AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I tried not to stare at her soft skin and failed.
“You’re beautiful.” I frowned when I noticed a faint bruise on her neck and pressed my palm against it. “Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Next time choke him out first, wrap second.” I admonished. “Then again, he was really big, I’m proud of you for keeping a clear head.”
She rubbed her eyes, mascara slid down her cheeks, she’d never looked so pretty. “Are you complimenting me?”
“It slipped?” I licked my lips and backed her into the water again with my body, I lifted a shaky hand and ran it down her shoulder.
“Did that slip too?” She looked over at my hand.
“I’m very clumsy.” I admitted, then lifted my other hand and cupped her chin. “We need rules.”
“For?”
“Survival.”
She took a deep breath. “How bad is it, Ivan?”
My chest clenched. “Nobody has really asked me that, not yet, despite the obvious information that I clearly never wanted this position.”
“You lied to me.”
“I lied to everyone,” I said, meeting her gaze. “We have our own rules now. Mine is, I’ll trust you, and I need you to trust me. I won’t tell you everything because it keeps you safe, do you understand?”
She pressed a palm to my chest. “I would like to request an addendum to the first part of that.”
“What?”
“Lie to everyone but me. Lie to the world. Lie to my family. Lie to your friends. But don’t lie to me. You promised, you said to trust you, can I?”
“Yes,” I said quickly. “You can.”
“Do you hate me?”
I opened my mouth and closed it, then shook my head.
“Do you want to?”
“Most days yes.” I laughed. “You said you wanted honesty.”
“Why?” Her eyebrows scrunched up. “Why do you want to hate someone most days? I mean, I do want to hate you most days, but we all have our reasons.”
When I looked at her, I saw someone I wanted to both love and hate, but they went hand in hand, to love her was to hate her, to hate her was to love her. The fear of admitting the vulnerability she pulled out in me was so heavy, so strong. I hated what her Family did, so I wanted to hate her too, because any other emotion meant—well, that I was sleeping with the devil, that I’d somehow failed.
And after that night, with Junior, after the killing.
She’d been the only one to see me.
I pulled her into my arms, her breasts slid against my chest, she felt so right in my embrace as I spoke against her ear. “That night, when I came back to the room and was bleeding, the first time, and you made me take a bath and I pulled you in, and I—” I stopped myself. “I let myself go with you, I let myself rely on someone else and you were so willing to be that person that I hated myself for being weak, and then I hated you for letting me.”
“Weakness isn’t in relying on others, it’s in trying to do it yourself,” she said right back. “You were my first kiss, you know.”
“I know.”
“You’re a total asshole.”
