I grip the couch tighter and nod my head.
“No one else has been here have they, Ella?” he asks me, grazing my entrance with his pinky as he keeps circling my clit. “Since I was?”
I shake my head. Don’t speak.
“But I don’t want to be there.” He takes his fingers away, presses his dick against my ass. “I want to be here.”
I bite my lip, tears springing into my eyes. The last time I did that…my eyes fall closed. I remember the blood. The way my stomach convulsed. It had been more than rough. It had been…torturous.
It had been the first and last time.
I never let myself become a victim, not with my mother. Not with my exes. But there was one night…one time. We were both drunk and Shane…
I think I’ve underestimated Maverick. I think this isn’t a game anymore. I think I’m an idiot for going to a man’s house I don’t know, that I met in the woods and let hit me. I think I’ve tried to find an escape from the life I deserve. The shitty trailer and the shitty mom and no food. That’s my life.
But this… Maybe I deserve this, too.
He presses further against me, the belt tightening around my throat, making my head spin back around. I grip the couch tighter, bury my face against it, tears hot behind my eyes.
He’s not going to stop.
I don’t know why I thought he might. I don’t know why I taunted him. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize a monster when I first looked into his eyes at Liber. I’d told him I’d seen the devil. I’d told him I saw that same devil in myself.
And I did. After that night I fucked up. After that night I poured myself one beer after another for the carbs, for something to put in my mouth. For...the forgetting. After the night my mom left to get her fix and her boyfriend stayed.
After the night he came to my room.
If I could’ve just been brave. If I could’ve said something worth saying. If I could’ve suffered through the hunger. Forgotten the beer. If I could’ve not been starved for something more than food.
Maverick leans over me, his chest to my back, his lips against my ear. He’s not inside me, but his cock is so hard, so hot, I know he’s not going to wait much longer. I’ve been here before.
His fingers are at the back of my neck, he’s holding the belt so tight around my throat. I can’t breathe.
“Ella,” he whispers in my ear. “Be a good girl.” His breath is soft against my skin, soft and warm. “I’ll take care of you if you’re good, you know that, don’t you?”
This isn’t a game.
Is this a game?
“If you’re not,” he continues, stroking his fingers down the side of my wet face, “if you’re not good for me…” he trails off, and I wonder if he’s going to say anything at all. But then he finishes his sentence. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
Am I really scared? Is this really fear? He doesn’t mean it. But I think about what he said on New Year’s Eve. About beating a woman to death with a hammer.
No…
For some reason, jarring me from my thoughts, he loosens his hold on the belt and I gulp down air.
“Tell me why I should stop,” he says softly.
My head is spinning with his words, my chest tightening, my mind racing.
“Talk to me, Ella.” His words are more urgent, almost begging. Pleading. “Tell me your secrets.”
“I-I don’t want it,” I force myself to say. “Not there.”
He laughs against my cheek. “Never been fucked in the ass before?”
I swallow, my throat sore. “I have,” I confess. I feel his body tense at my back. “I just…” I don’t know what else to say. He might be god, and I might fall at his feet, but this way? Don’t gods want willing submission? They don’t want to force their subjects to their knees…do they? Isn’t that why we have free will?
Do I have free will here with him? I’m not so sure anymore.
He’s quiet, only the sound of our breathing in the room. And then he groans against my neck, his teeth scraping my skin so I can feel the sound in his throat, like it’s coming from his soul.
“Fuck,” he hisses, his brow pressed against my shoulder. “FUCK!”
Tears pour down my face even as I squeeze my eyes shut tight, trying to hold them back, fisting my hands on the back of the couch.
What happened to him to bring him to me?
Is it like what happened to me?
Are devils made? Was I born empty? Was he?
As if he’s reading my mind he says against my shirt, “What happened to you, Ella? Why do you let me treat you like that?”
I don’t pick my head up from the couch.
He reaches under me, clamps his hand over my mouth and jerks my head back. “You’re gonna have to start talking soon, baby.”
Baby.
“I can’t take this silence. It makes me want to hurt you more.”
Chapter Twelve
I wake to the sound of laughter.
At first, I roll over and clamp a pillow over my head, thinking it’s my mom and the moaning is about to start. But then I realize this bed is way bigger than mine.
I throw off the pillow and bolt upright, straining my ears.
Another person laughs.
And there’s something in the air...
I inhale deeply, my heart kicking into overdrive. Marijuana.
I glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It’s three in the morning. Thursday. I think about the fight last night, just a few hours ago. The glass on the floor Maverick cleaned up in silence after I pulled my clothes back on.
He left me in here, threw me one of his shirts to wear, and went downstairs. We didn’t speak after that fight. After he almost…
I close my eyes shut and hear someone laugh again. I think about staying here in the dark, about trying to go back to sleep. But I want to talk to him. And I want to know who’s here.
In the past three weeks, I’ve spent more nights here in his house than in my own. And I know it’s stupid and childish, but I can’t help but imagining this house being…my house too.
My face burns as I think that, and I would never say it out loud to him, but still. I want to know who he’s letting invade our little bubble.
I take a deep breath, steel my spine, and walk out of the double doors of his bedroom. I hear a few voices, none of them Maverick’s, and it suddenly occurs to me that maybe he’s not down there at all. Maybe he has friends over, and he went to sleep in a guest room or maybe…
Then I hear his laugh. It’s a barking laugh, almost carefree. So unlike the boy I know. Even still, despite our fight, it makes me feel better to hear him. To know he’s here.
I head down the stairs, not being overly quiet, so he’ll know I’m coming. I round the staircase, head down the long hallway to the living room.
And when I stand in the doorway, I freeze, thinking this was a terrible idea.
Immediately, my eyes lock on the boy straight across from me, sitting on the couch beside Maverick. He has dark blue eyes, black curly hair. I’ve never seen him before, but he’s just as beautiful as Maverick is and I can’t look away from him as I cross my arms self-consciously over my chest.