“Yes, Adeline,” he whispers.
I close my eyes, resignation seeping from my pores. Sensing the change, his hand travels across my flat stomach. I tense beneath his touch, goosebumps rising on my skin.
His long fingers latch onto the zipper of my hoodie, slowly pulling it down, parting the material at a painful pace. The sound of the metal teeth separating disrupts the sound of my erratic breathing.
“Don’t torture me,” I bite out, anger flashing from his deliberately slow pace.
A wicked smile flashes, and even the mirror can’t lessen the cruelty.
“Poor little mouse,” he taunts. “You’re sadly mistaken if you thought I was going to make this anything but painful.”
Chapter 30
The Manipulator
H
e has the strangest ability to suck the air from my lungs with a simple look. And when his terrifying words accompany the deadly stare, it feels like I don’t have any lungs at all.
The hoodie parts and he slowly pulls it down my arms. The material drops to the floor, where muddy shoes have trekked across a thousand times tonight.
It feels like a cruel metaphor. Along with my clothes, my flesh and soul will be stained tonight.
“Someone could come in here,” I whisper, my voice barely penetrating the tension in the air.
He smiles—a wicked smile that tells me he wouldn’t mind if someone did.
“What do you think they’d do?” he implores as he lifts my shirt, the pads of his fingers grazing my skin. Goosebumps rise, a physical reaction from the electricity dancing across my skin wherever he touches me.
“Do you think they’d watch?” he asks. “Do you think they’d enjoy the sight of your naked flesh on display? Maybe they would get off on seeing your dripping pussy reflected back at them everywhere they look. Or the pretty flush on your chest when you come. I think they’d even enjoy watching your eyes roll to the back of your head when my cock fills you so fully, you can’t fit any more of me inside you.”
A shot of fear injects straight into my heart, forcing the muscle into overdrive. But yet, my body still responds in a much darker way.
Just like his words, I feel my pussy pulsate as my panties gradually dampen until it’s exactly like he said—dripping.
Would I be okay with a stranger watching? I don’t think so. But something about the way he paints the picture makes me wonder if I’d let it happen anyway.
“You’d be okay with other people seeing me naked?” I challenge breathlessly, watching my shirt flutter to the black floor. His fingers drift up my spine, slow and deliberate. They burn like lava searing my flesh.
“No,” he murmurs in my ear. I watch him through the mirror, his eyes drifting down until they’re targeted on my chest. The band of my bra tightens, the material biting into my skin before it loosens. The black lacy cups supporting my breasts fall and bare me completely.
My nipples are painfully tight. When he catches sight of my hardened peaks, his tongue drifts across his lower lip as if he’s salivating at the sight.
“You want to know what I’d do?” he questions. “I would let them watch. I would let them watch me claim you as mine and own every inch of your body. They would watch my cock fill every one of your holes and then watch you cry because of how hard you came. And then I’d fucking kill them. My cock would still be wet from your cum as I’d slice their throats for even daring to look at what’s mine.”
The fear inside me tightens into a sharp point, threatening to pop the balloon of sanity I have left.
“You’re psychotic,” I gasp. This time he laughs, the dark rumble traveling straight to the apex of my thighs.
“You will learn to love it,” he murmurs distractedly. His attention has been pulled away as his hands drift across my flat stomach and cup my breasts. I don’t have small breasts by any means, I was blessed with good genes. But the size of his hands—they’re so big that they make my breasts look small, barely overflowing his hands.
He’s a monster. Inside and out.
Still, I feel my panties becoming more drenched.
It shouldn’t be possible for the body to concurrently feel hate and desire, but I suppose we would all be lifeless without the complexities of human emotion.
He squeezes my breasts, nearly to the point of pain.
“I’m going to fuck these soon,” he promises before releasing them and moving his hands to the button of my jeans.
With a single flick of his hands, my actions creep in no stealthier than a bank robber in a vault full of money.
What the fuck are you doing, Addie?
Fuck, I don’t know. This is wrong. So, very wrong. But I don’t stop him from unzipping my jeans. Nor do I stop him from hooking his thumbs on either side and pulling them down.
He helps me out of my shoes first and then slips the jeans completely free. I’m left in nothing but my black lacy thong.
I swallow, my heart racing as I take in our reflection. He’s still fully clothed, his eyes ping-ponging across the mirrors to look at every angle of my undressed state. He looks as if he can’t decide which mirror to settle on. I fight the urge to cover myself. I find the act of hiding more embarrassing than standing almost fully naked in front of a beautiful man.
“You have to undress, too,” I insist. No way am I going to be the only one left exposed.
Finally, he comes out from behind me and stands before me. It hurts to meet his mismatched eyes. It feels more real when I’m not looking at them through a glass mirror.
For the first time, this moment with Zade feels consensual. And I’m not sure if I want that. But what fucking sense does that make? To not want it to be consensual.
Yet, there’s some sick part of me that wants him to force this. So I can play victim later? Go on pretending that my pussy isn’t weeping for him and that I’m not anticipating the feel of him inside of me?
It’s easier to play the victim when you’re not the mastermind behind all your bad decisions.
“If you really want that, little mouse, then you’re going to have to do it,” he says quietly. He looks at me as if he doesn’t believe I’ll willingly undress him. And I think he knows what that look does to me. The asshole knows exactly how incapable I am of backing down from a challenge.
I pay him the same respect he paid me. I undress him slowly. Gently. Deliberately brushing my fingers against his skin and earning my own shivers and growls of impatience.
I gasp when I remove his shirt. The scars on his face don’t end there. Two severe knife wounds blemish his skin—one cutting across his heart and the other across his defined abs. The skin is raised and jagged, a stark pink against his tanned skin.
And they still hurt him.
When I brush my fingertips over them, he tenses beneath my touch and bares his teeth.
It’s not a physical pain. These scars have long healed. But they’re like icebergs. They’re unmistakable and imposing on the outside, but beneath the surface is something much bigger and threatening. Something capable of sinking someone to the pits of their depravity, just like the Titanic.
They hurt him deeply on the inside, and I really want to know what caused them.
Where there aren't scars, there are intricate tattoos. A dragon coils up his side and across his chest, fire blooming from its mouth and down Zade's shoulder. A mermaid rests on the opposite side, a beautiful woman peering over her naked shoulder.