“Fucking hate you,” I spat, shoving my palm against his face, smashing his head back to the floor.
He laughed, a sound unhinged. “Not as much as I hate myself,” he said, and bucked again, rolling us so he caged me beneath him, arms braced on either side of my head. He stared down at me, breathing ragged.
My chest heaved, and he just stared, eyes wild and wet and empty.
He just pressed harder, his hips rutting against me, friction building and building until my pulse blurred into a single, vibrating note.
It wasn’t arousal; it was annihilation, the need to be ground down to nothing, to finally match the ruin of my insides.
“I could fuck you right here,” he said, voice shredded, “and you’d let me. You’d beg for it.”
I bucked against his palm, half in protest, half in surrender. “You don’t get to have me,” I hissed. “Not after what you did.”
He began circling my clit in tight, brutal circles, thumb rough against the swollen ache of me, and everything sparkled behind my eyelids, black and glittering.
He hissed, “Filthy little bitch. You don’t know what you want.”
I tried to arch away, but he crushed my hips to the floor, fingers working at me with a violence that bordered on hatred.
“Fuck you,” I gasped, but my own voice came out needy, traitorous.
My cheeks burned with shame, but I rocked against his hand anyway, desperate for the raw sensation, the punishment.
He pressed his palm harder, every nerve sparking white-hot and I let a whimper slip.
The pressure, the heat, the need. It was all tangled up with grief and anger, a snarl of feelings so dense I couldn’t breathe.
I just wanted to feel. In the moment, I forgot about the blame, the anger, the hatred. All I could think about was the sensation of his fingers on me.
My head felt like a crow’s wing pinned behind glass, fluttering but hopeless: I was watching myself from very far away. A wet, sickly dream where shame and pleasure were the same color, the same temperature.
I remembered the way my mother used to say,a real woman takes what she’s given and makes it last.Maybe that’s what I was doing. Making this last, letting every second of it stake a claim inside me.
Caiden made a trail with his mouth towards my ear. “You already gave yourself away to my best friend. Don’t pretend you’re pure.” He ground his hips against my thigh. “You’re just a hole. Just like your mom. Just like your sister.”
I arched and writhed and then bucked him off, my elbow slamming into his ribs.
He rolled, groaning. His eyes were glassy, unfocused and wild.
I rolled away, my body burning, skin red and welted where he’d held me.
The whole room spun with anger and disgust, and for a moment I thought I might throw up. The sight of my own trembling legs, the sticky ache between them, was almost too much to bear.
I thought of Lillian. I wondered if this was how she’d felt, in the final moments before she let go. Split and ruined, wanting to claw herself out of her own skin, the scream of being alive so much sharper than the silence of the grave.
I caught his stare, hateful and wounded, I wondered which one of us had gone further off the edge.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” I spat, the words raw and blistered from the inside.
This anger within me had bled into destruction.
He sat up, arms braced behind him, a menacing expression on his face. “You’re no better than me, Amelia. We’re the samefucking animal.”
It stung because it was true, or close enough to make me sick. I felt the heat drain from my bones.
“Get out,” I said, and the words came out as a frigid whisper. The cold in my voice startled even me. “You’re drunk and you shouldn’t even be here.”
Caiden’s jaw spasmed. For an instant, I thought he might lunge for me again, smash the last of the furniture, put a fist through the television, maybe even put a fist through me.
