Page 121 of Breathe Like Hell

I’m thinking about both of you.

“You’re such a slut, Dakota. And not the good kind. The filthy, nasty, disgusting kind.”

“Only for you,” I lied.

“You know I hate when you do that shit. When you blatantly lie to me.”

“It also gets you hard.”

He pushed me harder against the rock and I hoped I would bruise, hoped the rock would mark my cheek, cut me, make me bleed, just so Micah would see it. Then he would know how terrible Mason was to me. I used to wonder what he’d think if he ever saw a hand-shaped bruise on my neck, wondered what he’d think of the person who gave it to me, and I never really got the answer for that.

Micah was a sadist, but I wasn’t sure if he only liked me in pain inflicted by his own cruel hands, or if he would be affected by Mason’s marks.

If I had to guess, I’d say he liked it either way. The one night where they’d both fingered me was good enough of an example of that, seeing as Mason slapped me right in front of Micah and he did nothing to stop it.

“I don’t want you to come,” Mason grunted.

“Too bad,” I replied, even though I probably wasn’t going to come. I just wanted to piss him off. My hands were pinned awkwardly to the rock underneath me, and Mason certainly wasn’t going to touch my clit. I usually couldn’t get there by penetration alone. Maybe if I focused hard enough on fantasizing about Micah, I could make an orgasm happen by sheer will.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Mason leaned forward and slapped my cheek. Not hard, but enough to sting.

My eyes sprung open. “You said you didn’t want me to look at you so it would be easier for me to think about Micah. That’s what the fuck I’m doing.”

I actually regretted saying it the second the words left my mouth, because as much as I liked being a brat and playing this stupid game of jealousy with him, I wasn’t safe here. With me and Mason alone on this beach, he would win every time. I’d known that from the start.

And he looked pretty fucking angry now.

For a split-second, I wished I was anywhere else.

I was so fucking tired of feeling like this with him.

If I tried to leave Mason, he’d want to kill me. He would rather have me dead than solely belonging to Micah.

And still, I didn’t want to leave.

That was probably the worst part of all of this.

The terrible, disgusting, pitch-black core of our relationship. The thing that’d always been there, rotting away in the darkness.

In some awful, twisted way, I liked it. I’d never once questioned Mason’s feelings towards me, because he suffocated me with them. I’d never once wondered if he was going to leave me, punish me with distance, because he wouldn’t let me take a single breath without him. Our relationship filled me up with helium—or neon—making my head rush, my lungs ache, binding me in toxic exhilaration.

There was something very wrong about the way we fit together, but we did fit.

Broken meets broken.

A terrifying new gravity snaps into place.

An unbreakable bond forms.

Maybe we had too much sex and too few conversations, and maybe that was as much my fault as it was his, but I knew things about him now. We could work on the rest of it. Together.

I gritted my teeth as Mason fucked me deeper and harder, pounding into me. The more pain he inflicted, the more violence he wrapped around me, the more I wanted him. Because I understood him. He’d told me part of his secret, the one he’d kept from me for months.

He was broken, just like me. Someone left him, too.

But I’d never leave him. Never.