“Sometimes.”
“Does it help?”
“No, baby,” he says. “It’s just true, is all.”
I suck in a ragged breath. “Does anything help?”
“Nothing helps. I won’t lie to you. It’s a hard thing—not like on TV or a video game. It’s real like nothing else. It’s jagged inside you—especially if you never did it before.”
I feel a sob come up from my chest. Like my whole body is trapped sobs. I think they might be there forever, like ghosts trapped inside me. All I can see is him doubling over. Lazarus’s face when he got that phone call. “I caused deaths today.”
“I know.”
“It hurts.”
“I know, baby,” he says.
I love him for being real with me now.
“You stay alive, Mira. It’s what we do. It’s built in.”
“Like animals.” I feel crazy suddenly, like everything is upside down. “That’s what I am. This is what it really is, isn’t it? When you appeared at the boathouse, I thought you were the animal. Child of the Black Lion. But I am, too.”
“Mira—”
“No, listen. Me going around putting bullets in people’s bellies? Maybe this is the first time I’ve acted with any real honesty.”
“You know that’s bullshit. What you did doesn’t change what’s inside you, Mira.”
I feel like it does, though—I feel like things will never be okay again. I want to crawl out of my skin. I flatten my hand to his chest. “Make me forget. Fuck me like an animal. I want you to turn me inside out and fuck me on the dirty floor. Make me feel the dirt.”
He takes hold of my hair and turns my face to his.
“Fuck me the way I like.”
He sucks in a slow breath, then kisses me long and slow. Much too soft.
I reach for his cock. He’s hard. Steely through his jeans. “Tell me what a whore I am until I forget. Until I can’t feel.”
“Mira.” He kisses my ear. Shivers go through me.
“I want you to use me until I’m completely twisted up and worn out. Like a piece of trash for you to—”
He shuts me up with another kiss.
“Harder,” I say.
“Baby, I want to just love you,” he says.
“Do it, then. Right here on the mat.”
“No, I mean, I want to hold on to you and feel how much I fucking actually love you. I’m sick from how much I love you.”
My blood races. He loves me. Sick from how much he loves me.
Only Aleksio would say it like that.
He tightens his arms around me. “I love using you like a whore, don’t get me wrong. It’s the hottest thing on the planet, but I only call you that because you’re so hot and I’m so fucking in love with you. I’m not gonna call you a whore when you feel shitty and want to feel shittier. Screw that.”
“You are such an asshole.”
He holds me more tightly, staring into my eyes with a mixture of tenderness and desperation. “I know,” he says.
My snort sounds ragged to my own ears.
Suddenly his mouth is lowering to mine and he’s kissing me, holding me, warming me, softening me. Like ice melting away.
He pulls his head away. “Okay?”
I close my eyes. “Okay.”
“Breathe, baby. You’re not breathing.”
I suck in a breath, then heave it out. “It hurts to know what I did.”
“I know,” he says.
“But you’re here.”
“Always.”
“You love me.”
“I love the fuck out of you.”
I should feel happy about that, but us together is another thing that’s doomed. “Sometimes love isn’t enough, is it?”
The engine rumbles. There’s nothing to say to that. Our lives run in opposite and opposing directions—I care about the rule of law. He lives to break it. I’m all about rescuing kids from a lifestyle he promotes.
The air inside the van is cold except where he holds me. It’s like a metaphor: Us together against the cold, dark world.
But his breath is warm on my neck. He kisses me on the tingly, breath-warmed spot, letting his lips linger, hot and soft. He trails a finger down my neck. I stifle a gasp—it’s still powerful when he touches me. As powerful as that first day in the boathouse.
“What are you doing?”
“You make me crazy. I can’t ever let you go.” The fact that he even says it shows me that he knows, deep down, that we’re doomed.
My pulse pounds. His hands tremble; his lust is wild as wolves, barely restrained.
I’ve never had a man want me like this. I’ve never wanted a man back like this.
He pulls down my bra, baring my breasts. The cold air freezes my nipples until he sets his warm mouth on one, his fingers on the other. It’s a dark kind of heaven.
He sets his free hand on my bare knee under my skirt. “Baby,” he says.
The van shifts as though we took a corner too fast. It feels dangerous in this van. Was I honestly just begging for sex? The phone wobbles, making the light strobe briefly over his cheekbone, his dark curls. He takes my wrists in one hand and pins them above my head, the way he always likes to do. He slides his other hand up my thigh.
My pulse skitters.
He shoves my skirt up and cups me between my legs, hand strong and firm. He just holds me there, moving slightly with the careening van. Everything is falling out of my brain. I’m forgetting everything in the wake of the forbidden sensation of being held and controlled by him.
He finds the elastic of my panties and presses his fingers to my dripping wet pussy.
“Aleksio, we’re in a car chase. Be reasonable.”
“Be reasonable? Fuck reasonable. I won’t be reasonable about you—not ever. That’s a promise.” Slowly he begins to slide and stroke. “Not ever.” He slides and strokes between my legs, and when he hits a certain momentum, I gasp. “You are so sensitive.”
To you, I think.
“Jerk your hands. Feel how I’m holding you. Feel how you can’t ever get away from me.”
I jerk and twist, needing him with a hunger that feels wild and wrong. He pushes a finger into my core, and I gasp.
“Feel how I’ll never let you go.” He has his hand between my legs, stroking me. “Feel it.”
“Aleksio—”
“Say it. Don’t let me go.”
He tightens his grip on me, and instinctively I try to pull away—but I can’t. The way he holds my wrists with one hand while he roams his free hand all over me is intoxicating as pure grain alcohol.
He whispers warm in my ear. “Say it.”
Forbidden warmth blossoms inside me. And I want him. “I love you.”
His breath hitches. “Mira the rebel.” He tightens his grip. It hurts in a way that’s beautiful and good, the pressure of him holding me in place.
The van takes another turn.
“This is so wrong,” I say.
He strokes me higher, up, up, to the edge of oblivion. He nuzzles the side of my neck. “Nothing’s right. Nothing will ever be right.”
He slides his finger inside me now, and my laugh turns to a groan of pleasure. He lays me over the top of a cooler and pushes up my skirt and pulls down my panties so that they bunch around my ankles.