“I know he’s there,” Sullen says quietly, his voice calm and controlled yet he sounds even more dangerous this way. “I know you wanted to undress, for him. Give him a show.” His grip on my wrist tightens as I dart my gaze to his, my head bowed, lips inches from his own. But before I can deny his bullshit allegation, he dips his chin and nudges his nose against my hair, the side of my face, then lower, to the crook of my neck, causing goosebumps to erupt on my flesh. “I thought I could trust you. But you are just so fuckingbad,Karia. You couldn’t tell me when you saw him, could you? You wanted him to see all of you, one last time?”
That’s not… I just… “I didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.” My voice is hoarse. My thoughts are muddled. I can feel Cosmo still watching, and in my head, he is smiling cruelly at all of this. “I’m sorry, I?—”
“You’re sorry?” Sullen pulls back, expression blank as he studies me, his nose close to my own. “What is it you said you’d do for me?” He glances at my mouth, then back up. “With your tongue?”
“Sullen, I?—”
He grabs my jaw roughly, squeezes my wrist with his other hand. “No, no. Say it. Let him hear.”
My neck feels impossibly hot. “I said I would… clean up… your…” I trail off, sweat prickling at the back of my neck. Everything is bendy and wavy and I know I am drunk, but not enough for this.
“My what?” Sullen coaxes, his tongue curving over my mouth ashelicksme.
“Your…” My pulse feels sluggish. Even my eyes are seared with heat. “Your… I would clean up your?—”
“She doesn’t need to say,” Cosmo says coldly.“I heard it.”
Sullen brushes his thumb over my bottom lip, a sick smile on his pretty mouth, then he turns calmly to face Cosmo. “Run along,” he says quietly as I look between them both, feeling strangely as if I am spinning in infinite space. “For you,she would never.”
Cosmo straightens from the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. He narrows his gaze, but he doesn’t look like he’s going to leave, despite the way the color seems to have drained from his face with Sullen’s true words. “I don’t trust you with her?—”
“There is nothing I would let harm her. Including you.” Sullen’s hand lowers to my throat, curling gently over the bandage, the bruises, but he doesn’t look away from Cosmo. “And if she wanted to run, she could have done it many times. Isn’t that right, Little Sun?” All without facing me, like I am merely a prop, a toy, an object under his command.
In this moment, it’s true.
I shift my hips, grinding against him. “I don’t want to run from you, Sullen,” I answer quietly, then I lift my gaze to my friend. “And I don’t want to be with you tonight, Cosmo. I already told you to leave me alone.”
Sullen’s voice is rougher when he says, “Good girl, Princess. I’d hate to murder him, too.” Then his thumb begins to pick at the bandage along my throat.
Chapter 28
Karia
Idon’t watch more than a heartbeat as Cosmo pushes away from the doorframe and ducks beyond the gauzy curtains.
My eyes come to Sullen’s.
He’s staring at me as he flicks the edge of the bandage free from my throat. I bite back my wince even as it stings, the way he slowly rips it off, almost as if he is savoring each moment that it drags and pricks. His dark gaze watches me intently, searching for my discomfort, and I can’t stop clenching my jaw as he continues pulling, goosebumps and heat rising along my skin. It hurts even as cool air rushes in from my exposed flesh, but I don’t want him to stop anything he’s doing.
I want him to do worse. More.Everything.
I lean into him instead of flinching away, our noses nearly touching as he tugs the last scrap of sticky fabric free. My pulse beats in my throat where I was cut, my skin raw from the torturous way he undid all the gentleness in which he took care of me in the aftermath of having a knife held to my pulse point.
His grip around my wrist tightens but still, he makes no move to touch me elsewhere, despite the fact I am aching forhim. After what I did in his room, what I said to Cosmo, how I have chosen him at every turn, I deserve to get fucked.
I slide my hand up his arm, along the corded muscles of his shoulders, broad beneath my fingers. I curve my hand over the back of his neck, along his bandana, my thumb brushing the sliver of skin between his hairline and his covering.
His eyes drop from mine as he pulls back an inch, and I watch as he holds up the wide bandage he pulled off, cream-colored on one side, but my darkened blood dots the white of the other.
It’sthishe is focused on.
My pulse leaps to my throat, causing the pounding there at my wound to escalate, quicken. I imagine this is how a rabbit feels trapped in the gaze of a fox, despite the fact he is not looking at me.
Then, slowly, very deliberate in every motion, he lifts the dirty wrapping to his mouth as his gaze flicks to mine, locking hold much like my breath trapped inside my lungs.
He flicks his tongue out to the blood-stained fabric, tasting me.
His eyes flutter closed, chin lifting as his nostrils flare, like my blood is divinity.
