Page 38 of Shattered In Darkness

Her eyes roll up, wet and wild. “No. No, Brody, please, I wasn’t, I swear. I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear, I swear.”

Bullshit.

I press harder on her bruise. She yelps.

“I saw the photos. Security footage. Little wasted blur in a hoodie, always at the edge of the scene. Just like the night you fucked me up. Just like your old man wanted.” My voice turns cold, vicious. “How much does he pay you? Is it worth it, letting him ruin you every night?”

She sobs, once, maybe twice. But then she tries to twist free, hissing, “Fuck you, I’m not his, I’m not anyone’s—I didn’t go to that place, fuck, you’re insane, you lost your mind, Brody, you fucking lost it.”

“You’re wrong,” I hiss. My lips are so close to her ear I can see the tiny hairs stand up across her neck. “I haven’t lost shit. This is who I always was.”

She sobs, but it’s not broken. There’s anger in it too. The endless coil. Love. Hate. Primal and rotten.

She thinks she knows what pain is. She thinks the world has already bled her dry. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get that obsession is a thousand knives in the gut, every second, every hour, day after day.

Being apart from her hurts more than anything my father ever did to me. I want to pound her skull through plaster, or kneel and lick salt from her wounds. I want both. That’s my fucked up curse.

My hands shake. Fury or want, I can’t tell. My vision goes edged, white-hot. I press my thigh between her legs. She’s hot, soaked. Her cunt pulses for me. Her body always betrays her. My fingers dig in against her inner wall until I feel her start to break.

She’s crying now, dripping. I watch the drop trace her cheek. For a second I doubt myself. Impossible. My father raised me to spot weakness, to hunt for subtext and betrayal in every syllable. She’s not lying. Or if she is, she’s better at this than I thought.

“Keep screaming, Bambi. Makes me hard.”

She’s trembling, shattering for me. She’s gorgeous when she’s ruined. Most girls crumple, stop fighting, go flat. Not her. She’ll snarl at me all the way to the bottom. She’ll rip up anything I give her, just so I have to make her take it ten times harder.

She gets it from me. From all the wrong in both of us.

Her pupils are huge, swallowing blue. She snarls something I can’t even parse, voice broken, a pitiful cry fucked by rage. “I wish you were dead,” she says, but it comes out as a moan under my hand. I can’t tell if she’s pleading, or cursing, or praying.

“Yeah?” My voice is low, controlled, whispering right against her ear. “You want me dead? Or do you want me to fuck you hard enough to knock the air out of your pretty mouth?” She shakes her head, clutching at the line between disgust and desperation. “You don’t get it, Bambi,” I whisper. “No matter how much you fight, your body will always fucking give you up.”

I dip my head, lips skimming her jaw. She cries out again, not in terror, though. It’s surrender.

I laugh at her, at us. “You should hate me,” I say, “but you don’t. That’s the joke, isn’t it? You want me more every time I treat you like garbage.” She whispers something. I loosen my hand. Only a little. “What was that?” I taunt.

She huffs out a noise like she’s choking down whatever pride is left. She looks up at me, every inch of her body shaking, defiant as a dog with a broken back.

“I said,” her teeth clatter, “I wish I could stop wanting you.”

It’s sick. It’s so fucking sick. My cock throbs.

“You wish,” I echo, soft, mean, right in her ear, “you wish you could stop?” She tries to nod but I squeeze her harder. “You can’t, Bambi. Don’t pretend you’re not desperate for it. For me.”

She jerks in my grip, a tremor beating in her neck. “You’re full of yourself. You think you’re the only thing I ever craved?”

“You’re right, I’m not. You’re just a back-stabbing whore.”

Her legs wobble. She’s half a breath from collapse. I let her drop to her knees, just to see if she’ll crumble the rest of the way. She doesn’t. She plants her palms on the ground between my boots, thighs spread. Just like that. No shame. Eyes wild.

I stare at her. I want to remember every second burned into my skull. Lola, with my fingerprints bruising her jaw, tears on her face, mouth trembling open. The past and present. The fucking ghost of what we used to be.

Look at her. My Bambi on her knees. Exactly where I always knew she belonged.

She glares up at me. “Go ahead. Do it. Humiliate me. That’s what you want, right? That’s all I’m good for.”

“Yeah,” I say, unzipping my jeans. “That’s exactly what I want.”

I shove my cock in her mouth before she can catch her breath. I don’t let her get gentle with it, don’t let her control the pace. I fist my hands in her hair and fuck her throat, hard, mean, unforgiving.