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“If I’ve not laid eyes on you physically for too long, the loop starts replaying,” he says quietly, and it almost feels like a confession. “I prefer the fucking loop, so I try to keep gaps of space and time between us, because you are so damn young and you keep getting yourself into traps.”
“I managed to get myself out of messes before you,” I point out.
“I’d like to know how the bloody hell you managed that, sometime.”
For a second, it almost sounds like a joke. But…does Slade even know how to joke?
At his blank expression, I decide he’s being serious. A why so serious Joker joke gets pushed way down, because I don’t think he would get it. And he’d stare at me the way he usually stares at Dice.
“Tell me why you killed the one man in this world who has hurt me, and I’ll give you the answer to the forest.”
He snorts derisively and gives me a pitying look. “You’ve romanticized it, haven’t you?” he asks, leaning forward, putting his face dangerously close to mine.
My eyes flick to his lips twice before I’m finally able to hold his gaze, and he looks terribly smug.
“You think I killed him because he broke your heart,” he says, moving even closer until I can feel the heat of his breath against the crease of my lips.
My lips part just barely, and his eyes flick down before meeting mine again.
“It would make sense,” I tell him, even though I’m feeling a little faint, almost as though not touching him when I’m so close is weakening me. “If you’ve been watching me even from behind the bars, then you’d know everything he did to me.”
In the next breath, he goes from beside me to on top of me, his hand on my throat just tight enough to let me know he could kill me in an instant, but not tight enough to hurt.
For whatever stupid reason, there’s a big part of me that knows he won’t hurt me. Like I said, it’s stupid.
His thumb slides down the front of my throat, and his face is inches from mine as he settles himself between my hips. My legs slide up, pressing against his sides, and he stares down at me like he wants to kill me and fuck me and can’t decide which way to go.
“You keep bringing that up. Who’ve you been talking to, Princess?” he asks softly, letting his lips brush mine. “Who knew I can do that?”
Just that ghost of a touch has electricity waking up every nerve on my body.
“How do you know things you shouldn’t know?” he asks again, his voice even quieter. “Can you see me too?”
“I can’t see you the way you see me. But I still know. I know you killed him because you watched what he did to me,” I go on, my voice a little firmer, but still as quiet as his.
“No,” he says, pulling his face back enough to where our eyes can meet again as the muscle along his jaw jumps with tension. “I didn’t. I killed him because I watched your life from eighteen until the day of my freedom on a loop. I watched him touch you over and over and over, because the story wouldn’t fast forward through that part.”
A breath hisses out of me when he puts more pressure on my throat, just shy of painful, as he bites out, “I watched him touch you, and I watched you beg for it. You let yourself be bonded, and you let him steal a piece of you that you’ll never get back. He destroyed you, and you let him because you’re weak.”
His grip loosens as he seems to give an involuntary roll of his hips, putting pressure on me in all the right places. Sucking in a breath, my hands slide up to his chest, holding there, waiting for my command to push him away.
But I don’t.
“You’re an unpredictable variable now, with a twisted mind to match. It’s that dead man’s fault. He stole your light, and you let him.”
I swallow harshly again.
“This turns you on because you’re attracted to the most dangerous situations out there, tempting your own darkness to emerge so you can taste that high,” he goes on. “You love that high. It’s why you end up captured and lost to the high so often. You love tempting the darkness, though you’ll deny it aloud.”
That feels a little too close to home.
Absently, he toys with a piece of my hair before continuing. “I killed him because I had to watch him touch you. Had to watch him fuck you. Had to watch you cry out his motherfucking name, and I was grateful I couldn’t hear any of it. It was the only time I was grateful I couldn’t hear what you sounded like.”
His eyes stay fixed on mine, and I hold my breath like I’m waiting for whatever is supposed to happen next.
“I had to watch you be weak and stupid, and I couldn’t do anything about it but view that endless loop. I couldn’t ever fucking hurt you, so I made him pay enough for the both of you. I killed him because, over and over, I watched him touch what was mine.”
Another roll of his hips has my hands fisting in his T-sh
