“I’ll throw you off that same fucking wall if you keep pushing me!” I shout.
Dean lets out a long, slow breath.
“Now we’re coming to the truth of it, aren’t we, Cat?” He releases my neck, but he doesn’t step back. He stands very close, looking down at me. “Are you planning to kill me, too, little kitten?”
“N-no,” I stammer, guiltily digging my fingernails into my opposite arm. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I think you did.”
“No! I just . . . you’re so fucking unreasonable!”
“And that’s what you meant, isn’t it, kitten? You spoke in anger, and it’s supposed to sound like a joke. But the implicit threat is there underneath. You’re reminding me that you did in fact kill Rocco Prince, and you’ll do it again if I make you mad enough. If I make things hard on you. If I scare you, if you think I’d spill your secret . . . I’ll become a threat that has to be eliminated, just like Rocco.”
There’s a difference between someone insulting you with lies, and someone peeling back the cover over an ugly truth. One is much more unpleasant than the other.
Dean has found my deepest, most painful place, and he’s driving a spike into the aching flesh.
My sister thinks I’m a good person. Anna and Chay do, too.
Dean knows the truth.
“No,” I say numbly. “That isn’t true.”
“We both know it is,” Dean says softly, his eyes fixed on mine.
“No!” I shake my head until my curls are a dark whirl in front of my eyes. “I wouldn’t do that. I had to kill Rocco. I had no choice!”
“You don’t have to defend it to me,” Dean says. “I agree with you. Zoe never would have done it. Miles might have, but he hesitated. He wanted to find the more humane way. Only you saw what had to be done. You murdered Rocco. I would have done the same.”
Dean believes we have something in common. He thinks I did something admirable.
It makes me want to vomit.
“No!” I cry, backing away from him. “I’m not like you.”
Dean laughs quietly.
“You think there’s a difference between you and me, because you did it for Zoe? There’s no fucking difference. All mafia crime is committed on that premise. We’re all doing what we think needs to be done for the good of the family. It’s the core ideology of our world. You can justify each individual action any way you like, but the difference between a civilian and mafiosi is that we put the good of our family above the law.”
Dean is advancing toward me again. I keep trying to retreat, until my back hits the wall.
My stomach is churning.
I hate what he’s saying.
I’m not like my father, or Dean’s father, or Dean himself. I’m not like the Chancellor or Professor Penmark. I may have come to enjoy Kingmakers, some of the time, but that doesn’t mean I belong here! It doesn’t mean I’m one of them.
Dean reaches out one of those deadly, pale hands. This time he draws the back of his fingers softly down my cheek, each point of contact an electric spark.
“What you did to Rocco proves that you’re as mafia as the rest of us. Maybe even more.”
“I’M NOT!” I cry, slapping his hand away. And then, when he won’t back up, when he keeps me trapped against the wall, I shove him again, raging against his immovable body.
“You want to hit me, Cat?” he growls, pinning me to the wall with his arms on either side of my face. “Go ahead and do it, then.”
I don’t understand this game.
I don’t understand any of his games.
All I know is that I’m trapped, and I’ve never liked small spaces. Never liked confinement.
“Hit me,” he hisses. “You think you have the balls to throw me off the wall? You can’t even raise one little paw to touch me.”
“Fuck you!” I shout back at him.
“Do it,” he says, getting right in my face. “Fucking do it, you little coward.”
I slap him hard across the face, my hand whipping out before I can stop myself.
The sharp CRACK! echoes in the room. A livid pink mark jumps into being on his pale cheek.
“Hit me again,” Dean says, his eyes glittering bright.
I hesitate.
“HIT ME!”
I slap him again, even harder. So hard that my hand stings.
A bright bead of blood rises on his lower lip.
Dean seizes me by the back of the neck and kisses me hard. I taste the blood on his lip, like salt and iron.
I bite that lower lip, seizing it between my teeth and gnawing and sucking on it until my whole mouth fills with the taste of metal.
Dean lifts me up and slams me against the wall, holding me up at a height where he can kiss me without bending. His tongue plunges in and out of my mouth and those full lips swallow me whole.
Without meaning to, I’ve wrapped my legs around his tight waist, and my arms around his shoulders. My hands twist in his hair so I can hold his head against mine, so I can kiss him back just as rabidly.
And I am kissing him back. I’m not fighting him, not trying to push him away.
I’ve wrapped my whole body around him and I’m dropping myself down into this kiss, giving in to it, letting it take me over completely.
I don’t want to think about Rocco and what I did to him. I don’t want to consider if I’m good or bad or justified.
I want to lose myself in this moment of ferocity, where letting go feels right, and where Dean’s aggression has transformed into something pleasurable through an alchemy I can’t understand.
His hands on my body are just as strong as ever, just as violent, but as he grasps my breasts through my shirt, that rough friction makes the blood thunder through my flesh, it makes my nipples stiff and hard and aching, so rigid that the only thing that can satisfy is his rough grip.
I’m grinding my body against his, my skirt rucked up around my waist, only thin cotton panties between me and Dean’s bare torso. I can feel the heat of his flesh and my own wetness soaking my underwear.
Dean feels it, too.
He shoves his hand down the waistband of my skirt, down into my panties, and he starts rubbing my pussy against his palm.
I’ve never been touched there by anyone but myself.
The difference between my own hand and Dean’s is like the difference between a firecracker and a nuclear bomb. His hand is warmer than mine, stronger than mine, just a little bit rougher than mine. It feels incredible against my throbbing flesh.
He shoves two fingers into me. I bounce and grind against his hand, his fingers thrusting in and out of me, his palm rubbing hard against my clit.
All the while our mouths are locked together in a kiss that only grows more violent, more deep, more desperate.
I moan into his mouth, I bounce up and down on his fingers, and I feel something coming, something as massive and hectic as a tornado ripping through me.
Dean pulls his hand away. He stops kissing me and he grabs my face instead, pinching the soft flesh of my cheeks. I can feel my own wetness on his fingers.
He looks into my eyes.
“You don’t get to cum,” he growls.
I let out a pathetic gasp of disappointment and desperation.
I need to cum. I have to. I might die if I don’t.