“That’s not my name, baby,” I scold her gently.
Her gorgeous red lips tug up into a smile, but she shakes her head, running one hand through her hair. She’s wearing my shirt and her underwear and nothing else. I think I wouldn’t mind seeing that in my kitchen every damn day, but I know that’s foolish. The cloud of lust making my head spin.
I’m not made for marriage, and besides that, Ria… I don’t let myself think about that. About her.
Ella swallows. “What happened to your back?”
I exhale, run a hand through my hair and turn to the island in the kitchen, reaching across the sink to grab the vape off of it. It’s already loaded and ready to go.
I bring it up to my mouth, but she closes the space between us and covers my fingers with hers, pulling the red vape down.
She gently pulls it from me, and I let her.
She sets it beside the sink and turns to face me, crossing her arms. “Talk to me.”
I run my hand through my hair. This conversation reminds me of last night’s, before Lucifer and Ezra came over. And that conversation did not go well. And I know it’s my fault. I know I’m an asshole. I just wish…I wish she’d open up to me. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Maverick.”
I don’t like this. Now I guess I know how she felt.
“You know my secrets. Tell me one of yours.”
I don’t actually know her secrets, but I understand I know more about her than she knows about me. Still, my jaw tightens. I fold my arms, mimicking her posture, leaning against the sink as we stare at one another. “Tell me, Ella. Tell me…what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
She blinks, taken aback as she looks down at her feet, rocks back and forth on her heels. “I don’t know,” she finally says, looking back up at me. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
I smile. “Nu uh, baby. That’s not how we’re gonna play this game—”
“It’s not a game, Maverick!” she snaps, dropping her arms and stepping toward me, her playful demeanor gone.
Here we fucking go. The thing about Ella is she doesn’t like nice. She doesn’t like calm. I think that’s why she goes to that fucking school. I think that’s why I fucking like her. I think she enjoys our arguments, and I think… I think I do too.
“This isn’t a game! You follow me at work. You follow me at home. You hurt my mom, take me back here like you fucking own me or something!” She jabs a finger in my chest, her face flushing pink with her anger. “You let your friends touch me, show me off like I’m a fucking toy! I don’t belong to you! And you don’t wanna tell me shit about—”
I grab her wrist, yank her close to me, cutting her off. “I’ve never heard you say so many words at one time, kid.” My mouth is over hers, our lips touching. “It’s a shame it has to be fucking bullshit.”
She opens her mouth, but I press my palm against her lips, cutting off her words.
“You do belong to me.”
She jerks her head away from me, tries to yank her wrist out of my grip too, but I don’t let her go.
Every muscle in my body is coiled, and I feel hot all over. Like I just want to fucking break something. Like I want to rip her apart. Kiss her until she can’t breathe. Until she disappears into me, and me into her.
She knows nothing about the Unsaints. The 6. My real life. She’s an escape. She’s what my life might be if it could be something else. If there wasn’t a girl locked inside my basement. If there wasn’t a price on her head. A price I’ve gotta pay in five weeks.
This, between me and Ella…it’s nothing. It can never be anything more than nothing. But if she wants to make it hurt, if she wants to make this painful, too, our time together, then that’s fucking fine with me.
She lifts her free hand to slap me and I catch that wrist, too. I spin her around, shoving her against the sink, holding down her hands and she snarls up at me. She lifts her knee to kick me, but I press my legs against her bare ones, shift both of her wrists to one hand, and then I snatch up the chef’s knife from the block on the counter.
She stills.
Her entire body is frozen, her eyes wide.
I held a knife to her throat in the woods at Liber and she didn’t react like this, but then again, she had taken a fucking handful of Xanax and been drinking.
I skim the point of the blade down her bare arm, beneath the sleeves of my shirt.
I watch as goosebumps rise on her skin, look down at her as she swallows.
“Don’t you?” I ask her softly, gliding the knife back up her arm, under the sleeves of my t-shirt and down again. I can feel her pulse in her wrists, still held in my other hand, my body pressed against hers. “Don’t you belong to me, Ella?”
She shakes her head. “No.” The word is low, like a growl, and her eyes are narrowed, even though I can see it: her fear.
I press the tip of the knife harder against her pale flesh, caressing it up and down her arm. “What would happen,” I ask her, licking my lips, “if I…slipped?” I nod toward the knife.
Her eyes widen. Mouth opens. But she doesn’t answer me.
I feel my dick growing hard and I know she feels it too, against her stomach. I nudge my leg between her thighs. “No one would hear you scream, Ella. Not here.”
She sucks in a breath, her body still frozen, anger replaced completely with fear.
“No one would know you were missing. Not for nearly a week.” I glide the point of the knife up over her collarbone, to just under her chin.
She jerks her head up, flinching. I lay the flat part of the blade at her throat.
“Not until Connor missed you, huh? But Connor doesn’t talk, does he?” I smirk at the anger returning to her face, her features hardening, her jaw tight. “You ever kissed him, Ella?”
She doesn’t answer.
I tip her chin up higher with the knife. “No. Not him then.” I sigh, let her wrists go. With the knife under her chin, she’s not gonna move.
I grab onto her waist instead, fingers digging in. “When you stopped me last night, who was it? Who was it that had hurt you, huh?”
Her pale skin flushes pink.
“Is that the worst thing you’ve ever done, baby?” I lean down close, my forehead to hers, the knife still against her throat.
Her hands are against the sink, as if to steady herself.
“Who did you let fuck you in the ass, Ella? If I own you, and I can’t, then who could?”
“You don’t own me.” Her words are angry, through gritted teeth. She doesn’t want to open her mouth very wide, doesn’t want this knife to cut her. “And he didn’t either.”
“Who?”
“Fuck you.”
I yank her hair back, tipping her throat up higher so she’s forced to look away from me, forced to stare at the ceiling. “Who?”
She swallows, and I watch her throat bob against the flat side of the blade. The sharp side, though, that’s still angled toward her chin. It would be so easy. So easy to make her bleed.
“Fucking answer me, goddammit!” I yell at her, and she flinches, screwing her eyes closed tight. “Tell me why you let me treat you like this.”