“Whatever you were tryin’ to say there, whatever you’re tryin’ to think, it’s bullshit,” he clipped.
“You don’t even know—” I tried to interrupt, but his eyes stopped me.
“I know, Will. I know because it seeps from your every fuckin’ pore. Your absolute blindness to what you are.” The grip on my arm tightened. “What I’m fuckin’ holding onto, somehow holding but not breaking.” His eyes swam with something so dark it hurt to look at. “Not yet, at least,” he muttered, his voice iron yet soft, like it had been under the forge for too long; it was melting, being molded by the heat—by pain.
“I don’t want to kiss you. Well, I do. Fucking more than anything in this world. Then I want to eat your pussy for hours. Sink my cock into that pussy and fuckin’ make you scream, make my fucking home inside that cunt.”
My insides dropped to the floor with his words. My legs throbbed and my pussy clenched tight, as if expecting a release to come from the words describing the act itself. I didn’t doubt that if Gage kept talking, kept looking at me like that, he’d make me come by just talking dirty. That was the thing about him. He was just so… visceral.
His eyes swam with the same desire that paralyzed me. Every inch of his body was held tight, the veins on his neck raised like he was battling with something.
He was silent a long time, just looking at me, fucking me with his stare. Then he leaned forward, inhaling roughly, sharply, sniffing me. My panties were drenched. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
“It will start with that kiss you just asked for. The thing I’ll give you, because I want to give you everything in this fucking world that you want, and it just so turns out that it lines up with my selfish desires,” he murmured, his mouth almost brushing mine but not crossing that important and very tiny distance between our lips.
His eyes didn’t let me go. “But it can’t be yet. Because the second I lay my lips to yours, it’s done. For both of us. I know it. You’re not gonna be the innocent, beautiful, and fucking oblivious girl anymore. Because I’ll worship every fucking inch of you to make sure you’re not blind to yourself. But then I’ll also fuck you so dirty that you won’t even look innocent to the Devil himself.”
Sweat beaded at my temples with the force of his words. He was penetrating me with those filthy and carnal sentences, my pussy wrapping around them like a physical thing. I’d never had such a reaction to anything in my life. I didn’t think anyone had this kind of reaction to anything ever.
Gage watched me. He was my puppet master, yanking at strings I didn’t know I had as he continued to speak. “I’m gonna tarnish you, dirty you, break you. I know it. Which means the longer I go without kissin’ you, the longer I get to enjoy my little bird before I crush her in my hands. Make her broken like me.” His hands tightened around me as if testing how much I could take.
His stare was unyielding. “And this isn’t me sayin’ I ain’t gonna do it. Because I’m broken, baby. I’m bad. And not the good kind of bad that sees true beauty and lets it go before he can ruin it. No, I’m the kind of bad that will take that beauty, appreciate it, and then snatch it for himself. Turn it into something that means it’ll never be the same again. Because you know you’ll never be the same again. I sure as fuck won’t.” He paused, his hands still at my chin, his eyes still searing my soul.
My heart seemed to crack against my rib cage with the force of its beats.
“So no, I’m not gonna kiss you just yet,” he rasped, eyes on my mouth. “I’m gonna let my little bird fly, enjoy the freedom she didn’t know she had for a little while longer.” He leaned in so his lips were almost—almost—touching mine once more. “But only a little fuckin’ while. Because I’m a man of strength. I’ve made it a fucking prerequisite of my survival to resist the temptation of things I know will destroy me. But I ain’t gonna be able to resist you for long, despite the fact that you’ll destroy me. And I’ll destroy you right back.”
With those words spearing me right through the heart, he gave me one last moment, then turned on his heel and gave me nothing but the view of the death he wore on his back.
Seven
One Week Later
One week.
I hadn’t heard from Gage in an entire week.
And I wasn’t one of those girls who spiraled when a guy didn’t call. Mostly because with me, after a point, the guy didn’t call. My life was simple, structured, unexciting. But it wasn’t that—it was because I didn’t fawn at the feet of these men. I didn’t yank my self-worth from inside me and hand it to them to do with what they wanted. I didn’t change my whole life in order to make them comfortable, in order to ‘keep them.’ And with the guys I’d dated, that meant I lost them. And it never bothered me. In each of my very brief relationships, I’d made sure to distance myself, to not give them all of me.