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“You’re not all that great at reading the room, are you?” Snatching the photo from me, she wipes it clean again before putting it back down.
“Have I pushed your button?” The question rolls from my tongue when she scowls up at me. I found her limit just as she found mine, and she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like that I know her better than she wants me to.
“Why are you still here?” Eve snaps back, crossing her hands over her chest.
When will she realise that nothing can protect her from me? Not her violin or her trembling arms. Certainly not me or her. In the end, she won’t survive me. No one does. One way or another, I break them beyond repair.
“Eve.” I say her name as though it’s all the answer she needs to her question. It’s the most accurate reply I can give her. I’m still here because of her.
“I’m fine now,” she bites back, slapping my hand away when I try to tuck her hair off her face. “And anyway, it wasn’t your fault.”
“Not entirely. You should’ve told me.”
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda…” Eve shakes her head as though it’s a trivial point, and with a shrug, she turns to walk away.
“Don’t.” Clasping her hand in mine, I tug her to face me again, making sure my hold is secure enough that she can’t run away from me. Surprisingly, all the anger that’s been simmering for the last few hours doesn’t boil over. My feelings aside, I am curious about her actions. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The first hint of colour flushes the apples of her cheeks. A relief that I wasn’t aware I needed warms through me. Although she’s still pallid, that pinch of colour, along with the bashfulness in her eyes, is enough to ease the vise around my chest.
Eve’s reply is a deep sigh with a shrug, and I still, lightly grasping her shoulders. Again, I’m met with the marks I left on her neck. Before I can brace myself, my gut wrenches.
I warned her. I told her I would destroy her. And I almost did.
“This isn’t an answer,” I tell her when she shrugs again. “Why would you be so reckless, Eve? How could you not—”
“You would’ve stopped,” she finally grumbles.
“I should have.”
“But I didn’t want you to.” The timid statement echoes in the outside stillness that follows it.
That honeyed gaze I’ve grown so deeply desirous of flutters over my chest as my hands smooth over her collarbone to hold her face. The earth-pounding gallop of my heart makes it impossible to hear anything other than the hunger I can’t sate for her. Eve will never understand or perhaps even know how deep my fondness for her goes. It’s too natural to my skin and bones. It’s etched into my flesh and the markings of my DNA. A soul-deep obsession written in the fabric of my existence.
In other words, I’m completely fucked. I give her a smile.
“You touched me,” she whispers, sighing when I nod. “And I-I just wondered what it would feel like everywhere. Here.” Her fingers trail over the length of her neck, down to her chest. “And here. All over.”
A long, needy breath escapes her as I tug her closer with my hands still holding her jaw. The gold threads of her hair are a tangled disarray as I comb my fingers through them, tipping her head back when I coil them at her nape. The rosy tint on her cheeks spreads lightly to her ears and down her throat to her chest.
What a marvellous sight she is as I step flush to her, leaning down so I can breathe in her shallow breaths.
“I wanted you inside me,” she murmurs with a wet flutter of her lashes. “I wondered how it would be. Imagined what you would feel like. But it just wasn’t enough because I had to know. The rest”—she shrugs—“doesn’t matter.”
“You’re still bleeding.”
“I’m fine. It doesn’t matter now.”
“It doesn’t matter?” I scoff. That anger that had been quietly rumbling in the background roars to the surface. “It fucking does matter.”
“It’s fine,” she whimpers at the sudden twist of my fingers in her hair. Each strand threatens to slice through my skin and flesh the more I tighten my grip. “I’m okay. It’s okay.”
“No.” The dry rasp of my voice causes her eyes to widen. “It’s not fine, Eve. It’s not okay. And if you don’t stop saying it, so help me God, I’ll spank those fucking words out of your vocabulary for good.”
There’s a long, suffocated hitch to her breath as she licks over her lips. My threat blazes back at me in her eyes as she squirms deeper into me. The blush on her cheeks deepens. I know she’s imagining the scenario I just painted for her from the lust glazing her eyes. When I stroke over the marks I left on her neck with the back of my fingers, she mewls as if she wants more. God damn my soul for eternity if I don’t want to mark her all over, cover every inch of skin so that there isn’t a single part of her that isn’t mine.
“I would’ve never been able to resist you.” The confession pushes from my lips as her hands flatten to my chest. “My sweet, darling Eve, in the end, I would’ve had you regardless. I would’ve had you even if you didn’t want me to.”
“So I’m right,” she says. “We would always end up right here, Your Grace.”
