Page 7 of Ambition
“You mean the great intel on just how big Theo’s dick is?” I know it’s childish, but I can’t help it. I step forward, unable to stay away.
She backs up, her eyes never leaving mine as we do a familiar dance, but usually it’s in the context of controlled training. Fights with the sole intent of bettering ourselves.
This feels like worse.
I step forward. She steps back.
And again.
Until…her spine collides with the wall, her breath coming out in a small rush. “Seven inches, if I had to guess.” Her eyes narrow.
“Did you even feel it, considering you’ve had an inch more when I’ve been inside of you?” I press my palms on either side of her head, using my physicality to pin her to the wall.
She rolls her eyes. “That’s not really how vaginas work.”
For an abrupt moment, I want to laugh, she knows I do too, the way her lips tip a little upward and her eyes widen like she’s silently pleading with me to make this all a joke. But I don’t give in, and she leaves the shallowness of humor behind.
“You want to leave this alone,” she says quietly, her throat moving as she swallows.
I glance down, and then I see it.
What I missed before.
More marks around her throat.
My stomach flips, even though I know it’s her thing. Flashes of her asking me to hurt her in the months after the warehouse cascade through my brain and I feel turned on and nauseous both, imagining her doing the same with someone like Theo. It’s not that he or Vipera is bigger than Writhe or richer or anything, but he’sworse.He has far less morals and is rather indiscriminate in his killing sprees. Partly why the 6 see him as a problem. Plus there’s that penchant for sadism and submission that I don’t want anywhere near Isa, no matter that she loves the same.
“It’s just a job,” she whispers, like she knows I saw the evidence of her kink, but that’s not how I see it in my head. “Let it go, Von.”
But everything feels suddenly worse. More serious. I press each fingertip to the cold wall, trying to steady my breathing. To not think of Halloween, seven years ago, imagining if I didn’t run fast enough, if I didn’t get there quick enough, my life would end if hers had. I try to put the coldness back into place. It’s so easy with everyone else. Like breathing, my indifference.
But her…her.
I shake my head once. “Don’t go back there.” I try to stay rational. To give her a real reason as I glance at her throat. “If he did that the first night… What if he knows who you really are? Who Writhe truly is? What if—”
She places her palm over my mouth.
I know my logic is fucked. It’s a little bit of rough sex. I have no ground to stand on, but it doesn’t mean I won’t try.
Even so, my eyes flutter closed with my lips to her skin.
“Stop,” she whispers. “Don’t drive yourself crazy over…over me. I can take care of myself, Von. You know that.”
I think of the man she…hurt.Murdered.
It doesn’t matter how dangerous she can be. It doesn’t obliterate the thought…Iwant to take care ofyou.
Slowly, she curls her fingers into a fist until only her thumb is pressed to my bottom lip. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”
My eyes flash open.
I remember her in the redness of the warehouse room. The clawing of music in my ears. The way she must have been screaming over it, sitting beside a man she fought off or snuck up on as he guarded her—she never said which, why she went after him. Only that there was a pitchfork there. The warehouse formerly operated as a supply building for a farming company.
She used the tool to…
I blink away the memory. I think of ones that built me up for that moment of finding her there.
Seeing my mom come home covered in blood. My dad with his arm in a sling. Watching as my father put stitches in my mother’s thigh after an overzealous target tried to shred an artery and a hospital visit might spread too much information.