RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,74
though, do you.” He states it—a raw, undeniable fact. “You daydream about my mouth on yours all the time. I can see it playing out in your head. It’s quite the show. You imagine what it would be like, trapped in a dark room with me, my hot breath in your ear, my sweat on your tongue, my dick rubbing up against your cunt, and you can barely sit still. And when you really lose yourself, you let your mind off its leash and you fantasize about what it would be like to have me actually inside you. You sit so very still, beautiful Elodie. So, so still. You don’t move a muscle, not even a twitch. You stare straight ahead, you don’t even dare to breathe, but I see your white knuckles and your pulse hammering away in the hollow of your throat. The way your eyelids shutter. The red shame that colors your cheeks when you’re done with me in your head.” He picks up the bottle of wine next to him and rips out the cork, holding the mouth of it to his lips. “It’s the most distracting, arousing, incensing thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some shit, let me tell you.” He drinks, just as deeply as when he just polished off the water a second ago. This time I force myself to make eye contact as he swallows once, twice, three times.
When he sets the bottle down, I get to my feet and slowly walk toward him. “You know what?” I whisper.
“What?” he whispers back.
“I wish I could pick up that bottle and smash it over your fucking head, Jacobi.”
“What’s stopping you?” He fires back the taunt so quickly, he must have known I was picturing that, too.
“Because I’m not insane. I don’t just go around assaulting people because I feel like it. I’m not a slave to my compulsions.”
“Shame.” Wren lets his head fall back; he looks up at me with a lazy, self-assuredness that makes me so angry I want to cry. “If you were, we’d have dispensed with this bullshit and fucked already.”
I curl my lip up at him. “Is that all you care about? Fucking me? If I gave in and let you have me, would you finally grow bored and move on to your next victim?”
“No.” He says it without surprise or condemnation. “I won’t ever be done with you. Just as you’ll never offer yourself up to me just to get me to leave you alone, sweet girl.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not sweet.”
He laughs. “That’s the part I like the best. When was your last tetanus shot?”
“What?”
He points the bottle of wine at me. At my feet, specifically. “You forgot your shoes, Stillwater. I did my best, but it’s far from clean up here. You’re also bleeding from your hand.”
I look down, shocked to see my own bare feet against the floorboards. How the hell did I neglect to put shoes and socks on? Kicking and scrabbling my way through the crawlspace alone could have cut me to ribbons. Damnit, what the hell was I thinking?
That you wanted to kill the conceited asshole lying on the blankets in front of you, that’s what.
Urgh. I was in such a rush to get up here and tear him a new one that I wasn’t thinking at all. My knuckles buzz with pain as I clench my hand into a fist, inspecting the damage I did there. It’s not as bad as it could be—the gash isn’t that deep, but it definitely is bleeding. I pull my hoody sleeve down over the injury, covering it up with the cuff. “It’ll be fine,” I clip out. “It’ll stop in a minute.”
Wren’s sharp gaze flays me down to the bone. “Sit down, Elodie.”
“I will not. I only came up here to ask you who the fuck you think you are.”
“And once I tell you who I think I am, you’re gonna wriggle back into that crawlspace and disappear back downstairs?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Exactly. Okay. Well I think I’m the only guy in this godforsaken hellhole who you’ve looked twice at. I think I’m the guy you can’t stop thinking about. I also think I’m the only guy who’s ever made your heart race out of your chest. Am I wrong?”
I narrow my eyes to slits. “Yes.”
Using the wine bottle again, Wren points at me rudely. “You are completely incapable of telling the truth, aren’t you? That’s pretty sad.”