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Travis was busy frowning, probably still at what I said about Brooklyn, while Declan appeared as a deer caught in headlights would.
“So, Sawyer,” I practically hissed out his name, “you can take your rude remarks and your half-smirks and go fuck yourself, in case I wasn’t already clear.” Seething, I spun and pounded up the stairs.
My blood was at a boiling point. I could feel it coursing through my veins like fire, like lava, threatening to burn through my skin and bubble out. That fucking prick. I hated him, I really did—except that was the thing, wasn’t it? I hated him, and I didn’t.
I hated that I didn’t hate him.
I hated that I loved him.
I hated me.
I ended up in the first bedroom on the second floor, which, shocker, was Sawyer’s room. The whole place reeked of him, of his sweat and his desperation, of his fuckups. My feet stopped me at the foot of his bed, and I stared holes into that mattress. I’d almost gotten on it with him, before. Before I knew just how badly broken that boy was. I remembered our encounter here during that first party, when I hadn’t truly any idea how fucked up he was. Boy, did I learn or what?
I learned, and I ended up in the same place. Needless to say, it sucked ass.
My boiling blood was not alone for long, because soon a tattooed figure joined me, standing mere inches behind me as he remarked, “That was…something else.” Travis’s tone was impressed, but he shouldn’t be. I’d wanted to blow up at Sawyer, and that? That wasn’t even the half of it. I could’ve kept going. I could’ve given Sawyer more.
That fuckboy…I hated him, I really did.
Parting my lips, I muttered, “I hate him.” And I did. It wasn’t the entire truth, but who cared? Right now my hatred for Sawyer Salvatore drowned out anything else I could feel. I didn’t dare turn around, didn’t dare meet those sparkling blue eyes of Travis; I knew what I’d find.
“I think we’ve all gone through periods where we hate Sawyer,” Travis mused, stepping closer. His chest pressed against my back, and I found myself leaning into him, letting him run his hands up my arms and to my neck, stopping only to sweep my hair to one shoulder, push it aside and out of the way.“Why didn’t you tell me about Brooklyn?” His musings turned into a growl, his chest thundering behind me. He was angry.
I kind of liked it when it was angry.
My eyelids fluttered shut, and my breath became erratic the moment Travis wrapped a single, strong and steady hand around my throat. I’d traded one psychopath for another, and yet…yet this one…this one made me feel things Ray didn’t. This one I needed like I needed the air I breathed, even after he tried to foolishly punish me by locking me up in his room.
What a stupid thing to have done.
With one hand around my neck, his other snaked its way around my stomach, holding me tightly against him. His lips pressed against my shoulder, and I let out a ragged breath. “All that aside…I enjoy seeing you so riled up, Ash.”
The way he held onto me, his fingers coiled just tight enough around my neck to be uncomfortable but not hard enough to hurt, made me think he had a steadier hand than I suspected. Travis was not like Ray; whereas Ray was a wild animal on the hunt, Travis was honed predator, a hunter who was taught how to ensnare his prey and make it so that his prey never wanted to escape.
Me? He had me right where he wanted me; he and I both knew it.
“And now you have me,” I murmured, feeling his hold on my neck increase slightly once I spoke. Then I said something I probably should not have said—namely because we were in Sawyer’s room, because I’d just blown up downstairs—but I thought it was safe to say everyone needed a stress reliever after that. “What are you going to do with me?”
A dare. Me egging him on, baiting him with the thing I knew he wanted above all else: me. My body. Travis Scott would claim my soul for his if I’d let him, but that’s the thing. My heart might belong to these sexy, rich, broken guys, but my soul? My soul was mine, and I wasn’t going to give it up.
His lips neared my ear, his breath hot and smelling of smoke. It was a scent I’d come to like, only because I associated it with him. “I know what you want me to do.”
I grinned to myself, feeling his fingers slowly move away from my throat and up to my jaw until he cupped it firmly. “And what’s what?”
Travis answered me by roughly spinning me, grabbing the sides of my face moments before his mouth met mine, a voracious display of carnal hunger, his tongue meeting mine in seconds and drowning me in everything that was him. Danger. Lust. Need. He was everything I shouldn’t want and everything I did.
In the beginning, I didn’t know how insane Ray was, but Travis? I’d known from the beginning, and did it help me to steer clear of him? Nope. I liked the danger, the feeling of being desired so strongly he would break off friendships for me. I liked knowing that he was mine and I didn’t have to compete with anyone else to win him. I didn’t see the whole picture with Ray, but with Travis I did. I saw the big picture, and it was a beautiful mess that I yearned to be a part of.
My legs hit the frame of Sawyer’s bed, and I fell back, Travis coming down with me, pinning me beneath him. Not like I was about to run the other way. No, we were far past that point now. So far past it I couldn’t even remember those days. Right here, right now, I didn’t miss the past.
Why miss the old days when the current days were so much better? Stalker aside, that was.
Our lips never broke apart, even as we inched up in the bed. The back of my head collided with Sawyer’s pillow, and Travis’s mouth only roamed to my neck to give him more room to reach for the nightstand, where Sawyer kept a good supply of condoms. That was one thing the douchebag was good for. Protection. If only condoms could keep the knives and serial killers away.
Alas, scientists hadn’t invented that brand yet.
After he found what he was looking for, it was a race to tug down our clothes. Whoever was the fastest…got naked first? Eh, not really sure where my mind was going with that, mostly because I was too zeroed in on the tattooed man above me and the hard-on he was sporting through his jeans.
Within a minute we were free of our clothing—or at least the most important bits, the clothing that would only get in the way of his cock getting inside of me—and he was rolling the condom on. His blue eyes met mine, two sparkling sapphires that whispered beautiful lies and dangerous truths, and yet again one of his hands found my throat, fingers curling around it slowly.
