What baffled me was how he’d been able to keep to himself for six years. Anyone would have forced me into a relationship with them, or at least would have kissed me. Not Theon. It was as though he was content with just keeping his eyes on me, when we both knew how bad he wanted more. His expressions werealways readable. I would really strip down if he told me to. In my head, I’d accepted that he owned me because it was impossible to imagine Theon standing by and let another man take me, though I would never say it to him. He’d claimed every part of me without even touching me, and that alone was a mystery, and a torture to him.
His self control was commendable.
“Why haven’t you tried to touch me? Not even once.” I didn’t know how many minutes had passed, or if he even heard my question. I could be speaking in my head for all I knew, since I was half asleep and half awake.
After a long while, he spoke.
“You’re a dangerous temptation.” His voice was soothing, quiet, soft, as if singing a lullaby or reading a bedtime story in a silent space. “You…you’re like a drug. One hit, and I’d be hooked. You’d sink into my veins even though you already have, and I know—once I got a taste of you, I wouldn’t stop. I’d lose control, lose myself. And if I get too attached, more than I already am…I don’t trust what I’ll become.”
My heart suddenly felt too heavy.
It took me back six years, to three months before graduation—to that cliff. He had tried to save me, tried to save me from my kidnapper. But as we ran, he slipped, falling over the edge. He managed to grab hold, his fingers clinging desperately to the ledge, the rushing waters and jagged rocks looming below. I’d left him and ran away.
I’d left him because the kidnapper was on our tail, and if he knew Theon was holding onto his dear life, he’d throw him off completely. I couldn’t let that happen to him. So I’d run, using myself as the bait, distracting him.
It must be why he suddenly hated me. Either because he thought I’d left him there, or because he regretted coming to save me.
Theon and I were the only ones in the woods, he’d found me, being the stalker that he was. He must have had a tracker on me, just like today. Because there was no way he’d have found me that night, or this evening.
The door clicked open.
Was he leaving?
“Theon,” I whispered, hoping this wasn’t all in my head, hoping I was actually speaking to him even though it felt like my body was floating in space. “I came back.”
He needed to know. He should know I didn’t leave him there to save my ass. That I got rid of the man and came back for him.
“I came back, but you weren’t there anymore.”
13
THEON
Hudson Granger’s arm was looped around a girl at a club, his mouth frequently on her with his other hand squeezing her boobs. There were three clubs in South Highland, but this was the most popular. It was twelve in the morning, marking three hours that I’d been staring at Hudson, waiting for the right timing.
A woman—about the tenth one tonight—stopped before me, obstructing my direct view of him. I gave her an unwelcoming stare, one I learned unnerve people most times, but she glanced over her shoulder and smiled.
“I see you’ve been staring at him. He may be into threesome. If you ask him, he might let you in. And maybe luckily, I can join, too.” Her hand came up to touch my chest, sliding down to my stomach. “Damn, you’ve got a nice body.”
I was turned off. Just like always.
No amount of foreplay could turn me on as much as Ainsley turned me on. She could be saying anything unrelated to sex, and I’d be hard, my imagination working ten times stronger and dissecting possible ways to have her strung up and waiting with her ass in the air, pussy wet and begging to be invaded.
Sometimes...okay, all the time, I had to picture that I was fucking her and not some random girl whenever I was tired of my fist and needed a pussy to come into. Even still, I wasn’t always satisfied. So I stopped, because there was no torture compared to wanting someone and not having them.
I grabbed the girl’s wrist as she inched towards my zipper. “Weren’t you taught not to touch strangers?”
She blushed. “I didn’t have someone growing up.”
“Neither did I.” I seized her other hand as it came for my zipper again. “Now leave before you find out what kind of stranger I am.”
She was intrigued. “What kind of stranger are you?”
Perfect timing. Hudson was standing up with the girl, walking out of the door.
“The kind you see on the news, where females are often the victims.”
Lust drowned from her eyes as she staggered back, scouring my expression. I gave her the impression that I was dead serious, and she brisked away, her face a war ground of dread and disbelief.
