My reflection looks calmer.
It’s a fucking lie.
I unlock the door and step back into the dim hallway, but the truth walks with me.I can’t keep her at knife’s length.I can’t touch her without slicing her open.
And I can’t look at her without wanting everything I’ve denied myself for years.
Next time?
Next time, I don't think I’ll walk away.
Chapter 12
Becki
The second his footsteps fade down the hallway, I collapse back onto the cot.The thin mattress sighs under me, the metal frame creaking like it knows exactly what just happened in this room.
Or almost happened.
For a few seconds I just lie there, staring at the ceiling’s peeling paint, letting the silence swallow the wild thundering in my chest.The air still vibrates with Royal’s presence, the leftover heat of him lingering like smoke after a match goes out.
Every part of me is buzzing.Not with fear, not with shame, but with the kind of sharp, starving need that makes my fingers tremble around the chain links.It rushes through me in waves, hot and electric, settling low in my belly and between my thighs.My wrist stings where the cuff chafed my skin raw earlier, but even that sting seems intimate, like something he left on me on purpose.
Royal didn’t kiss me.But he almost did.And my hand on his cock, even through his pants.The memory is a blade sliding slow under the skin.
His breath brushing my lips, his voice cracking, his control slipping thread by thread.He held that knife to my skin like he wanted to carve a promise.Biker looked at me like I was the sin he finally wanted to confess to.
And then he walked away.
Coward.
My thighs press together automatically, a small gasp escaping me as everything throbs at once.Want, anger, hunger, the memory of his breath ghosting across my mouth.
I try to breathe, try to settle, but my pulse is sprinting under my skin like I’m still pinned to that wall with his knife beside my cheek.My hips keep shifting, restless, seeking friction from the cot’s thin blanket, from anything.
I flop back, legs splayed, chain pulling taut at my wrist.The chain rattles like it’s laughing at me, like it knows exactly what kind of mess I am right now.
“Fuck,” I whisper into the dim darkness.
My voice sounds utterly wrecked.Desperate.Too honest.
I shouldn’t do this.The thought comes weakly, the last whine of whatever good sense I ever had.
I absolutely should not do this.
At Pearly Gates, we were told not to.It’s shameful.
But the second I slide my free hand down my stomach, the second my fingertips drift under the waistband of my shorts, my hips arch up like my body has been waiting all damn night for this exact moment.My breath catches on a sharp inhale, and my toes curl before I even touch myself where I’m aching.
He did this to me.
Royal.
The biker who chained me.The man who almost kissed me.The man who touches me like he’s deciding whether to worship me or fuck me.The man who held a knife to my skin tonight and looked like he wanted to carve his name into my bones.
My fingers slip lower.
Wet.
