If you make a sound, I’ll cut out your fucking tongue, Presley. Is that what you want, huh? You think I won’t do it?
Horror climbs my body like a ladder. It starts as a numbness in my feet. A prickling. A tingling. By the time it reaches my chest, I feel like I’m about to split out and my insides will rupture out of me like sand. Only…Pax boots his bedroom door closed and drops his hold of me. Not for long. Only for enough time to set down his camera and to walk across his room, stalking like a predator with the muscles bunching and shifting in his back, over to where his stereo system is blasting Rage Against the Machine. Assuming that he’s going to turn the music down so I can hear when he gives me shit for being late, I’m surprised all over again when he cranks it up even louder.
He faces me with dark determination written into the lines of his face. He doesn’t speak. Instead, he points to the empty, polished floorboards in front of him. The demand is clear: get your fucking ass over here.
I’m not afraid.
I’m not afraid.
I’m not afraid.
This has been true ever since the night Dad moved into Grandpa’s place. It isn’t true now. The first stirrings of fear have ignited within me. It’s as if a stone has been cast into the still, flat waters of my calm, disturbing the surface, and instead of the ripples decreasing, they’re building, becoming greater and greater, more violent with every step I take toward the point on the floor where Pax is pointing.
I can hardly breathe when I reach him.
His eyes are wild—the pale filaments of blue and white-grey twisting together until his irises look like they’re made of beaten silver. Over my racing heart and the blood roaring in my ears, I can just about make out the sound of ‘Bulls on Parade’ blaring from the speakers mounted on Pax’s bedroom wall. Strangely, I can hear Pax perfectly when he whispers to me, though.
“You disobeyed me, Chase.”
I shake my head. “Jarvis came to my room. My father told the school…told them what happened. She’s has to check in on me—” Pax’s right eye twitches. Less than a millimeter of movement, but I see the command in the action.
Be still.
Be quiet.
“Take off your clothes.”
I swallow thickly. “I sweat so much on the way down here. It’s hot as hell out there. Maybe I should get cleaned up first?”
His right eye twitches again. A muscle feathers in his jaw. His nostrils flare, too. He leans in closer to me, turning his head, angling himself in toward my neck. The whole time, he doesn’t break eye contact. It takes a second for me to realize that he’s smelling me. Slowly, deliberately, his eyes fall shut. “Take off your clothes…” he repeats. “Right. Fucking. Now.”
Am I really doing this?
Did I come down here, fully aware and perfectly fine with the knowledge that I was showing up at Riot House for the sole purpose of getting fucked?
I did. I know I did, and I didn’t think twice about it. Pax encompasses me. He always has. Every dark, angry, ugly part of him, wrapped up in such a devilishly beautiful package. He’s hostile and he’s hateful, and he wields his anger like a blade. There is nothing good about him. But when I’m with him, I can let go. I don’t think anymore. I don’t rage against my own inner pain. The waking nightmares that plague me every second of the day have no power over me in his presence. I used to crave him because of how he looked. Because of how he made me feel. Now, I crave him because, around him, I can surrender. I can feel nothing at all.
I move automatically, undressing myself. It isn’t some kind of sexy, sultry strip tease designed to turn him on. I remove my clothes, focusing on his face as I slip out of each item. He watches me back, and I feel the weight of his attention fixed and locked around my throat like a goddamn choke hold. I want him. I want him more than I want to keep on living. I want him more than I want to die. And isn’t that the crux of this whole thing? Isn’t the wanting of him the only thing keeping me sane? Driven mad and held together by the one person who has the power to destroy everything.
Pax runs his tongue over his bottom lip, tilting his head back. His hands contract at his sides. “Turn around,” he tells me.
Turning away from him feels like turning away from the warmth of the sun—a fierce and volatile sun that might explode and wipe out humankind at any moment.
“Walk over to the desk.”
The skin across the back of my neck and over my shoulders reacts to the heat of his breath, making me break out in goosebumps. I somehow make it over to the desk on the far side of the room, which is set in front of a huge floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the forest.
“Bend over it,” Pax commands.
The lights are on in his room. Anyone standing out there in the dark can see in here. They’ll be able to see me bending over his desk, too, my tits crushed against the wood, my face three inches from the glass. Nothing in me cares.
I give him what he wants.
I expect his hands. I even expect his cock. What I don’t expect is his tongue. He falls on me like a creature possessed, spreading my ass cheeks. The next thing I know, he’s on his knees behind me and his face is buried. His tongue…Jesus, his tongue is inside me. Somewhere it should not be. I gasp, and the gasp turns into a groan as I sink into the sensation of it, amazed that it could feel fucking good. Pax’s fingers are inside me next. I’ve never experienced anything as overwhelming as someone eating my ass and fingering me at the same time. It’s…it’s fucking…GOD! I grip hold of the edge of the desk, my mouth falling open. “Pax! Holy fuck!”
He pulls back and bites my ass cheek, showing no mercy whatsoever. The pain rips through me like a lightning bolt. “What?” he snarls. “You expect to walk around the academy wearing skintight jeans and fucking get away with it? You think I’m gonna let you flaunt this ass to anyone who cares to see it and not punish you for it later?”
“I—”
He lays the flat of his tongue against my asshole again, forcing the tip of it inside me, and my whole head lights up.
“You think,” he growls, “that a little sweat is gonna put me off, Chase? I want your sweat. I want you filthy. I want you out in the beating sun for seven hours straight, and then I want your pussy on my face. You dare shower before coming here and I’ll make you fucking regret it.” He bites me again—the other ass cheek this time—and a scream rips out of my mouth before I can cut it off.
“Stop.”
I can’t. I really can’t. Fuck. The pain…
It intensifies as he digs in again, deeper, and the scream turns silent. I’m so paralyzed by the wash of sensation that even my vocal cords won’t work.
He pulls back, getting to his feet, and I slump against the desk, breathing hard.
“Is this what you want, Firebrand? Is this what makes you come?” I can see his reflection in the window now. His expression is savage. Would he look down at me, the way he’s looking at me right now, so possessively, if he knew I could see him? That question is answered very clearly when his head snaps up and he makes eye contact with me in the glass. He knew I was watching him. He could feel it. And yes. That dark, possessive spark is still there in his eyes. He does nothing to hide it. “Did you think…” He places one hand on my lower back, leaning his weight against me. The muscles and tendons stand proud in his neck as he lowers his jeans over his hips, pushing them down with his other hand. “Did you think that this wasn’t coming? Did you think I’d forget how good you were last time? Did you think I wasn’t going to make you submit to me again?”