Poison

“It really is in the middle of nowhere,” she said, and looked around the grounds one final time before stepping over the threshold. There were no neighbours in sight. One of the reasons I’d chosen it in the first place. No neighbours. No noise. No intrusion.

I called the dogs back as they charged at her, and they listened, but only after they’d managed to bundle her into the kitchen wall and wagged their tails like rudders on speed.

I’d have let them do it all over again just to hear the slightest hint of the laugh that sounded out of her.

“Good dogs!” she giggled. “Wow, what cuties!”

It was her.

Finally, it was really her in the room along with me.

“They are amazing!” she laughed when they’d taken my instructions and zipped outside for their toilet break. “Collies?”

“Bill and Ted,” I said. “They are indeed collies.”

She stepped on through to the windows at the far end of the room while I held the back door open for the boys. My eyes were on her as she leaned into the sill and scoped out the horizon.

“This really is quite something,” she told me. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s really beautiful. There are plenty of things that are beautiful right here and now though.”

The dogs dashed back inside and made their way to their beds without accosting her a second time. I closed the door, and held back a minute, staring at the woman who’d set me alight again as she stared out at the sunshine. I saw her shoulders tighten as I stepped in her direction. I heard her breath catch as she felt me approach.

“Really, Lucas,” she whispered, and my heart thumped along with my cock, just to hear her say my name. “You’ve got a great place. So different from the city. It’s really amazing out here.”

“We’d better get started on that really amazing one off afternoon of yours, then,” I said, and my voice was low. So fucking low. So fucking alive.

She was shuddering before I’d even reached her. Her breaths were shallow before I’d even made contact, my body tight to hers.

“I’ve really needed this,” she said. “It’s crazy, but I need this.”

“That makes two of us. Maybe we’re both fucking crazy, or maybe the rest of the world is.”

“Just a one off,” she whispered.

“Just a one off.”

But I didn’t believe that.

We were already in too fucking deep for that, and we hadn’t even started yet. It was a shitstorm of lightning threatening to zap us both alive. It was a barrage of pain, and regret, and stupid decisions flaring back up to bite.

It was everything I cursed, and everything I craved, and just about everything that could add salt to the wounds I was trying to heal up around me.

Trying and failing.

Trying and failing at so fucking much these past few months.

“I mean it,” she said. “It has to be a one off. This doesn’t mean anything. It’s just stupid fun. A stupid way to spend a stupid afternoon, and nothing else. It can’t ever be anything else.”

She was waffling. Nervous.

She was edgy as hell as I slipped my hands onto her waist and pressed my mouth up close to her ear.

“This will never be a stupid way to spend an afternoon,” I told her, and she whimpered as she tipped her head back.

“Just fuck me, Lucas,” she hissed. “Make this one off worth the absolute insanity and just fucking fuck me.”Chapter FiveAnnaMy whole body was screaming out YES, even as my mind was screaming out NO.

He was toxic. Poisonous. The fatality of every scrap of my heart when he’d trashed it all to pieces without even looking back. The man who consumed me, promised me the stars, then destroyed me and left me a betrayed mush on the floor, sobbing my guts up and retching myself to sleep at night.

I hated him.

I’d sworn I’d always hate him.

But I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t stop my clit begging and my heart pounding and my breath quickening. I couldn’t stop myself giving my needy, filthy shards over to the man who knew how to consume them.

This was me. The real me. The crazy me.

The me everyone I knew would curse at and tell me I was a stupid bitch for letting loose.

The me I’d thrown to the side and ignored through ten years of trying to live a cookie cutter life for my own wellbeing.

And failed.

I’d failed.

I was doomed the second I felt his heat at my back. His hands on my waist. His warm breath alive on my neck. His words a whispered hiss at my ear.

“I’ll do more than fuck you, Anna. I’ll take you so fucking hard, you’ll be a mess for weeks, and you know it. You know full well the things I’ll fucking do to you, that’s why you’re here.”