He grips my neck so tightly that I go up on my tiptoes to give him more access. To give him more of me to squeeze and grope and grab.
“I’m trying to tell you that you don’t have to protect me anymore. That I’m not some innocent flower that you met in the woods two years ago. I’m not. I haven’t been that girl in a long time, Reed, okay? You don’t have to tell me to hold on to my dress or to keep my legs shut when you’re around.”
His thumb presses down on my pulse. “I don’t, huh? I don’t have to protect you. I can do whatever I want with you then?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. And where do you get off trying to protect me anyway? You’re the guy who hurt me. You’re the reason I’m like this. All broken.” My hands creep up to his hair then and I grip his longish strands. I grip them and a breath puffs out of me because they feel the same as they did two years ago. Rich and soft and cozy, and tugging on them, I continue, “And I’m the reason you’re haunted. And I want this to end.”
“To end,” he says roughly.
“Yes. I want this to end, Reed. I don’t want to be broken anymore. I don’t want you to be haunted. We need to move on. We need to forget about each other. We need to forget that we ever met.” I look into his eyes that have turned even harsher now. “I need to forget that I ever met you. That I ever fell in love with you. I need to forget you, Reed. I want to. And I want this to be the last time.”
“Last time what?”
“That we see each other. I don’t want… I don’t want you to come here anymore. To pick me up or to drive me around. I’m safe, Reed. So I don’t want you to be my chauffeur anymore. Besides, the audition video is done. So I don’t need you anymore.”
It got done last week. So this is it.
This has to be.
“You don’t need me anymore,” he repeats.
“No.” I shake my head, feeling all achy and sad. “So promise me.”
“Promise you.”
I nod, my neck in his grip, my head feeling heavy. “Promise me this is the last time. And maybe one day…”
“One day what?”
“One day I can meet someone and I can fall in love with him. I want to fall for someone. A different guy. A good guy. A guy who doesn’t hurt me like you do.”
The muscle on his cheek tics and tics. “You want to fall for someone?”
My heart sinks.
It goes all the way, down and down, to the bottom of my stomach. I don’t even think that I can hear it anymore. I don’t even think I feel it.
As if my heart is hiding.
It’s running away from me at the thought of falling for someone else.
But my heart is stupid. It has always been.
“Yes,” I whisper.
He goes still then. At my response.
As still as my own chest. Like his heart ran away too at the thought of me falling for someone else.
But that’s not true, is it?
He doesn’t have a heart to begin with. His chest is a wasteland where no heart, no flower will ever grow and I was foolish to ever think otherwise.
I still am.
Because his stillness makes me want to cry.
Makes me want to take back my words and fall at his feet. It makes me want to tell him that I will never ever fall for anyone else.
I can’t.
Because two years ago, I loved him too much and sometimes I still feel that love.
I hate it.
I hate that I can feel it in my chest but I feel it nonetheless.
But then, that’s why I’ve done this, right?
To not feel it anymore. To end it once and for all.
“So say it,” Reed commands after a few seconds. “Say the words then.”
I’m not surprised that he already knows what I’m going to say. It’s the strangest thing that we can sense each other’s thoughts like that but I’m not going to dwell on it.
I’m going to say it.
“I-I think we should…”
His grip flexes around my throat, in my hair. “We should what?”
“You should f-fuck me.”
It took me what felt like forever to say it but it doesn’t take him more than a fraction of a second to repeat it. “I should fuck you.”
I jerk out a nod and swallow that I’m sure he can feel on his rough palm. “Yes.”
“Because you’re not an innocent flower anymore. I don’t need to tell you to hold on to your dress. Or to hide your pussy from me.”
I’d forgotten.
I’d forgotten how filthy his words can be. Or at least what they made me feel when he talked to me like that. How they affected me.
How they sent currents running through my body, my stomach, my limbs. How my skin would tremble and become coarse with goosebumps.
“Yes,” I reply, swallowing again. “It didn’t work the last time. Protecting me, my body. So I think we should d-do it.”
“Do it.”
“I think we should get each other out of our systems. Get closure. So we can move on. We can —”
“Yeah, you said that.” He squeezes my throat again. “You already said how you wanted to fall for someone else.”
“Reed —”
He cuts me off again. “So you want me to fuck you, fuck that thing between your legs, so you can offer it up to someone else. A good guy. A guy who doesn’t hurt you like I do. Am I getting it right?”
At his angry words, jealous words, a great, mighty tremble rolls through my thighs, through the thing between my legs, and I have to press my thighs together to keep my balance.
But then, I shouldn’t have worried about falling because he’s got a good hold on me.
A possessive hold.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that we have to end this and —”
“And you’ve already done it, haven’t you?” he growls, his wolf eyes narrowed. “You’ve already offered it up to fucking Toby. Toby with his brown fucking eyes and his fucking kindness. He was kind to you. Isn’t that what you said? Toby was kind to you and so you went wherever he took you. And when he asked you, you spread your legs for him, is that it?”
“Reed —”
“Toby tell you that though? That you have to fuck someone to get over someone else. He teach you that?”
I tug on his hair. “Reed, that’s not —”
This time he cuts me off not with his words, but with his actions. His fingers shift and ripple around my body and he comes ever so much closer to me.
His mouth breathes fire over mine as he rasps, “Let’s see then. Let’s see what that motherfucker taught you.”
Before I can respond to that, he puts his fire-breathing lips on mine.
For a second I’m so shocked, I’m so taken aback, that I freeze.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know if I should move or breathe or what. And I guess he has the same problem because he doesn’t do any of those things either.