“Who the fuck am I?” I asked Beck, hating the broken in my voice. “Catherine has been controlling me since birth. Nothing was real. I’m not even sure my mom and dad were real at this point.”
They were too dead to tell me, but I had my suspicions that they might have worked for Delta too. Why else would my father freak out like that and try and run? A normal person would have gone to the police.
“Are you even fucking real?” I said, lifting my tear-filled eyes to meet his. The next words caught in my throat at the tumult in those stormy gray depths.Holy fuck.
“I’m going to say this one time, Butterfly,” he said in that quietly menacing voice. “This is the realest fucking thing that will ever be in your life.”
My body reacted involuntarily, pushing into Beck, needing to feel his hard body against mine. For some messed up reason, the madder he got, the scarier he became, the more I wanted to climb him like a fucking tree.
“The past doesn’t fucking matter, because after this vote, you’ll never have to worry about Catherine again. She’s going to pay. She’s going to have everything she loves and desires in this world stripped from her. I will make sure of that.”
“How long until the vote?” I said, needing this shit done in my life. I needed one normal day. Just one.
“Eight days.”
Eight more days until this was all over. Eight more days until I took my fucking life back.
Debitch was going down.
26
Dante didn’t go far from me; Beck let him stay in his old apartment, because we were now … living together. Something that should have freaked me the hell out, but it didn’t. Having Beck around was my comfort in life, and the officialness of “living together” didn’t diminish that at all. While I was still recovering, we spent the next few days at home, eating, sleeping, and Beck loving the fuck out of my body until I could barely walk. But this time it was completely okay with me. I hadn’t had many happy days since my parents’ deaths, but this week, it actually kind of felt like I was being given a gift.
If only it wasn’t the last hurrah before we were all destroyed. With the vote closing in, my nerves were completely shot. I alternated between relieved and terrified, because I had no idea if this was all going to go our way.
Either way, it would all be over soon.
* * *
Three days before the vote,I was leaving the bathroom, still drying my hair.
“Riley, what the fuck is this in the sink?” Beck yelled, and I pranced across, dressed in just a bra and panties, peering over his shoulder.
“Huh, guess I forgot to wash my bowl,” I said with a shrug, pressing my breasts to his arm because it felt good and I was somewhat addicted to Beck. “Who knew we could actually grow something green. I’ll tell that to the dead plants in the bathroom and on the balcony.”
A smile actually worked its way across his lips, and I shrugged again. This was one of our first little snags in living together. Beck was meticulously clean, and I was kind of a slob. Neither of us were working on making that mesh better either, and probably we’d need to get a cleaner in at some point—when we weren’t so suspicious of strangers—because cleaning was never going to be my thing. But for now, we were all “odd couple bickering” which generally turned into the best kind of foreplay.
My nipples ached as I brushed them across his arm again. “Are you trying to distract me, Butterfly?” Beck asked, and he was the one distracting me, because I liked that rumble in his voice.
The towel from my wet hair hit the floor, and Beck’s hands were on my ass as he lifted me to the bench.
“Is it working?” I asked, breathless as he parted my knees and settled between them. He’d just jumped out of the shower before me, so he was only wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. Boxers which were strained far too tight over his erection.
Beck chuckled a dark, sexy sound as he captured my lips with his own, coaxing my mouth to open so he could explore with his tongue. Large, rough hands skimmed over my sides, reaching behind me to flick the clasp of my bra open and discard the garment somewhere across the kitchen.
His palms cupped my breasts, and I moaned into his kiss.
“I’d say it’s working pretty well,” he told me, his voice a husky promise ofallthe orgasms. Hell yes.
I looped my arms around his neck, pulling him closer as I sealed my lips to his, drinking him in like a fine wine and groaning when he ground against my core. If this was what living with Beck was like, I could safely chalk it up as one of the best decisions I’d ever made.
Seriously, it was like we couldn’t get enough of each other. Any time the opportunity presented we were clawing at each other, desperate to be closer...
The cold touch of metal at my hip made me pull back with a gasp, only to find Beck with a fucking butcher knife in his hand.
“Um...” I squinted at the blade, then quickly clued in when he swapped it to his other hand and sliced the other side of my panties open. Smart man, using the tools available.
He grinned at me, tossing my destroyed underwear over his shoulder then sliding the blade back into the big wooden knife block behind me.
