Page 106 of The Dearly Departed

She’s just like everyone else.

But she wasn’t, was she? Nobody else had ever looked at me with such a burning desire, like she longed for this just as much as I did. Like her existence alone depended on the experience of her flesh against mine …

But oh God, if someone saw … if someone walked in …

"Analise," I said through a clenched jaw.

“Please,” she whispered, her hand beginning to move in slight, cautious strokes. “Let me touch you. I need to—”

“No,” I demanded, a direct contrast to everything I longed for. “You need to stop.”

God, I didn’t want her to though. I wanted to rip our clothes off, to lay her on this sofa, to spread her legs wide and feast on her body until the only coherent word left on her tongue was my name and my name alone.

But she doesn’t know my name.

She doesn’t even know who I am.

My chest ached at the thought as I tipped my head back, her palm squeezing and gripping, drawing my arousal closer and closer to the surface.

"You want me," she argued, desperate. “Please. Just tell me—"

“No,” I denied, grasping for my resolve as I attempted to shift away from the hold she had on me.

But she shook her head, her eyes full of anguish as she came closer, her hand now moving with more deliberation. "I know you want me. I know you look at me. Don’t pretend like you don’t—I can feel it. And I want you too. God, I want you so much. I want this, and you have no idea what that means for me. You have no idea how difficult it is for me to say this to you, to admit—"

"Fuck what we want, Analise," I snapped, not bothering to deny it anymore as I finally wrapped my hand around her wrist and pried it away from my painful erection as I sat up. "What I or you or anybody else wants doesn't fucking matter. Don’t you understand that?"

She wrestled her arm from my grip, pulling it back to her side. "And don’t you understand that I am sick of being told that what I want doesn't matter? Goddammit, I am so fucking sick of being told what to do."

I’d hoped she’d be rejected. I’d hoped she’d take the hint and keep her distance from me and never ever try something like this again because, next time, I wasn’t sure my resolve could be as strong.

But as much as I needed her to remove her touch from my body, I never meant to hurt her. I never meant for my harsh tone or words to fill her eyes with tears or redden her cheeks with anger, yet both were evident now, and I was flooded with guilt. In this moment, making her upset felt like a greater sin than murder, and if I had the means, I would give my own back a thousand lashes for ever opening my damn mouth and making her cry.

Still, another part of me—the sensible part—told me this was good. It said, if she hated me, she’d keep her distance once and for all, and I could get on with business as usual.

So, I forced my lips to sneer, forced my face to reflect an anger toward her I could never feel. I stared her down, and I wished so badly she could see the feigned hatred on my face as I uttered in a low, growling voice, "Well, that's too fucking bad, Princess.”

Her lips curled into an expression of distaste. “Don’t call me that.”

“Oh, but isn’t that exactly what you are? A pretty little princess, living in her castle, being told exactly what to do, what to wear, who to fuck—”

“Shut up,” she snapped at me, taken aback. “You can’t talk to me like this. W-why are you—"

“Oh, but I can, and I am,” I said, not allowing the guilt I felt to seep into my tone. “And I’m telling you to stay the fuck away from me. You have to."

And even as I said those words, I longed to live in a world in which they never had to be said in the first place.

She held her head back and peered down her long, straight nose, her lips curving into a hurt, albeit challenging, smile. "Oh, that's funny because just a minute ago, that wasn’t at all what you wanted, was it? No, I think you do want me. I think you—"

"Do you even understand what I could do to you? Do you think it’s beneath me to hurt a woman?" I interrupted harshly, tipping my head and staring her down. "Hell, just the other night, Gerald sent me to murder some lady. Did you know that?"

Her expression was stoic. She didn’t want me to believe she could be rattled, but she was. I could tell by the way she swallowed, the way she hesitated before replying, "But you wouldn't hurt me.”

Never, I agreed silently as I lifted my hand, and with the back of my knuckles, I traced the length of her long, slender throat, damning my gloves for providing a barrier between my skin and hers.

"Her neck was almost as pretty as yours too," I commented in a murmur, my eyes fixated on the diamonds dangling from her earlobes, sparkling beneath the chandelier lights. "And that's exactly what I thought before I snapped it."

She exhaled and tipped her head to the side, lengthening the expanse of smooth, pale skin. God, how I wanted to sink my teeth into her flesh. How I wanted to give her everything she begged for, everything she and I both wanted.