She bites my lip when I slip two fingers inside, her body trembling against mine. She's so wet I could drown in her.
I finger her slowly, relentlessly, until she's panting and clawing at my shoulder, her inner walls fluttering.
"You're going to make me come," she says, her voice shaking.
"That's the idea," I whisper against her ear. "You're supposed to like it when I ruin you. You should fucking love the way it hurts, Brielle. If you don't, I'm doing it wrong."
She comes hard, biting down on my neck to keep from screaming. The sound is muffled, desperate.
When she's done, I pull my hand away and lick her juices from my fingers. Her taste might be my favorite flavor. If I could bottle it and drink it instead of wine, I would.
She watches, glassy-eyed, and then laughs. "You're such a fucking bastard."
I pour her another glass of wine. "Maybe. But you keep coming back."
She sips it, then sets the glass down. "What do you want?" she asks again, but this time it's not a challenge. It's a plea, like she's desperate to understand why I won't let her go, or why she loves that so much.
I want you to stay. Fuck our agreement, just…stay.
This whole agreement was supposed to be about exorcising her from my mind. Instead, exactly like expected, it only embedded her deeper into my psyche.
I can't help myself when it comes to her. Just like I've never been able to keep from following her everywhere she goes, watching her every minute of the day. She'd probably kill me if she knew just how much surveillance I have on her, just to keep her close, just to ensure no one else gets close enough to take her from me. But the threat of her finding out never really stops me.
She's always been a drug to me. No matter how much I feed the addiction, it just grows worse.
"I want you on my cock, moaning that you belong to me," I say instead of asking for more than she's willing to give.
She shakes her head, but she's smiling. "You're delusional."
I kiss her again, hard. "You love it."
"Yeah, I do," she sighs, defeated.
I pull her onto my lap, cradling her like something precious. "Then stop fighting so fucking hard," I say, my voice hoarse as the plea slips out without permission. "Just…stop."
"You're the only thing I've ever wanted to fight, and the only one I never want to fight," she says.
"Jesus." I kiss her again, until both of us are starving for oxygen.
She curls up against me when I let her up, biting her lip. "Can I ask…?"
"Ask what?" I ask, searching her face when she trails off like she's afraid to finish her question.
"About the accident," she whispers.
I flinch, going rigid. "I don't want to talk about the accident, Brielle."
"We have to talk about it at some point, Asher," she argues, her voice a scrap of sound in the cabin. "You want me to stop fighting you and just give in, but I don't understand why you hated me so much after the accident. I don't understand why you hate yourself. I just…I need to understand you."
The plea in her voice wrecks me. She doesn't even realize what she's asking, not really. Or maybe she does, and she's just desperate enough to see how much of my poison she can swallow before she breaks for good.
I grip the armrests, my knuckles turning white. "No," I say, "we don't. We never have to talk about that night." My voice is a hollowed-out ghost. "It's done. It's over."
Brielle shakes her head, curls falling into her face. She shoves them aside, scowling up at me. "It's not over. You said it yourself, remember? You said you've never forgiven yourself for almost killing me. You said it still haunts you every night."
She's right, and I hate her for it. I want to snap at her, to call her a brat and tell her to drop it, but the words dissolve into acid before I can spit them out. Instead, I stare straight ahead, blinking hard against the memories clawing at the inside of my skull.
They're always the same: the taste of her lips on mine, the haze of the red light reflecting off the dashboard, the sound of the garbage truck as it rumbled through the intersection. The sickening crunch of steel folding in on itself. Most of all, it's the sound of her screaming my name, the high, desperate pitch of it as she realized what was about to happen, that haunts me.
