Something twists in my chest. Not satisfaction. Not the cold triumph I should feel at seeing my enemy brought low. Something worse. Something that feels horrifyingly like regret.
She looks beautiful, fierce, and utterly destroyed.
And she’s not done.
I reach for her without thinking, hoping to touch her face, smooth her hair, and do something gentle that might balance out the destruction. But she catches my wrists, forces them above my head, and pins them to the desk with a strength I didn't know she had.
"I told you to fuck me like you hate me," she says, and her voice is steady even though her lower lip is trembling. "So fuck me like you hate me."
Then she sinks down onto me in one brutal motion, taking me to the hilt, and starts to ride.
She’s neither gentle nor careful as she fucks. Not like in the hunting lodge when I felt something in my chest cracking open at the thought I might’ve lost her. This is punishment. This is revenge.
This is two people trying to destroy something they're terrified to keep.
I try to move my hand to grab her hips, but she tightens her grip on me. Her knees pin me by my side, and her hips roll with a ferocity that I know will break us both.
"No," she says. "You don't get to control this. You don't get to make this something it's not."
What is it?I want to ask.What is this, if not two people who can't stop wanting each other even when they’re trying to kill each other?
But there’s no way I can stop her, even if I want to stop her. So, I let her take what she needs. I let her use me the way I used her, because maybe that's the only fairness left. Maybe this is the only honest conversation we can still have.
Sweat drips from her forehead onto my chest. Tears, too—I can see them tracking through the ruined makeup, catching light, and falling like rain.
"Fuck you," she says, grinding down. "Fuck you."
Again and again. There’s a rhythm to her anger, and it’s everything I fucking deserve.
"Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you."
But the thing is…
She's not saying it like she means it at me. She's saying it like she's trying to convince herself. Like if she says them enough times, they'll become true.
Each “fuck you”sounds like a confession she can't afford to make. And with every repetition, they sound suspiciously like three other words wearing a disguise.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
I need to make some sound, I need to let her know that she’s not the only one who feels this way. When she releases one of my hands, I reach up immediately. But before I can touch her, she reaches me first.
She slaps me across the face.
The crack of it echoes through the penthouse. My head snaps to the side. For a moment, all I can hear is my own heartbeat and Bella's ragged breathing.
When I turn back to her, there's a dark wildness in her tear-soaked eyes.
She raises her hand to do it again.
I catch her wrist. Sit up in one fluid motion. In her surprise, she loosens her other hand just enough for me to regain control. My body sits up, my newly freed arm wraps around her back, and I pull her against me so we're chest to chest, eye to eye, and breathing the same wrecked air.
She's still moving. Even held like this, her hips haven't stopped, grinding against me in small, desperate circles that are going to ruin me before I'm ready.
"Fuck you," she says through clenched teeth. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck?—"
My fingers find her hair, give it a tug, and bury my face in her neck.
This time, I press my mouth to the spot where her pulse is racing, and I breathe her in. Sweat and sex and the soft delicious taste of her that I can never name but can never forget. She smells like every terrible thing I want and am not allowed to have.
