in my world without my knowing it, he had to drag me kicking and screaming into his.
Yet, I still cry out when he sinks two fingers inside me and curls them to tease the flesh behind my clit. I still tremble and buck, moan and writhe over his perfectly swollen dick when he pumps those fingers slowly, the tip of his nose grazing my cheek, his eyes watching my face like they’ve always done
.
Dropping my gaze down to my lap, I watch his hand move inside my panties, his knuckles pushing up against the thin cloth. I wish like hell he would just rip them off so I can see everything he’s doing.
Because he isn’t wrong.
Nobody has gotten me off like he has.
Nobody knows how to play my body to the point where I’m acting on instinct instead of thought.
And I want to be dirty.
Absolutely fucking filthy.
I want to open up like a budding flower to reveal all my sordid parts.
I want to be controlled.
Tamed.
Sexually, at least.
Conquered, like he’s doing to me now.
Mostly, I want a man who is just as fucked up as me, who wants me for who I am.
Ari’s fingers sink deeper, and my head falls against his shoulder, my back arching forward, my tits on open display as my legs spread wider across his lap.
Bringing my arms up, I drive my fingers into his hair, pull his mouth closer to my jaw, shudder against the nip of his teeth as my hostility is abandoned, my hatred tucked away to dwell on later.
I want to feel without thinking.
To enjoy without worry of judgment.
To be free. That’s what I’ve always wanted. The thrill of it lost on the day I decided to grow up.
It feels like I was judging myself so harshly, while Ari stood in the shadows loving everything I thought was wrong with me.
His arm tightens around my waist, and he tugs me tighter against his cock, the thick, hard length of it pushing up between the cheeks of my ass. His hand keeps pumping as he nips and licks at my jaw.
I finally turn my head and brush my lips over his mouth, sweep out with my tongue only for him to bite down and smile against my mouth, that tiny bit of pain enough to still me in place as his thumb circles my clit and sets me off.
The first wave of a small orgasm rolls through me, my pussy clenching his fingers, my come soaking his hand, the wet sounds a steady rhythm as he pumps and pumps and pumps.
I’m shaking all over, holding onto his hair like a lifeline, my tongue tugging to escape his teeth as his grey eyes pin mine.