The question throws me a bit and leaves me stumbling as my fingers dance across her ribs. It’s been a long time since anyone has cared about my name—since anyone has cared about me at all, actually. My mind jumps to Clara, and I feel like shit again for forgetting about her so easily, but when I pull Bunny close, it becomes impossible not to.
Heat radiates from her skin, and for the first time in my life, I think my bones don’t feel so cold. It’s as if she pierces into me with more than just her stare. While I’m feeling her, studying the delicate curves of her mouth, she speaks again, her whisper close to my lips. “Tell me your name.”
“Why?” I snap. “Why does it matter?”
All she does is look at me, pinning me in place with those wild eyes full of blue flames. “It matters.”
I’ve been fighting for over a year to get everyone to stop calling me Blade. I hate that fucking name. I hate what it represents. I hate that it’s all that’s left of me. I hate that it’s what I am so much because I forgot who I was before this. She wants my name, but why does that matter? It’s not like that’s who I am. I haven’t been in a long time.
But I want to be.“Cade.”
My name is Cade.
One day, maybe I’ll thank her for reminding me of that.
Cade
Clara and I don’t usually talk much on nights like these. Either she’s weighed down by the events of the day, or I am. When we do talk, it’s about home—how much she misses her mom and Kassidy. I don’t really have much to contribute to those conversations except about the animals. I do miss them, probably more than anything else.
That’s not true.
I miss my mom, too.
I wonder if she thinks about me—if she even knows I’m gone.
I try not to dwell too much on it, though. It’s hard enough to get through the day without them in my mind. But Bunny wants to know. Sheactuallywants to know who I am outside of these walls, as if I’m more than the blood covering my skin.
At first, I don’t tell her anything too deep, just where I’m from and where I ended up before here. I can’t help but feel a little lighter when I think of the barn back home, of the animals that always seemed happier when I was around. Maybe that was all in my head because, lord knows, that’s how I felt— more alive when they were near.
The grin that was fixed on my face falls when she whispers, “I know what that’s like.” I take her in from my position on thefloor. I don’t even think she notices, not with the tears beading in her eyes. Before she catches me looking, I let my head fall back onto the carpet, listening to her sniffles.
“How’d you end up here?”
The question snaps out of her mouth so quickly, with a sharp, biting tone, that it shocks me a bit. I glance back up at her, confused, but when I see the tear streak lingering on the lower half of her cheek, all prior feelings wash away.
“Come here.”
The muscles in her slender neck tighten when she jerks her head back, surprised at my command. I half expect her to tell me to go fuck myself or say something like she did earlier. Instead, she slinks off the chair like the droplets of water slid down her calf. She’s fluid and graceful as she melts into place beside me.
Her gaze tracks my movements, but when I’m leaning over her, she focuses only on my lips. I wonder if her quickened breath matches the pulse racing in her neck. I wonder if she’ll let me taste it.
“If I’m going to bear all my secrets to you,” I grumble, swallowing back the need clogging my throat, “then you’re going to lie quietly and take all I have to give while I do it.”
There’s a fighter in her, but she bends beneath my touch, dissolving into the flooring with my hand locked around her jaw. I hover over her for a minute, wanting to take her in exactly like this, compliant—already falling open for me.
When I settle myself between her thighs, I ask, “What did you want to know?” But her mumblings go mute the second my lips finally touch her skin. The natural sweetness I smelled on her comes from the vanilla burrowed deep within her flesh. Sweet as fucking pie, as I knew she’d be, I follow the curve of her neck, drawing out my tongue to taste her.
The quiver that started in her chest breaks out all across her body as I take her wrists to pin her arms above her head. A flashof fear sparks in her eyes, and I’m ashamed to say it, but it causes my dick to jump against her opening. “Little, little Bunny. Don’t be scared.”
I’ll only hurt her if she asks.
She doesn’t, but her body speaks a language all on its own. Shifting underneath me, Bunny spreads herself wider, unknowingly dragging her center across my sweats, allowing me to feel the heat of her. There’s a buzzing circulating inside me that has nothing to do with the alcohol I downed. It’s all her. Her smell. Her taste. The way she curves as she arches toward me. Bunny’s ribs jut out as she angles upward, so I bend myself to kiss each one, to drag my lips across her velvet-covered bruises.
“Don’t move,” I order her in a long, leisured tone, slowly letting her go one finger at a time. Testing her obedience, I wait for a second, waiting for her defiance, but she’s good for me, still and patient. I don’t know what’s taken over me—what about Bunny brings out the feral nature I’ve tried to fend off, but I want to ravage her. I want to tear her apart in every way possible and consume her so no one will ever see her like this again.
Without thinking, I grab the blade tucked in its place in my waistband and run it up the side of her thigh. God, that shiver dotting her perfect skin. “I said,” I grumbled, drawing it inward, “don’t move.”
Goosebumps continue to break out as I bring the blade closer to her center, but she does what she’s told and doesn’t move. Not an inch.
