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His brows shoot up, and his jaw becomes slack. Clearing his throat, he doesn’t look away.
“Do you want me to be yours?”
Since I’m not sure if I want him to be, I opt to be vague. “It’s only fair,” I mumble.
I move my hands under his gray tee, lifting it up to reveal the cut I made only a few days ago. As I’ve been doing every chance I get, I pick at it until the scab is gone.
There’s no denying the heat in his eyes or the devilish smile on my lips. He never asks why I do it, and I don’t tell him it’s because I want it to leave a scar.
I’ve lathered the marks Mama left on him in oils and helped treat them, because I don’t want her marks to be everlasting. But mine, I don’t want it to fade.Ever.
Without thinking, I lean down and run my tongue across the now pink, raw skin. “Mine,” I whisper so softly I hope he doesn’t hear me.
Of course, he does.
“Yours, Princess. I belong to you as much as you belong to me.”
Well, that’s a double-edged sword. Because I don’t want to belong to him, which I guess means he doesn’t belong to me either. Yet, even as the denial is on my lips, ready to be vocalized, I don’t. I hold myself back.
“Okay,” I whisper.
Right now, I don’t know if I mean okay as a way to acknowledge him, or if I’m agreeing. I can’t fucking think with him this close to me. I mentally snort at myself because that’s a lame excuse since I can’t think with him gone either.
In short, I’ve been reduced to an unthinking, all-feeling confused clusterfuck. Yep, that’s me. If there were some kind of fucked-up-anonymous, I’d be a prime candidate.
Hi, my name is Zoe and I can’t think.
Yeah, if only.
While I’m lost in thought, I don’t notice Gray move away from me. So when I finally realize he’s now in the small kitchenette, holding the framed photo of us, it feels surreal as fuck.
“Wait,” I manage to say just as he’s about to throw it into the trash.
Cocking a brow, he looks at me expectantly.
I swallow nervously. “I want to keep it.” Admitting that is harder than it should have been.
“Why the fuck do you want to keep it?”
That’s a good fucking question, and I’m not sure it makes sense. But it doesn’t have to.
Licking my lips, I meet his dark gaze. “I want to keep it as a reminder,” I whisper.
I’m not sure what it is I want to remember. The way he treated me, what I survived, or all of the above. All I know is that I’m not ready to part ways with the horrific picture that shows us both at our worst.
Him, like the monster you were afraid might hide under the bed as a kid. Me, the spineless girl, way out of her depth.
I think I want it to remind myself to never fall that far again. If another gun is ever pulled on me, I’ll fucking die on my feet instead of suffering on my knees.
As though he has a direct line to my thoughts, Gray nods thoughtfully. “You want to remember.” The way he says it makes me think he’s speaking to himself. “Why, Princess? Why would you want to remember?”
I look away, not about to divulge my thoughts to him.
The silence between us grows and thickens as it stretches on for minutes, but I refuse to answer him. I have my reasoning, and that’s all there is to it.
I’m surprised when he sighs, and without pushing me for answers, he closes the distance between us. He wraps his hand around my throat and adds enough pressure to make my breath hitch.
“I hate when I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours,” he admits.
