“You wouldn’t be able to fight me even if you weren’t drunk.”
“J-Jeremy…please.”
“Would you have begged Landon, too, if he were here? No, you wouldn’t. You would’ve opened your legs and offered him your ass if he’d so much as looked at it.”
“Lan wouldn’t do this to me,” I murmur. “He’s not a monster.”
He lifts his fist in the air and I close my eyes, expecting him to punch me or something, but only a thud reaches my ears.
On the mattress.
That’s what I realize when I peek through my lids. He drove his fist into the mattress.
And his eyes have become so dark, they damn near swallow me whole.
“A monster, huh?” His calm voice contradicts his expression as he grabs my jaw with raw power that chills me to the bone. “If that’s what you think of me, might as well go for it, no?”
My nails claw into his shirt with a desperation I’ve never felt before.
Not only to stop him, but also because I don’t want to lose whatever feeling that’s been slowly but surely developing in my chest.
“Kiss me,” I whisper in a desperate attempt to distract him.
He pauses, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he was caught off guard. “Why?”
“Please kiss me.” I try to lift my head, but his grip on my jaw forbids it.
“You want to kiss a monster?”
“I never said I was normal.”
“You’re an annoying fucking existence.”
“Still, you’re here.”
“That I am.”
“Kiss me, then, Jeremy. Just—”
My words are cut off when his lips slam against mine. They’re violent and absolutely claiming.
He kisses me like he already owns me, has the deeds to prove it, and is marking me for the world to see.
It’s much more animalistic than the kiss at that club. That one was consuming but slow and passionate.
Safe.
It felt safe back then, which is why I asked him to kiss me now. It was an attempt to recreate that atmosphere, but this one is by no means like that time.
He’s punishing me. Jeremy bites my tongue so hard that I groan and buck. More tears escape my eyes as I bite back, harder, until a metallic taste explodes in my mouth.
Jeremy drinks the blood off my tongue, then makes me swallow it. He tightens his hold on my jaw and pushes my head back so he can get deeper, closer, to a part of me that I can’t reach.
It’s like he’s punishing me for even asking to kiss him.
For everything else I said, too.
And illogically, it doesn’t feel threatening. It’s safe like back at the club but in a completely different way.
It’s safe and threatening and gray.
All at the same time.
When he wrenches his mouth from mine, I gasp, inhaling sharp intakes of air.
Jeremy watches me with that raw power in his gaze, the hurricane in his gray eyes, as his thumb wipes the blood from the corner of his lower lip.
There’s a nip there, and I realize that I actually drew his blood.
“Aren’t you an adorable little fighter?” He slides up, nearly crushing me with his weight as he straddles my head so that his knees are on either side, then grabs his shaft again, placing it at my battered lips. “Open.”
I purse them shut and stare at him.
“Either open your mouth or I’ll use another hole.”
My lips tremble.
“Are you scared of me, Cecily?”
“No.” I lie through my teeth. Because, yes, I thought I was courageous enough to not be intimidated by the notorious Jeremy Volkov, but that was way before I actually got to meet the real him.
The decadent, lawless beast.
“You should be.” He slaps my mouth with his weighty shaft. “I don’t make idle threats.”
It dawns on me then.
As I stare into his light-devoid eyes, I realize just how different Jeremy is. He really wouldn’t care if he broke me, or fucked me when I was drunk.
Knowing full well that I’m a virgin.
It’s about what he wants, and if I don’t give him that, he’ll just take it.
And a part of me is tempted to do that, to provoke him to take it.
But not when I’m drunk. I really wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I woke up tomorrow knowing full well that I didn’t allow the real me to make the decision.
So I open my mouth slowly.
Jeremy doesn’t wait or make introductions. He drives all the way inside, hitting the back of my throat. I gag and I think I’ll throw up all over myself, but he pulls away.