“Do it,” she said. “If you can kill for me, you can kill me.”
“You don’t get to say that.”
“I don’t want this,” she said, hysterical. She shoved me again, as though she could push me through the wall. The knife was still in my hands. “I want the part of you that you are afraid to let out here.”
I grabbed her by the throat and turned her, pushing her into the wall where I had just been. She didn’t have time to react; she was too emotional. I could feel the tight, tense edge in her. She wasn’t scared. I didn’t know what she was feeling right now, but God, part of me wanted her like this.
I brought the blade to her collarbone and dragged the dull side across her skin, a feather-faint line from her neck to her sternum. Her breath hitched.
“You think you trust me?” I asked through gritted teeth.
She nodded.
“No, I want you to say it.”
“I trust you.”
“Then don’t look away.”
I kept my hand against her throat, thumb pressed against the fluttering pulse there. The tip of the blade met the neckline of the tanktop and I hooked it on the blade, jerking it down with a surgical ease. It was precise, calculated. I knew exactly how much pressure to apply. She arched against the pressure, but not away from me. I felt her pulse quicken.
I traced it along her bare sternum now, letting the sharp tip snag against the fabric of her bra.
“You want to know who I really am?” I asked, moving my lips along her jaw as I put the knife against the wall beside her. “Here I am.”
She squirmed, testing the restraint I had on her.
“Let me go.”
“Make me.”
I kissed her, rough and hungry. I wanted her to know that she asked for this. She bit my lower lip hard enough that I tasted my own blood and I laughed against her mouth.
“You don’t get to kiss me,” she snapped, my blood trickling down her lip and staining her teeth.
“Good. Fight me.”
And she did. She twisted beneath me, trying to pry my hand off of her throat, but every time she moved, I moved closer. Every inch she tried to reclaim, I took more. She bit me. Her nails dug into my shoulders, leaving dozens of bruising crescent moons on my flesh. She pulled my hair.Shewas in total control, even though I was the one pinning her down. She owned every second of it.
“You still want me?” she asked, breathless.
“More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
She grabbed my shirt and tried to pull me into a kiss, exactly what she had just told me I couldn’t have. I turned her around, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and putting the blade toher throat. I was careful to keep the sharp edge away, pressing the other side against her flesh.
I handed her the knife and our eyes met. Without saying it aloud, I was telling heryour turn. She took it, and for a moment, it hovered between us. Her hands didn’t shake. She dragged the flat of the blade down my torso, following it with her eyes. When she got to my pants, she didn’t stop, tracing the knife over the length of my cock.
“Take them off,” she said.
I obeyed, pushing my pants down my legs and kicking them away. My skin burned from adrenaline and the ache of wanting her, even when I told myself I shouldn’t. Even when I had just been through a rollercoaster of emotions with her in the last hour. I was starting to think that maybe she was a psycho.
But she was breathtaking: furious and powerful and in control. I sat on the edge of the bed as she stripped off her shorts and underwear. She crouched in my lap, thighs around my hips.
“I want to feel you, but I want to feel what you’re afraid to show me,” she said, voice hoarse.
One of my hands found her waist and I tried to pull her closer. I brushed my nose over her cheek and quietly asked, “Let me kiss you?”
She responded by moving the knife blade to my throat, and our parted lips ghosted over each other but never made full contact. “No.”
