He kisses me, and our tongues clash. Taking my wrists into his hands, he pins them above my head and pulls my body taut, and I can’t break his hold no matter how hard I try. He’s in complete control, and a part of me thinks I should protest, but another part of me relishes how he handles me.
Just the thought of being at his mercy makes me shudder and gush with want.
Fuck, I’m almost there…
He makes me come twice before he finishes, then he rolls off me and sprawls across the mattress. I move to get up, needing to pee, but he grabs my arm and pulls me toward him.
“Not yet,” he mutters, tucking my head against his chest.
I freeze, stunned. Are we cuddling right now?
Dear baby Jesus, what next?
I loathe just how good it feels to be curled against him. He’s warm and firm, and I let my arm snake across his stomach to hold him a little tighter.
“Tell me something about yourself,” he suddenly says.
Furrowing my brow, I glance up at him. He’s staring down at me, his gaze weirdly intense.
“What?” I ask.
“Fair’s fair,” he insists. “I told you real shit last night. Now it’s your turn.”
“I-I don’t know…” What do I even tell him? I’m not real with anyone around here. Even Loni doesn’t know my deepest, darkest secrets because I keep them locked away where no one can ever find them.
I just need to give him something simple to reward him for being so willing to let me have a peek into his actual self last night.
“I like to cook.”
He frowns. “Not good enough.”
“What do you mean that’s not good enough?” I protest. “You didn’t exactly get super deep with me last night?”
He rolls me over onto my back and pins my arms above my head, just like when we were having sex.
“I hate my father,” he says, shocking me. “Always have. He’s a dick who wants me to be just like him, but I don’t want anything to do with what he represents. There’s nothing good in him. Just manipulation and darkness and I hate him for it.”
I stare up at him in total disbelief. “That … that was pretty deep.”
He hollows in his cheeks, then releases them. “Now you, and don’t try to get away with the surface-level shallow bullshit. I want a piece of your soul, Ellis. Give it to me.”
I’m terrified because it feels like he already has so much of my soul in his tight grip. I know he won’t let me go until I give him what he wants though, and what’s truly surprising is how much I want to give in and tell him … everything. It’s impossible, but the urge is there. He’s a terrible person, and if I unburdened myself to him, he might not judge me as harshly as everyone else.
Still, I’m hesitant. I’ve spent so much of my time at Angelview making sure no one knows anything significant about me, it feels somehow wrong and unnatural to be open now.
His eyes drop to my chest, and I can tell he’s staring at my scars again. He stares at them a lot, and I know he’s curious as to how I got them. He’s tried to ask a few times, but I always shut him down.
He turns his gaze back up to meet mine. “Come on, Ellis. Don’t be a coward.”
My nostrils flare, and I decide I can give him a crumb, nothing more.
Tilting my head back, I look past him to the ceiling. The words don’t come easily, but when they at last break free, they flow quickly like blood from a vein.
“Something real about me is that I’m not a good person, despite what everyone thinks. I hurt one of the only people who ever gave a fuck about me.” I think of James, of fire and blood, and I tremble all over.
“Hurt them how?”
Not just hurt. Killed.
I shake my head. I can’t go there. Not even for him.
“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I did it.”
For a moment, I think he might press for more details. At length, however, he gives me a curt nod.
“That’s real enough for me, I guess.”
He releases my hands and moves away from me, but not to leave like I expect. Instead, he stretches out next to me, wraps his arm around my waist, and pulls me back to his chest, as if he knows how much I need someone to hold me in that exact moment.
23
From that night onward, there’s a strange shift between me and Saint during our late-night hookups. As if I’ve broken through a dam with my initial question to him to tell me something real, we find ourselves talking nearly as much as having sex. It’s confusing as hell, and I don’t know what to think about our relationship, or whatever the hell we’ve decided to call this thing between us.
We’re cautious with what we tell each other, but we’re at least telling each other things. He tells me more about his fucked-up family, though he never gets too terribly deep with his feelings on the matter. His father is a megalomaniac control freak who wants his son to follow in his exact footsteps, not only in his profession, but in his personal life as well. Mr. Angelle wants Saint to go to Stanford, just like he did, and wants him to marry a Laurel-type, because that’s who he married, and then have them produce even more demon spawns together.
Saint’s not interested in the life his dad has planned for him at all, and it’s a huge point of tension between them. His mother does nothing to help him, always taking his dad’s side and falling into line with her husband’s wishes just like Laurel would.
One night, he flat out told me that was the main reason he didn’t want her anymore.
“I don’t want a girl who’s going to kiss my ass as often as she sucks my dick. I want a girl who’ll call me on my bullshit—and then suck my dick.”
I called him an asshole, and then proceeded to suck his dick.
The only irritating thing about the new development in our thing together is that he constantly asks me to tell him more about the friend I hurt. He’s like a dog with a bone, and I can’t shake him from the topic. I refuse to expand on the topic because I just can’t go there. Not with him. Not with anyone.
“Why won’t you just tell me?” he asks me one night as we lay curled together in my bed.
“It’s none of your business, that’s why,” I snap back.
He grabs me and pulls me up and over him so I’m straddling his lap, his semi-hard cock pressing against my pussy.
“I’ve given you tons of real bullshit,” he growls. “You’re giving me nothing in return, Ellis.”
“Oh, really?” My voice is snarky as I reach beneath us and wrap my fingers around his dick. “I’m giving you nothing?”
He hardens completely in my hand and I line him up with my entrance. I sink down on top of him and make him forget all about my dirty little secrets. At least for the moment.
I know distracting him with sex won’t always be a solution, however, and I need to figure out what I’m going to do. He’s not satisfied with the small tidbits I feed him about Carley and the few happy memories from my childhood, and I understand why. He doesn’t want my crumbs. He wants the whole banquet that is my complicated, fucked-up life.
Outside of our nightly bang-fests and chat sessions, Saint and I maintain the façade that we still hate each other as thoroughly as we did before. The only other people who know about our thing are Liam and Gabe. Gabe seems cool with it and has even been treating me more and more like a friend, as if by being Saint’s fuck buddy, I’ve somehow made myself worthy of his kindness. Liam, on the other hand, refuses to give me the time of day. He hardly even looks at me anymore when we’re in English class or cross paths on campus.