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I close my eyes, inhale, exhale, and do something I don’t want to, but I’m desperate. “Please just let me have this one night.” I open my eyes and carry his gaze. “I’m never going to have this again because in three days”—my voice drops to a whisper—“my life will be over.”
His expression softens as he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair out of my eyes.
I feel so damn ashamed of myself. I just begged him to let me have fun tonight.
Beg.
Ask.
Need permission.
My life is written in those words, a repeated mantra of ink on a piece of paper I want to tear up.
“You know I can’t let you do that,” he utters, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear he sounded a bit remorseful.
I want to argue with him. I want to scream. I want to march into that room and make out with the first guy I find. I should. I shouldn’t care about what would happen to that guy or what would happen to me.
I could make the latter happen, but I don’t think I can be responsible for someone else getting hurt.
“Whatever. Fine. I’ll go home.” I step forward, but he snags a hold of my arm. I blow out an exasperated breath. “If you want me to go be a good girl, you have to let me go.”
He cocks a brow. “Who says I want you to be a good girl?”
I glare at him. “I don’t give a shit what you want me to be. I’m only going home because I know you’ll tell on me if I don’t.”
He drags his teeth along his bottom lip. “Maybe I’ll tell, anyway.”
My stomach winds into knots. I hate this. Hate that everyone has so much control over me.
“Whatever. Tell on me if you want to. Maybe my dad will finally kill me, and I won’t have to go through with this stupid fate ceremony.” I move to swing around him, but he tightens his hold on my arm. Not roughly or anything, but it still pisses me off. “Let me go.”
With a brief pause, he gradually removes his hand from my arm. “I won’t tell on you if you do something for me in return.”
Wrath smolders inside of me. “Are you seriously blackmailing me right now?”
He lifts a shoulder. “That’s one way to look at it.”
“That’s the only way to look at it,” I snap.
I know I don’t have a choice. I have to agree, or I’m in deep shit.
“What do you want?”
He sucks on one of his lip rings. “There’s a lot of things I want. However, for right now, all I’m going to make you do is promise me one thing—that you’ll owe me a favor, one that I can cash in whenever I feel like it.” He gives a short pause then adds, “And I want us to seal the deal with a kiss.”
I was already opening my mouth to say I’ll take the deal, but then the other part of the deal registers. A kiss? He wants me to fucking kiss him?
SIX
ALLURA
My mother is right. I can be so stupid sometimes. Because when Hunter first asks me to kiss him to seal our deal, I think he’s kidding me, and I wait for him to bust up laughing or something. But he stands there in front of me, looking unsettlingly serious, and then it hits me like a violent wave.
Of course, he’s serious. This is Hunter, the guy who stabbed me in the back all those years ago. The guy who tormented me for my last three years of high school and who’s playing an active role in this fate ceremony.
“Fine,” I growl out. “I’ll kiss you, but only because you’re not giving me another choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” he says, reducing the space between us with a few steps. “You can choose if you want to.”
