The fire in his eyes told me he probably knewexactlyhow little it would take to agree.I’d fold so quickly, with the tiniest push.
“You’d say yes if I asked again, wouldn’t you?”He laughed, the tone broken by a deep, masculine groan.“I’m not about to do that, though.I want youbeggingfor me when I do fuck you—when, not if.You aren’t ready to submit like that yet, and that’s fine with me.I don’t have a problem waiting until you’re just that hard up, until you don’t have a speck of doubt.Until then, why don’t you be my good girl and come?”
Those words lit a fire inside of me, made it impossible to resist anything.Why?The idea of being called a good girl was insulting.
At least when I was wearing pants.It seemed pantsless was an entirely different thing, and I reacted in the opposite way.A surge of pleasure rushed through me—a mixture of his words along with the guiding I did automatically, the flow of energy from him to me—and it pulled me like the current in a river, something I couldn’t resist or fight against.It poured over me, crashing into me with such power that I could only arch my back and experience it.
My eyes shut, as though my brain couldn’t filter through all the stimuli that assaulted me.I parted my lips but couldn’t draw breath as I came hard, as the muscles in my back and my thighs all tightened to an almost painful point.
I remained on that edge for so long that my chest ached.It eased, my body going lax, my muscles too weak to even consider moving.I opened my eyes again to find Ingram there, his eyes brighter than usual, a sure sign of his emotions, his desires.His chest rose and fell in rapid pants, the seed that covered his hand showed that he’d come, but he was far from satisfied.
It left me confused, unsure how to address this, how to figure out where to go from here.I felt as though I’d crossed a line I’d never thought I would, one I’d guarded with everything I was for so long.
“Close your eyes and get some rest,” Ingram said.“Best way to work through shit in my experience.”
“And you sure know how to deal with this sort of thing, don’t you?”
He smirked as he rose, not bothering to do up his pants, to hide anything.He just kept the hand sticky with his cum away from him.“Yeah, I do, so listen to me and stop overthinking.Sweet dreams, Blizzard.”He offered a wink, then walked out, leaving me there all on my own.
How the hell was I going to face any of them tomorrow?
Post-nut clarity is a bitch.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Carter
“You want to hit me?Do it and get it over with.”Ingram crossed his arms as he stared at me, not looking worried at all about what I might do.
Which made me want to hit him all the more.I couldsmellYun on the asshole, despite the shower I knew Ingram had taken.How could he smell that much like her?I doubted she’d let him touch her, yet her scent clung to him like cologne.
And it pissed me off.
It set off all the territorial instincts inside me, made me want to go in and cover her in my scent.
Not that she’d let me…
“Hit you?Why would I do that?”I smiled widely, my trademark carefree attitude hiding my real feelings as it always did.
He made a derisive noise.“The fact that you can smile like that makes you one terrifying asshole, you know that?You can smile right before you take someone’s throat out—I’ve seen you do it.The wider that smile gets, the more I start questioning what’s going on in that freak show of a brain of yours.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” I lied, then held out half of the croissant that I’d been eating to him.“So we’ve got rank testing today, right?”
Ingram took the piece and popped it into his mouth, chewing quickly before swallowing it down.“That’s what I’ve heard.Fuck, how long’s it been since we had to be graded?”
“Not since I left Diamond.Feels nice to show off sometimes.”
“Speak for yourself.I don’t like getting watched like a fucking science experiment or a circus show.I’ve been an S-Rank and stealth for fifteen years.No fucking point in this bullshit again.”
I understood his feelings—and honestly, I shared them—but bitching about it wouldn’t change anything.At the end of the day, if they wanted us ranked again, if they wanted to ensure everyone was what they said, they were going to do that.Better to hide my reaction to it, to bury that down deep and not let anyone see anything real.
It was the only way to make it in the world, to keep that all close to the chest, to play the game.
And I was fantastic at that.
So I kept that smile in place and shrugged.“You’ll be fine.It’s not even a big deal for you to rank compared to the rest of us.One day of stretching your esper legs and it’s done.We’ll have a delicious dinner, we’ll talk to other squads, it’ll be a great day.”
Ingram rolled his eyes before stealing another piece of my breakfast.He opened his mouth as though to speak when his gaze moved past me and toward the doorway that led into the large meeting room where we stood.
