“These are my lips.”
He commanded with just the kiss, every brutal swipe of his tongue calculated torture. Even as another man held my wrist, I knew only Grayson—hot, demanding, vicious.
“Mine to mark,” Grayson said between his teeth, dragging my bottom lip out.
“Mine to ruin.” Then he bit. Hard.
My gasp melted into a groan, ripped and ravaged from my lungs.
“Give your groans back to me.” He sounded demonic. “Give them all back to me.”
Then Grayson shoved me off, dragging his thumb across the blood on his lower lip, glaring at me as he shoved his thumb into his mouth.
I finally got my New Year’s kiss with my husband, just as I was being sent away to the bed of another man.
Grayson went inside without another word.
The wind whipped the dark soil around West like some monster in an old black and white movie. A thing that lured maidens in fairy tales.
He dragged a knuckle down my flushed skin. “The look on your face was spectacular, Angel.”
I saw the triumph in his eyes, and I tore my face from him. “I didn’t choose you, West.”
He grinned. “But you didn’t choose him.”
Thirty-Nine
Dear Atlas,
I am your snitch and I’ve come to whisper secrets I can’t even say to myself.
Why can’t I see him as the villain?
Since that night, a briar has grown untamed inside of me, the feeling that refuses to die: I want more.
It drips ink into my blood.
Is it the shame that makes my fantasy so poignant?
I want him, but I don’t…want him. I w
ant to carve the rust off my heart.
I am your nun and I have come to pray at your altar.
Atlas, please carve out the humid sweetness from that night that keeps rusting along the curves and crevices of my beating organ. Use reality’s jagged knife.
With ugly.
With mean.
With fucking.
Bruise me and make me bleed until I don’t see anything but the truth.
I don’t want him; I want a safe facsimile, some effigy I can use to scrape the doubt and rust from my heart.
Do my wicked fantasies make me wicked? Does my shame make me shameful?