‘Why? Why is it always one monster or another? Why can’t I be left alone?’
‘Because that's just how life is. That's what fate has in store for us. Think about it, how monsters have been dogging us every step of the way. Who's your favourite monster?’
He brushes his hand over my arm, scorching me through my white dress.
There’s only one answer.
‘You are,’ I murmur.
He’s better than some monsters. If someone is always going to hurt me, better it’s him.
He breathes into my ear and whispers, ‘You don't know what a monster is.’
I freeze completely under his searching eyes. I can’t meet those full red lips of his, can’t let myself feel or that dam will break and I’ll be bereft in an ocean of sorrow I don’t think I can hold back any longer.
‘Please,’ I beg in a tiny voice, struggling to sound calm.
He wants me to do something reckless. I take a step back, farther into his room, into his room of darkness. But he follows. Trails me. Still breathing on me with breath so hot, it makes my fever insignificant.
‘You’re gorgeous when you beg. Please what?’
My chest bubbles with tears. ‘Please don’t let me be the reason for somebody else to get hurt . . . I don’t want anyone else to suffer because of me.’
‘What’s going on with you, Amy? You didn’t want to go to your mother’s funeral and you ignore your sister’s letters. Hell, you point-blank refuse to mention your father. What’s got you so scared that you don’t want to leave this place?’
His voice is softer, but still holds a trace of something dark. I’m being pushed into the darkest corner.
I can’t confide in him, even though I desperately want to. Keeping quiet is the only way to stay safe.
Elizabeth is brain damaged because you didn’t keep quiet, and never forget it.
‘Nothing. It was a mistake coming here tonight. You coming back is like a giant wrecking ball to my world and I should never have let you back in.’ I try to suck in oxygen, my breaths heavy and fast.
The look on his face is terrible. Wild-eyed, lacking that unattainable thing. It’s the way he always looks when I’m the Ice Princess. It’s the way he always looks just before he kisses me.
And he does. He kisses me like he’s drinking water in the desert. Against my belly, his cock burns, hard again or hard still. His body is a blackhole sucking me in.
For a moment, he lets me up for air and I gasp, ‘I'm asking you just to fuck me this time. Don’t give me . . . I don’t want to come . . . ’
‘I won’t make that promise,’ he says.
There’s a terrible silence into which I blurt, ‘But I don't —’
‘The way you smell, Amylocks, I guarantee you won't get a choice,’ he whispers into my ear. He strokes the swell of my cheek with his thumb. ‘I could smell your wet pussy as soon as you came through my door.’
I feel crushed.
Defeated.
Because I know those hands and I know how they can take the pain away, know how they can reach into my heart and eek out some small remnant of pure emotion not buried beneath my heart.
Instead of picking the lock to my heart, he used dynamite to blast his way in. He’s turned my heart to dust.
He lifts me up into his arms and carries me to his bedroom. Pushing me down on the bed, he kisses me ravenously. Bites my neck. Sends shivers all over me. His hands are rough on my breasts, stroking and squeezing but not bruising. With a deft movement, he winds the string of my panties around his finger, tugs it down, and tosses it aside. My arousal makes my heart stutter and my throat tight.
He makes his way down my belly with a mix of kisses and bites, and when he opens my thighs, I hiss, ‘You bastard.’
I feel panicky and desperate to separate myself from the moment. The difficulty is that when he slips his tongue into me, lapping at my warmth, it feels good. Too good. I’m already torn apart and barely put back together. This will undo me, permanently.
I put my hands on his shoulders, push hard, but he doesn’t relent. Putting a hand to his forehead, I try to force him away. He reaches up and grabs that hand, pins it next to my side. We’re tangled together.
To keep some freedom, I keep my other hand away from him, trying to figure a new escape. He goes on licking me, his tongue quick and slow, soft and hard, like an experiment or a demonstration of what he can do to me.
He’s doing this to make a point. I’m not sure what point — to prove he can do that to me, to pleasure me, to show me whatever he means to show me about himself. Or about myself.
I want him to numb me, not set me on fire. Not make me feel.
‘Please not that. Do whatever you want to do.’
‘Whatever I want to do? This is interesting, Amy, in a headachy kinda way. See, I’m having some bad days recently, haven’t slept in months, and here I am eating your pussy — I've heard a lotta girls like that — but you're saying you'd rather I do whatever I want?’
‘Yeah,’ I say dully and look away from him. I need him to be angry. And pretending not to care, that always makes him angry.
He’s still stroking my breast, and when he begins to rub my nipple with his thumb, I feel a sharp answering twinge between my
