Christian yelled at Ollie, “You’re tight with Piper’s cousin. Go fix this shit so we don’t get fucking ambushed.” He grabbed onto Eric’s face—hard. “Go. Right now. Calm the fuck down.”
Eric ripped his jaw from Christian’s grasp and locked onto me. I turned around quickly, unable to stand being scrutinized, and pulled his arm along with me. I whisked him into the door at the end of the hall and locked it behind us, ignoring the sign taped to the front that said Out of order - go pee outside.
The light was on within seconds, and his arm was ripped out of my grasp even quicker.
He stormed the tiny room, walking over the dirty vinyl floor. Back and forth. Back and forth. His shaky hand reached up, and he shoved his now curling black hair off his forehead and continued to breath heavily through his nose.
The hollow parts of his cheeks were tinted with an angry red. His eyes were darting. He looked everywhere but at me. Which was fine. I could hardly form words without his eyes on me, let alone if they were.
Almost as if he heard my thought, he stopped pacing and stood right in front of me. I kept my eyes on the tan bathroom rug that laid in between us, feeling like my lungs were going to explode.
“Who fucking touched you?”
My stomach dropped, and I somehow found the strength to raise my gaze, but I was too ashamed to look him in the eye. Instead, I looked in the mirror just over his shoulder and held back a shudder.
Strands of blonde hair framed my face, but it did nothing but accentuate my pale cheeks. My blue eyes glittered with unshed tears, and my lips were trembling. Fuck.
I pulled myself out of the trance and tried keeping my eyes unreadable as I placed them on Eric who was waiting for my answer. His strong, straight nose was flaring as he breathed deeply.
“What are you talking about?” I tried to deflect. “I told you it was a rumor I made up months ago. You remember. You were at the party when I told Christian.”
There was a slight twitch to Eric’s eye. “Who fucking raped you, Madeline? Was it him? Because I will snap his body in half.”
My voice was shaky. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “I told you… It—"
Eric rus
hed at me, and I pressed my back along the locked door, my breath catching in my throat. “Stop lying.”
I swore, in that moment, Eric was peeling back my layers one by one, and he was seeing all the little truths that laid behind. I swallowed, trying to even my breathing. “Eric—"
His hand wrapped around my chin. It wasn’t a tight, angry grasp. It was gentle, but his eyes were anything but. The dark pools were filled with anger and all things alpha. He was angry. And that set an entirely new batch of anxiety into my already-in-overdrive body.
“It wasn’t him,” I finally choked out, almost doubling over with queasiness.
Eric’s eyes shut, his temples wiggling back and forth. His dark eyelashes danced as he kept his lids closed. The calloused hand on my face tightened just enough to bring me back to reality. What did I just do?
At the last second, his eyes fluttered opened. They were no longer filled with rage but with something else entirely. “But someone did? Someone raped you?”
There was that word again. The word that dragged me underneath the high tide and kept drowning me all together. Raped. Someone raped you.
My eyes were stinging, and my throat was closing. I’d never in my life wanted someone as much as I wanted him in that moment. I wanted to cave into him. I wanted to bury my head in the crook of his neck and have him make me forget everything.
So I did the only thing I could think of to get out of the predicament. I glanced down to his mouth and pressed my lips to his. His hand quickly dropped from my chin as my tongue met his. His mouth was warm and tasted like cheap beer. My back arched as he gripped my hips—hard, his fingers biting at the skin underneath my shirt.
I waited for him to push me off and tell me he hated me. I wanted to make him mad. I wanted him to hate me again. The kiss was supposed to be a move in a chess game. I wanted to remind him that I wasn’t worth saving. I needed him to stop looking at me with pity.
But the kiss was the opposite. It was like opening a floodgate of trapped emotions inside my heart. I expected it to trigger something dark and unforgiving, but the kiss was anything but.
Briefly, very briefly, I wondered what it would feel like to be loved by a guy like him. How it would feel to be worshiped by a guy like him. How it would feel to be protected by a guy like him.
The room spun around me as he picked me up and slammed my butt down on the bathroom vanity, spilling random products to the floor. I scooted forward and pressed my middle to the bulge in his jeans as his hands cupped my face. His fingers were tangled in my hair, his teeth scraping over mine.
My body was on fire.
The only thing I could see was him.
The only thing I could taste was him.