Page 65 of Breathe Like Hell

“Am I funny to you?”

“If I say yes, will you fuck me?”

“Woah,” I chuckled. “Right here, right now?”

“I’m not answering that because you’re going to say no anyway.” She crossed her arms.

“Correct.”

“Why?”

“You know why.” I eyed her purposefully, hoping she couldn’t see any of the anguish tearing me up every time we touched this topic. No, I wasn’t ready to fuck her again. I wanted to. But I couldn’t. She’d slipped too far out of my grasp for me to be comfortable. “Turn on your laptop. Don’t you want to find out how much I remember about Process Safety?”

“You remember everything,” she grumbled, but she listened to me and turned back to the counter.

Part of the reason I chose her for my lab was because I knew she didn’t have any prior internship experience, and likely no connections in the industry. I wanted to be that for her. It felt like a concrete way I could improve her life, even if I was worsening it in other ways by wrapping her up in my own problems.

Getting the degree was only half the battle, and she didn’t have the privilege to be taking summers off for unpaid internships to build her resume. She was always quiet, but I noticed it more when her groupmates talked about jobs, or asked the TA internship questions. I didn’t want her to feel left out of that.

Plus, I actually had worked in industry fresh out of school, so I could help her with that, too. Anything she needed, any string she wanted pulled, I’d do it to the best of my ability.

I take care of you.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

DAKOTA

“Could you get me pregnant?” I asked Mason as he sat me on Micah’s kitchen table. I’d been thinking of Ivan and Katya recently, thinking of the decision they had to make.

“No,” Mason answered, his hands falling to my hips to pull my shorts down. I squirmed.

“No, as in it’s unlikely? Or not at all?”

“It’s not possible for an angel and a human to procreate. There needs to be a supernatural element in both.”

“That’s why angels and demons could work,” I surmised. “But not angels and humans.”

“Why the fuck are you asking?” Mason snapped, anger flickering in his eyes. His hands clenched into fists around my waistband. “I’m not the only man who comes inside of you.”

“I’m asking,” I started, gritting my teeth, “because I wanted to know. To know if it’s at all possible. You were the one who made a big deal about my birth control when we first had sex.”

“Yeah, that was to fuck with your head. You’re safe from babies.”

“I honestly don’t know why I⁠—”

I cut myself off when I heard the garage door opening. My pulse spiked and regret speared through me sharply. Mason glared down at me.

“Do you still want to show him what a slut you are for me?”

“No, Mason⁠—”

I barely got the word out before Mason was shoving his cock inside of me. I tried pointlessly to get away from him, hating everything. He held me down on the table, not allowing me to back out now. I gritted my teeth, an angry noise tearing out of me as he ripped my shirt off my body, fingers holding me hard enough to leave bruises.

“Mason—”

It was stupid, childish plan to make Micah jealous, and I was regretting it already. Sadness tugged on my heart along with the regret. Mason made me want to do terrible things, things Micah probably didn’t deserve. This would get me nowhere except in more trouble, but it was too late to go back now, seeing as Micah was walking into the house.

I turned my head away from him, shame making my face warm, fingernails scraping the table as my fingers curled. I could feel him staring at my naked body, and it made me flush all over.