Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 147801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Besides, he thinks I’m sleeping so I don’t have to put up a front.
After finishing with my wrists, I feel something being pulled from beneath me. The messed-up sheets, probably, and the pillow I wet with my saliva is also replaced, and then he disappears for a while, and when he comes back, his fingers rub something cool on my ass.
A soft whine slips out of my lips as the marks burn, but he taps the skin, carefully lathering it with what I assume is ointment.
The gentle rhythm lulls me into a deeper sleep, and I barely make out a warm duvet being placed on top of me.
As I float and float into that white room, I hear his voice laced with a touch of darkness. “What the fuck am I going to do with you now?”
19
KAYDEN
I’ve spent the past however many hours smoking.
Whole packs.
I’m almost out of cigarettes, but the nicotine rush did nothing to expel the agitation gnawing at my goddamn sanity.
The cold air bites into my skin as I stand on the balcony in nothing but pajama bottoms. But it’s not cold enough, not uncomfortable enough. Nothing is enough to make me loathe what I did a few hours ago.
Maybe I should ask Julian to inject me with his drug again.
Not that it worked the last time.
Nothing is working.
I crush the cigarette in the ashtray and, like a hopeless addict, step back into the room. The night air clings to my skin as I close the door behind me.
The reason for my sleeplessness—and pending life crisis—is sprawled across the bed.
My bed.
Gareth is on his stomach, hugging a pillow, the duvet slipped down to reveal the smooth curve of his back and the purple hickeys I left all over his skin.
My marks.
My touch.
Mine.
His blond hair spills across the pillow, messy and disheveled from how I yanked and pulled at those golden strands while I owned him.
Claimed him.
Made him all mine.
The thought that I’m the only one who can fuck him, touch him like that, sends a rush of blinding possessiveness through me.
I sit on the edge of the bed, unable to stop watching him.
There’s something ethereal about him, like he’s not quite real. Like if I reached out to trace the contours of his body, he’d vanish beneath my fingers, fading into nothing.
I’ve seen plenty of beautiful people, but I’ve never given it a second thought. His beauty, though, is the kind that hurts to look at. And now, asleep, with all his maliciousness gone, he looks so vulnerable and soft, I could strangle him.
I should’ve done that the first time I touched him and liked it.
I should have shot him.
But I wanted another taste.
And another.
And another.
I thought the urge would fade once I fucked him and staked a claim, but it’s only gotten worse.
One taste isn’t enough. Hell, two won’t be either.
Not even a dozen.
Because right now, I want to shield him from the entire world so he’s only mine.
Just replaying the way he moaned, the noises he made, the way this proud, goddamn major pain in the ass of a little monster submitted to me—
It makes me delirious.
My cock is filling up just watching him, and that’s not ideal.
It’s disastrous, to be honest, because he’s not supposed to have this effect on me.
And yet I can’t look away, even as the ache in my chest deepens.
I reach out and trace my knuckles over his face—the curve of his jaw, the slope of his cheek, the pout of his pillowy lips. My fingers pause at the tiny freckles dotting his straight nose. Up close, they look like stardust, otherworldly.
The desire building inside me feels suffocating, a weight lodged in my throat, because I know I shouldn’t touch him.
Want him.
Feel this…obsessed with him.
But he nuzzles into my hand, and it’s like a jolt of electricity shoots through me. My heart pounds so loudly, I hear it in my ears as I yank my arm away.
What the fuck was that about?
I shift and lie back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, refusing to look at him. But it’s harder than I thought.
A literal struggle.
The urge to fuck him again, to do something, anything, to relieve this mounting aggression is unbearable.
Maybe I should go for a swim—
My thoughts scatter when a warm body presses against my side, his forehead nuzzling the crook of my neck.
He throws an arm over my chest, right where the snake’s fangs are inked. I don’t like that—illogical, I know—and I clutch his wrist, absently rubbing the faint rope marks, then slide his arm up to rest near my shoulder.
His soft breaths land like a curse against my throat.
I close my eyes, letting the pull of sleep take over. But just as I’m drifting, I realize his wrist is still in my hand.
For some reason, I don’t let go.