Page 26 of Where We Ended

His fingers gripped my chin. “Don’t you get it yet, Natty? Silas has his priorities, and you aren’t one of them. He’s been around, watching you, hasn’t he…everywhere you go?”

I glared up at Alec and tried to push, but his body covered mine and he wouldn’t budge.

“Do you know how pathetic it makes you look that you’re willing to play house in another club, pretending to be some baking princess who wouldn’t dare hurt a fly, all while you’re just waiting for your dark prince to come and tell you it’s okay to come home?”

“That’s not how it is.” I pushed again, my hands sliding against his slick skin and getting nowhere.

He drew closer, his erection had mostly died down thankfully as he pressed close. “You’re choosing not to live your life, Natty. You could move on with someone who wants a life with you and yet you’re just frozen.”

He slapped the tile next to my face. “You will always be the runner-up to revenge and the mistress of vengeance. He wants the darkness more than he will ever crave your light.”

Like a soaked piece of paper, Alec had just reduced my life to a limp mass of blurred lines and smeared ink. Fat tears began trailing down my face, and I hated him for bringing his hand up to cradle my trembling jaw.

With his last words, every ounce of fight I had lifted from me like a cloud of steam and in its place was complacency.

“You have others who crave that light. Others who have needed you and all the hope you always saved for him. You have those who would also rip the world from its axis just for a chance to belong to you.”

Alec continued to stare at me as I cried. His thumb came up, swiping at my tears, only to then smear them along his lips, tasting the salt with his tongue.

My head tipped back as I asked, “Does crushing me really bring you so much pleasure?”

“If it’s the only way I’d ever get to keep you, then yes.” Alec’s lips brushed against my jaw.

I stared at the tile, waiting for him to be done with me because the fight had left me years ago when my choices had first started to be stolen from me. Back when Dirk had begun his obsession with me…when I’d become a thing instead of a person. That’s what Alec had reduced me to, and he had no idea how deep his betrayal gutted me.

Alec finally registered I wasn’t engaging with his ministrations, and he released me, shifting under the warm spray. I moved as well and began washing my hair. I didn’t care that Alec was watching me, or that he started washing his own body with a bar of soap, a mere few inches from me. I didn’t care that when he cleaned his cock, he stroked it several times and, in the process, the slick tip touched my thigh.

“Did he ever get branded for you?” His whispered words were followed up with a pleading look, as his hand wrapped around his cock. “Did he get a tattoo anywhere on his body that represents you? Because I did, Artie, all of this is for you.”

His arm flexed, the one he’d connected to me. As if he wanted me to see it every single day.

I rinsed my hair. “Silas only has one tattoo that matters to me.”

Alec only stared at me, stroking himself. “Does he look at you like this? Does he see the way your back dips just enough to leave a dimple right here?” He brushed his finger over my lower spine, making me flinch. “Does he think about sinking his tongue into every hole you have, only to prepare it to be filled with his cock?”

His wrist rotated quicker as my skin began to pebble from the cold air. The hot water was gone.

“When’s the last time you were fucked by him?”

I covered myself with my arms. “I’d like to get dressed.”

“You can get dressed, but I’m going to finish first and you’re going to watch me. You’re going to see what you do to me, what you’ve always done to me, and you’re going to remove your arms so I can see those tits while I do it.”

My nostrils flared in anger. Hurt whirling inside me like a tornado.

“And if I don’t?”

His caresses became more insistent, the head of his cock weeping with clear cum. Eyes hooded, he explained, “If you don’t then I’ll have to take a step closer and paint your skin, or I could have you lick it from the tiles once I finish all over the shower floor.”

I set my chin, glaring at him.

“This is sexual assault, Alec. Are you really stooping so low as to take something from me that I’m not willing to give?”

My heart thrashed as I tried to remain stoic and calm.

I thought I knew him.

All these years, I had assumed there was an understanding between us, a clear line that he’d never cross, no matter what or where we landed in life.