“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m hate fucking you.”
“Is that really how you want our first time to be?”
Unclipping my bra from behind me, fearlessly, I asked, “Is it our first time?” My voice was cutting through the bullshit.
All I wanted was to be worn as a crown around his head and his tongue buried in his throne… me.
All I wanted was to sit on my throne until I felt the royal benefits of wearing a crown.
He was never soft, but his voice was delicate, “No, this wouldn’t even be hundreds of times. You love fucking me.”
I watched him recoil into himself, knowing I didn’t remember us, him, before Arcadia Prep. I wanted to, but I didn’t get to choose what memories came back. None of them were complete anyways. I was only getting half-truths and whole lies.
I sat on top of him, swaying my hips back and forth against his length, chasing the mood still. “You didn’t care that I was close to Nyx?”
He switched our positions quickly, and I fell onto his bed hard. There was nothing soft about it, just like him. He flipped my skirt up, out of his way, before he pushed himself between my legs.
He crawled up me until he was hovering right above me, “You aren’t his; should I care how close you are? He can be your friend, but he’s not having you the way I am.”
I kissed the skin I could reach: his neck, his collarbones, his strong jaw, until he forced me back down to the bed with my wrists in his punishing grip. He was jealous, and it was showing.
I felt his tongue against my nipples, and the restraint of his grasp kept me down. “Don’t mention another guy again.”
“Is that why you didn’t tell me my memories? So you could hide everything but yourself?”
I felt his hips pushed up against mine even more and his tip was grazing along with me. He was torturing me for mentioning Nyx’s name.
“This could go very differently, Arianna. Watch what you say.”
I writhed and wiggled under his mouth sucking on my hard nipple and his length teasing my wetness. He was pushing me to the edge before he was even inside me—embarrassingly so.
I wanted to push him, but I didn’t know what he liked. I only knew what made him tick, what pushed his buttons, and what made him hate me.
“Is that why you hate me, Bolton? Because I’m more connected to him, or because I don’t remember you?”
All at once, I felt him fill me between my legs, reaching every depth of me inside and not caring to be gentle. His hips didn’t move urgently like teenage boys racing to the finish line. Bolton moved with spite, anger, revenge, hate—all for me and who I was now, instead of being who he remembered.
Leaning down into my space, his tongue licked up from my jaw to my ear. “I hate you for making me wait to do this with you for so long.”
I wrapped my legs around him, regretting not taking off my skirt. I was demanding more of him—more than I could take or could give back.
I wanted all of Bolton even though he was a monster.
My monster.
He wasn’t boyfriend material.
Because he was a king.
He hid my past, my memories, from me.
To force everything in the background, except himself.
He was a false god, wearing a crown that really belonged to me.
He bowed to me.
Arianna
His phone went off more than once while we chased the high of our two bodies rubbing together. It was so faint against his desk I barely heard it. His grunting fell against my lips, and my moans were anything but quiet.
Pushing back onto his knees, he looked down at me as his hands held my hips against his. We were both too close for games.
He brought me over the edge when his fingers dipped down between our bodies pushing the sensitive bundle of nerves around until I felt like I was flying. My back arched, while his fingers kept rubbing me, even though I was already high off his touch.
Bolton didn’t care. He wanted to break me—to break everything I knew and put it back together carefully, exactly how he wanted to.
My eyes fluttered open, widening as much as they would after coming that hard to watch him suffer the same fate. He pulled away, leaving me feeling so empty without him inside, as his fist worked his length.
I was going to break him too.
Maybe not now, today, or even tomorrow, but I was going to break him for thinking he could underestimate me and who I am.
Hate fucking.
“Someone’s popular. Want to get that?”
“It can wait.” He fell down onto his hard bed next to me with a thump. The beds at Arcadia weren’t meant for two people, let alone the furious movements Bolton just pulled off.
I turned into his side, and his arm folded under his head. I wanted to prod him in his weakened state. “Will I ever remember again?”
“The longer you’re gone, the harder it is to remember.”
He seemed so sure, so why wasn’t I when it came to believing him?
“Was I really promised to Caellum?”
His gaze shifted from the ceiling to me in a snap. “He said that?”
“That wasn’t a denial…”
I propped myself up on my elbow and yanked one of the blankets up to shield me from the cold of his room. Messy, dark, cold… it was a warning sign.
“Caellum hates me; he’ll say anything he can to get inside your head.”
It made me wonder why he didn’t think Caellum was untrustworthy then. It made no sense. I needed to remember, not go off everyone else’s word. “But you trust him…”
“I trust that he wouldn’t ever want you hurt. That’s the only trust I need to have.”
I sat up, hearing his phone buzzing again, and a painful hunger pinched my stomach, and I realized I had put my body through hell. Between watching Bolton and Nyx fight in class, being taken hostage by Caellum, all the secrets coming out of the dark, and Bolton breaking my body while handing me a crown… I was surprised I was still operating. “Tell me what happened between you two.”
He groaned, thinking a sound effect would be all it took to throw me off from getting an answer. Crossing my arms, I waited, minutes passed by in silence when I poked his exposed side. The blanket was barely covering him and that vein and his muscles trailing down his body were still on display.
Focus.
Answers.
“Fuck, Ari. It’s not like one thing happened, okay? It’s more like what didn’t happen.” He turned to face me, leaning on his elbow and looking at me so sternly I almost gave up knowing.
“You want me to remember, but you aren’t telling me anything. Maybe I should go ask Caellum.”
I was letting myself get emotional, desperate even, when I threw my legs off his bed and snagged my shirt up from the floor, along with my bra.
“I want you to remember for yourself, not how I remember shit. You’re remembering things without knowing. It’s slowly being triggered. Calling me powerless and running away from marrying me? That’s all happened before.”
I felt overwhelmed again. My head was feeling fuzzy, and now that pinch in my stomach was feeling like the least of my problems. I did my best to force my eyes open, just before my body started to sway and everything went dark.
Running on no sleep and ugly truths eventually always catches up.