Page 53 of Anthem of Love and Loathing

Whimpers escape her. They must surprise her because she scrunches her eyes closed. But then she changes her mind and meets my gaze head on. “I hate you. Touch me again and I will scream bloody murder.”

Is she trying to push my buttons on purpose? “Do you expect Kodiak or Golden will step in to protect you? Or perhaps your Drummer Boy?”

“Yes.”

“They won’t.” What they’ll assume is that we’re fucking through our issues. They’ll hear her scream and assume she’s coming on my cock. “They’ll think you’re enjoying it.”

“Bullshit.” Her gaze skates down my body to where my weight holds her in place. Her tongue darts out over her lips.

“Try me.” I start one last graffiti across the top of her chest, HEA—

She grits her teeth and turns motionless. Not giving me the satisfaction of any response.

Fuck. I want her to cry out. I want them to hear her the way I was forced to hear her with Bronx and then Kodiak.

Did she want me to hear her? Was she trying to make me jealous? Did it turn her on? Would it turn her on to know they can hear us?

When I’m finished, I put the cap on the marker and take one last photo. She turns her face away in this one.

“If you fuck me over again in any way, I will share these photos on social media,” I warn her before I get off her and release her wrists.

Chest heaving, she crawls out of my bed and gathers her clothes to her chest. She doesn’t bother getting dressed before she tries to open the door. She yanks on it a couple of times. “Asshole. Prick. Piece of shit. You better delete those photos.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”

“Fuck you.” She notices the notepad and kicks it out of the way. Dragging open the door, she bolts from the room.

I pick up the notepad and place it on the desk. It’s open to some lyrics I’ve been working on.

It’s your turn to bleed for me

Your turn to shatter

Threatening to release these pictures is one more thing that will keep her right where I want her.

Until I’m ready to put her back in the gutter she crawled out of.

19

Kelsey

It takes a ridiculous amount of exfoliating scrub and rubbing with a washcloth until I’m red and raw to get the words Riot wrote on my body to fade.

It’s going to take a lot more than a washcloth to scrub them from my psyche. Traitor. Bitch. Thief. And then the last one... in thick, capital letters—heartless. They hurt because he used to know I was none of those things.

He was unnecessarily cruel. Hurtful. And none of the words he wrote are true. It’s not just my skin that is stinging by the time I crawl into my bunk utterly confused. How am I the traitor? The heartless bitch?

He’s the one who betrayed me when he slept with Sonatina the weekend of the wedding. When I still thought we could find our way despite the arguments and Sonatina’s tricks.

He’s the one missing his heart! He chose the rockstar life without me over standing up to Carmine for me. I was collateral damage when it came to L.A. Riot’s meteoric rise. I was the one tossed out with the garbage, socially ruined, and completely broken.

He’s the one who’s changed. Become a monster. Someone I don’t even recognize. He’s diabolical. Cruel. He’s the one making everything so bad. He’s the one torturing me. The one taking indecent photos of me and threatening to put them on social media. He’s the one holding me down...

I had woken up with my heart beating out of my chest. That familiar sensation of being held down and overpowered by a man wanting to hurt me... Marco was my first thought. The fork under my pillow my second.

Only it wasn’t my bed or my pillow. And neither Marco nor his ghost had found me.

It shouldn’t have mattered that it was Riot who had me trapped beneath him—when he keeps going out of his way to hurt me and humiliate me—but it did. The sudden fear had eased replaced by slick heat between my thighs drowning out everything.