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She renews her struggles until I feel like a bully holding onto her. I sit up, moving to the end of the bed, still there, still available, but needing space to get back control.
But Paisley follows me, tugging at my shirt, pressing herself against my back, wrapping her legs around me while her warm hands slip under the fabric to explore my chest.
“I’m not going to have sex with you tonight. Please, just stop.”
She retracts, flinching away from the edge in my voice. I know I’m making a fucking mess of things, but I plough ahead anyway.
“We should probably get some sleep.”
The last security patrol is in the early hours of the morning. Once that’s past, I can go to work, transferring the body, driving it far away from the school to an old lot on the outskirts of the city. There it can sit beside the rusting vehicles while I teach my classes, avoiding suspicion, then return in the evening to transport it to a better resting place.
All of which requires a clear head. As many hours of sleep as I can cram into the intervening hours. Not something I can achieve with a raging hardon and the girl who stirs my most ardent desires clinging to me, trying to get me naked.
“I don’t want to sleep.”
And I try to make my retort lighthearted. “Sometimes we don’t get what we want.”
When I turn to face her, pulling her limbs away only to have them reattach like I’m fighting a four-legged octopus, her face hardens. “You did.”
There’s a weird note to her voice, something I don’t understand. A chill grips my centre, spreading quickly until my body is encased in ice. “What do you mean?”
“The night you drugged me.”
Paisley stares me straight in the eyes and I admire her courage. Her ability to confront me head on with the things I can barely think about, let alone say. Except she has the world’s worst timing.
When I shake my head, she plunges ahead. “You took what you wanted, and I didn’t complain. I never started an argument over it or diminished you for craving the things you wanted.”
My eyes are dry, grainy. I can feel them moving in their sockets, a sensation that sickens me to my bones.
“I never confronted you because I liked giving you what you needed, what you couldn’t get from anyone else. But if you don’t let me have the same, if you’re not prepared to reciprocate, to treat us as equal, then it’s not me helping you to get what you need, is it? It’s just you taking what you want with no consideration for the cost. It’s just abuse.”
The words are right there, right on the tip of my tongue. Words to gaslight her, trick her into believing what she knows to be true is nothing more than an empty thought, lacking substance. A mistake in her recollection.
The words to pierce her with doubt if I could only say them.
But I won’t. “I’m sorry.”
She kicks at me, frustration clenching her hands into tight fists. “I don’t want your fucking apology. You saw the recording. That’s what I want from you.”
My stomach pulls tight. The back of my neck prickles.
I shake my head, but she ignores me, ploughing ahead, her tone vicious. “I want you to hold me down, put your hand over my mouth and fuck me without caring if it hurts or if I beg you to stop. I don’t want to fall asleep with the memory of what he did to me imprinted in my skin, staining me with his tattoo of hate.”
“Sweetheart, I—”
And she punches me in the shoulder. Hard, not playing. “No. Nosweetheart. You don’t get to decide this for me. If you won’t give me what I need, if we’re not equals, then you’re no better than he is, and if that’s all you are then you can get out because I never want to see you again.”
Her chest heaves like she’s sobbing but her eyes are dry. Of course, they are. There’s a fire banked in there waiting for its moment to spark back to life.
I reach out, wanting to comfort, wanting to stroke her and hold her and whisper pointless platitudes about how everything’s going to be all right. I reach out and instead of doing any of that uselessness, I take a fistful of her hair, using it to pull her head back until her neck strains and her blazing stare points at the ceiling.
The recording plays out in my mind, leading me into dangerous territory.
Along with being sickened at treading the same path, I’m excited. My skin is buzzing.
She gasps, a sound of pure relief, and I open my jaw until it strains, biting into the sweet curve where her neck joins to her shoulder, clenching my teeth until the tension of her skin sends my hunger spiralling into orbit. I bite her, marking her in the same place where he marked her but going deeper, hurting her more, so angered by her refusal to do what I thought was best that I enjoy it, not just the sensation but the idea I can cause her pain, that she welcomes it.
It feeds into that parts of me I’ve deliberately starved, a depraved section I wanted dead but is still alive, its blackened heart still beating.
