“Couldn’t help myself. You have no idea how hot you looked lying there while I pounded into you.”
Shame races through me, wave upon devastating wave. Betrayal twists in my chest, knife sharp. If he’d only put the camera in here to make sure I didn’t try to escape, it would have been one thing. He’s my captor, after all. But he did it to spy on me. He did it even after he knew what the Colony had done. He’d had the cameras in here after Cap was shot, when I’d thought things between us had changed. The knowledge of that cuts like a blade. Was it even real? Was what we shared ever real?
“Were you watching me that night you called me?” But the answer comes to me immediately. He’d told me to roll onto my back. That’s how he’d known I wasn’t on my back—because he saw me.
“You were,” I snap. “You were watching me that night while you made me… You were watching me and getting yourself off!”
“Fuck, you have no idea what you do to me.” He hums in his throat, reaching as if to touch my lips with his fingers. “Only you make me come that hard.”
If I’m honest with myself, the idea of him watching me get off, and of him coming to the sight of it, would be hot if I didn’t feel so betrayed. If I didn’t feel as if he’s taken yet another thing from me on top of everything else.
“This is… I don’t believe… Spider, I swear, I’ll kill you.”
The light in his eyes cuts across my heart like glass.
“This I’d like to see.” He starts toward me, arms outspread, exposing his chest, as if I’m holding a knife with which to stab him in the heart.
I back away, and he reaches for my arm.
“Don’t touch me,” I growl, leaping back as though one touch from him will incinerate me on contact. “If you touch me, you fucking animal, I’ll kill you,” I snarl.
Spider steps forward, closing the space between us easily. He grabs my wrist and hauls me to him. His expression is cruel and smirking as he presses me against him with nothing more than a hand around my small wrist.
He’s killing me softly from the inside out, and he’s enjoying every moment of it. The connection I thought I once had with him feels suddenly like a cruel lie, one that perhaps I fooled myself into believing was there.
Fury explodes out of me. I know there’s no way I could really hurt him, no use in fighting him, but anger and shame won’t allow me to think straight. Suddenly, I’m pounding at his chest with my fist and swinging at his face.
“Let go of me, you low life shit! You don’t get to touch me. You don’t get to put your filthy hands on me,” I snarl, hammering at him. I’m thrashing and pummeling his huge chest.
Spider’s large hands trap my wrists, holding them against his chest so that I’m beating my fists against him with hardly any real force, and all my thrashing is for naught.
“Let go of me!” I scream. “I hate you! I swear I’ll kill you!”
“Enough.” Spider whirls me around and his arms pin mine at my sides as he holds his own wrist at my stomach, locking his arms in place.
I sob, tossing my head and kicking out at the air uselessly.
“Fuck, Wildcat.” The amusement in his grunt makes me livid. “You want me to hurt you?” he adds more firmly.
His arms remain around me, a relentless grip that leaves me no hope of hurting him or escaping. My rage burns itself out, and my struggles die. Small, broken sobs shake out of me.
“Are you finished?” he murmurs.
I freeze, staring at the floor. He’d said that as if I’m a misbehaving child throwing a temper tantrum.
It sinks in how foolish it is to fight him, and I deflate, helplessness and hopelessness pulling me down into their depths. I want to destroy him, want to hurt him, but all I can do is just accept whatever he does to me. The thought guts me.
Keeping one arm around me, Spider cups my forehead with his palm, pressing my head to his shoulder. When I remain compliantly against him, his palm strokes my hair back.
Slowly, he releases me. Then he walks around me until he’s standing in front of me.
“Please, take the cameras down.” It’s a ridiculous request, a plea for some measure of mercy