Total pages in book: 199
Estimated words: 200280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1001(@200wpm)___ 801(@250wpm)___ 668(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1001(@200wpm)___ 801(@250wpm)___ 668(@300wpm)
I don’t think I’m breathing at all.
I think I’m suffocating.
I think he’s suffocating me. With his words, all dirty and heavy and sticky like syrup.
A syrup so sweet that I have no choice but to guzzle it down instead of air.
“But they’re fools, aren’t they?” he says, his voice still low, his eyes still dark and his jaw still clenched.
“Why?”
He squeezes my arm again, “Because they don’t know that you’re mine.”
Current runs up and down my spine and my fists become tighter in his shirt. “No.”
“They don’t know that I’ll fuck them up, if they keep watching you.”
“What?”
“If they keep wanting to touch you.”
“I-I’m —”
“And you know I can do it, don’t you?”
I swallow. “Yes.”
“Tell me why.”
“Because you’re the Angry Thorn.”
“I am.”
“And you belong to me.”
I sway on my feet a little. “Yes.”
“No one can keep us apart.”
“No.”
His lips pull up in another smirk and in the back of my mind I think that this smirk from him seems different. It feels different too. “And do you know who I’ll enjoy fucking up the most, if he ever came between us?”
“W-who?”
“Your piece of shit brother.”
I blink. “What?”
His smirk only grows. And I realize it’s different because it’s cruel.
It’s cold.
So cold that it burns me.
“And I’m pretty sure he will,” he keeps going, his eyes burning me too. “Because he’s an asshole like that. But it’s okay. I can take him. In fact, I’ve been wanting to take him for years now. And now that I have you,” his heated eyes go up and down my body, “I won’t hesitate to break his bones and play ping pong with his eyeballs, if it means keeping you.” Then, even lower, “Tempest.”
I flinch.
At him using my real name.
My stupid Shakespearean name that I’ve hated for as long as I can remember. Because Shakespeare was a fool who wrote tragedies and reveled in destroying happily ever afters. He probably didn’t even believe that they existed. Exactly like the people who I’ve grown up with.
But more than that, I flinch because the name that I’ve always hated sounds so… beautiful in his voice.
As if he’s got the magic of turning ugly things into beautiful ones.
Even though he’s using it mockingly.
Even though he’s breaking my heart into a million pieces.
And he is, isn’t he?
By how callous he sounds. How cruel. How he knew all along, which seems to be the theme of the night.
That he knew.
Who I was. Who I really was, all this time.
And he’s using it against me.
“Who would’ve thought, huh,” he continues thoughtfully, “that the guy I can’t stand, the guy that I’ve hated for years, the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever met, that guy has such a pretty little sister? I mean, where was he hiding you? And he was, wasn’t he? That fucker. Probably because he knew. One look at his pretty-as-fuck sister can turn a man into a giant rabid horndog. So maybe I can’t blame him. But it doesn’t matter now, does it? The deed is done. You’re mine. And the best part is,” he leans in further, “that you don’t wanna go anywhere either. My pretty little stalker.”
“Let me go,” I growl.
“Yeah?”
I twist my fist in his t-shirt and push at him. “Let me the fuck go.”
He doesn’t budge. “I don’t think I want to.”
“I swear to God, if you —”
“I think,” he speaks over me, “now that this opportunity has fallen into my lap, I want to use it.”
“What?”
“Use you.” He tilts his head to the side. “To fuck with your brother.”
My heart has dropped to my stomach. “Don’t you dare.”
“No?” He chuckles then. “But come on, it’ll be fun. All you have to do is pose for the camera and kiss me a little.”
“What?”
“Which I bet you’ve been dying to do anyway.”
I push at him again. “Let me go.”
“Are you saying that you haven’t been dying to kiss me, Tempest?” He tsks. “Because if you are, then I find that very hard to believe. Especially given the fact that you’ve got a crush on me. You have, haven’t you?”
“No, not anymore. I don’t —”
He tsks some more. “See, I don’t think I like you lying to me, baby.”
“Don’t you call me baby. I’m not your fucking baby.”
He puts his other hand on his chest, where his heart is. “Well that hurt a little. But we’re going to let it slide, baby, and focus on important things.”
“You —”
“Such as you and me. And that kiss in front of the camera.”
His words, his smirk. Those eyes.
They’re stabbing me, stabbing my heart like sharp thorns.
Making me bleed on the inside.
Making me weep and gush out all the soft, pink emotions that I had for him.
But I’ll be damned if I let him see that.
I’ll be fucking damned if I let him see anything other than my anger at him.