RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,79
fucking freezer burn.”
“My heart is not top sirloin.”
“Whatever. It’s fucked is all I’m saying, and you telling me you’re capable of caring about anything is frankly so unbelievable that this seems like a massive waste of both my time and yours.”
“I’d hate to waste your time, Little E.” God, how can I want to kiss her so fucking badly while she’s telling me that I’m a lost cause? It’s nothing so predictable as the fact that most girls normally trip over themselves to be in my presence and she decidedly does not. There’s an element of that, yes, but this need…fuck me, it’s so much more than that. She’s weighed me and found me wanting. I’ve never given a shit about what other people think of me before, but this girl’s low opinion of me matters more than I can bear. Her defiance, and her strength, and her self-assuredness are addicting. She knows exactly who she is and what she stands for, and I want to breathe her like she’s life its very self.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, turning her head away. The candlelight glows against her hair, creating a golden halo around her head.
“How am I looking at you?” This is sheer insolence on my part. I know precisely how I’m looking at her, and I’m not planning on dialing it down one iota. I want to devour her. Claim her. Bind her to me any way that I can. And if she can read that in the burning fire in my eyes, then so fucking be it. I’m not ashamed of how I’m feeling, and I sure as fuck won’t be hiding it from her, either.
“Just…behave,” she warns. “You promised.”
“Alright, fine. Have it your way. Ask me another question.” I wait with bated breath, tension building between my shoulder blades as I anticipate what she’s going to say next. It’s thrilling, this exchange, to know that the things she’s asking me here and now represent moments in the past when she sat alone in her thoughts and wondered things about me.
Elodie takes three deep mouthfuls from her glass of wine. “Okay. Why did Dashiell treat Carina so badly? Was it some kind of bet between you guys?”
“Dashiell likes to break his toys when they become too important to him.”
She wrinkles her nose in disgust. “So, what? He did something to humiliate her and cause her pain because he liked her too much? That’s the excuse you’re arming him with?”
“I’m not arming him with shit. And it’s not an excuse. I’m giving you the facts. Dash reacts badly to situations where he finds his power diminished in any way. And liking Carina made him weak. He saw that weakness as a perceived threat, and so he rooted it out with his bare hands and crushed it before it could hurt him.”
The attic falls silent, the dusty old space breathing around us as Elodie studies my face. Her eyes rove over my brow, down the line of my nose. Her clear blue eyes hover over my mouth for a split second before they snap up to meet my own gaze. She looks like she’s stewing on something, words piling up in a traffic jam on the tip of her tongue.
“I know what you wanna know,” I whisper.
“Oh? Then please go ahead. Enlighten me with an answer, if you’re suddenly so all-powerful and all-knowing.”
My breath catches in my throat—the strangest, most alien sensation. Something I haven’t experienced in a very long time. “You want to know if that’s how my mind works. You want to know if that’s what I’ll do to you, if you let me in. But you can’t allow yourself to ask me that, because asking is admission that you’re thinking about it. Letting me in. And that terrifies you.”
“Jesus, Wren, I’m—”
No. I won’t let her dispute it. It’s so fucking obvious. I’m sick of biding my time, waiting for her to relinquish herself to me. In one quick, predatory lunge, I rise up onto my knees, lean across the blanket, and I cup her face in both of my hands. I don’t kiss her. Not yet. It’s almost impossible, but I hold myself back. “My toys have never been important to me, Little E,” I whisper. “I don’t throw them away because I’m afraid of what they’ll do to me, or because I’m bored of them. I discard them because they never live up to my expectations. But you…” Her eyelids shutter. “You’re not