And before I know it, my hand shoots up and I slap him in the face.
My eyes go wide when I realize what I’ve done.
When I realize that he hardly blinked, hardly even moved his face but my palm is burning. It’s stinging with the force of my slap, with the shock of it. With the violence.
This wildness he invokes in me so easily. This passion.
I thought that after knowing how caged and trapped he’s been because of what I did, all this furious fire would go out. But apparently not.
So when he lowers his face even more and stares into my eyes, as if giving me the go-ahead, telling me to put him in his place, slap him once more, I do it.
I smack his face once more.
And a third time and a fourth and when that’s not enough, I punch his chest. I beat at it with my fists and keep going until he grabs my wrists and pins them on the bark.
Not only that, he pins my entire body to the tree as he moves closer to me.
As his strong chest pushes against my arched one.
As his lean torso presses against my ribs.
“Does that make you happy now?” he asks, his jaw all tight.
No.
No, it doesn’t.
Especially when I realize that I’ve become an animal tonight too. One who can see in the dark like him because I clearly notice my scratch marks on his face. My red fingerprints and where my nails have marked his skin.
“Oh my God, Reed. Y-you’re hurt,” I stammer, knowing my statement is stupid.
I wanted to hurt him and of course he is.
But I don’t like it.
I don’t like that I hurt him and that I’m still angry. But I don’t know what else to be.
God, I’m so screwed up. So tied up in knots. All because of him.
He thinks so too, Reed.
Because he chuckles roughly. “Jesus Christ, Fae, you kill me. You fucking murder me with your goodness.”
I’m ashamed to say that I shift on my feet at his tone, at the fondness in it. At the familiarity, and I struggle against his hold. “Let me go.”
His ruby red lips twitch and his hooded eyes rove over my face and stop at my lips.
That I have to lick because he won’t stop staring.
“What’s this one?” he whispers.
I lick my lips again as a blush fans over my cheeks. “None of your business.”
He looks up and there’s amusement lurking in his gaze. “Are you trying to hide it? The name.”
“No.”
A full-fledged smirk overcomes his lips then. “Fae’s getting shy, isn’t she?”
“Stop…” I struggle against his hold again because my blush is burning my cheeks. “Let me go, Reed.”
He flexes his grip around my hands and I try very hard — as I’ve been doing for the past few minutes —not to feel his grip, feel his skin, the pads of his fingers, the meat of his palm.
The fact that there’s only a sliver of distance between our bodies.
“Not until you tell me.”
I glare at him and he chuckles again.
“Fine,” I say. “Sex and Candy.”
It’s green, dark and pretty, and when I wore it, it felt like the right choice, wearing something green. Because I felt green, all untrained and inexperienced.
But now I don’t think it’s a good thing, feeling so out of depth in my white dress and dark green lipstick.
Especially when the mere name of my lipstick makes him grow heated.
Especially when I can feel that heat running through my own veins. Because I’m trapped now, between him and the tree, and he’s got a hold of my arms as he stares down at me.
All hungry and intense.
“Sex,” he drawls.
“And candy,” I tell him to make a point.
“Because your lips taste like candy?”
“You’ll never know, will you?”
His wolf eyes glow. “I already do, remember?”
Yes.
I do remember.
Although I don’t want to. Although this is one memory I try not to bring up when I’m punishing myself for falling in love with him.
That night. The rain. His mouth. His Mustang with foggy windows.
“No,” I whisper.
“Yeah, you do,” he counters. “You remember everything. Like I do.”
He does remember everything and now I know why.
Because like mine, his present is the product of his past too.
Our past.
Instead of fighting against it, the past and his tight grip, I let myself go loose then. “I remember.” I let the floodgates open. I let this one memory douse me. “I remember that you let me go. You let me escape your clutches.”
His eyes narrow for a second. “Unscathed.”
Maybe it’s madness. Insanity. Maybe Mercury is in retrograde tonight.
Because none of it feels wrong.
Remembering doesn’t feel wrong. Remembering with him doesn’t feel like wrong either. It doesn’t feel like I’m about to drink a toxic potion labeled love.
“I didn’t want you to,” I tell him, which of course he knows but still.