Badlands: Next Generation Collection, page 12
The my girl shit irked me, though it wasn’t meant in the same way I used it. I was now beginning to understand that. I didn’t care about having his respect or not, but I was glad to have it nonetheless. I stood, rounded the table to the curio cabinet, grabbed a bottle and my bag from a chair, and headed for the stairs.
“We leave at sundown.” I called over my shoulder.
At the top of the stairs, I went for the bedroom all the way at the end on my right hand side. I’d heard this door shut earlier and knew Addy was on the other side.
Pushing it open, the sound of the shower running greeted me from the attached bathroom.
I slipped in and used my boot to close the door, taking a look around the room. It was simple. A queen sized bed was centered with moss colored linen, matching dressers, and a flat screen.
Sitting the bottle on a nightstand, I removed my shirt and plopped my ass down, reaching into my front pocket.
I could hear muffled crying from behind the bathroom door.
I wanted to shove an arrow through the skull of whoever took her friend away.
I also knew she needed to cry now and get it out of her system. I didn’t feel any sympathy for her; sympathy was easy. Empathy, however…it could have easily been one of mine that we lost today.
This was her parents’ fault for keeping her so sheltered while trying to tell her what the Badlands was all about from within a secure compound.
Addy was a self-indulgent princess who had always been protected. That was in there, she was out here now, with me. It was time someone showed her what the Badlands really was.
I knew she would be just fine, though, because I’d been right about her.
She looked like a deviant angel, and behind her eyes lurked something savage.
Chapter Fifteen
Quindecim
The water was ice cold, like tiny razor blades dragging over my skin. I welcomed the stinging sensation, but it did very little to take away the ache in my chest.
I’d done so well holding it together, and then I thought of her empty room back home. Her silence was a comfort I never realized I’d taken for granted.
She listened to me and heard every word I ever said. She protected me, never judged me. She’d always been there—a huge part of my life, and now she was just…gone.
I tried to swallow, but it felt as if there were fragments of glass in my throat. Every breath was a bit harder as something hitched in my chest. A storm gathered behind my eyelids. I placed my back against the wall and a hand over my mouth. I couldn’t hold it back. The tears fell.
I had never lost anyone before—not anyone I was close to.
Maybe it was karma teaching me a lesson. I’d done a lot of terrible things in life, and I was far from done adding to my rap sheet. To many, I wasn’t a good person, and perhaps bad people weren’t allowed to grieve.
But I did. I was.
This hurt.
I didn’t try to stop my tears from falling, only muffled the sounds that seemed as if they would rip open my chest and fill the house.
After pain, there would be anger, and that’s what I was waiting for. She was what I was waiting for, practically screaming eternally for her to wake up. I needed her.
This had to be ten times worse for Nyx. I wanted to go to her but I knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t want my shoulder to cry on; she’d only offer me hers.
I let my tears subside, getting out every last hiccup before I turned the shower off and climbed out. Goose pimples prickled my arms and legs from the shift in temperature. My hair dripped onto the tiled floor as I wrapped a fluffy towel around myself.
It was a little weird to be in a stranger’s home, helping myself to their things, but it wasn’t as if they would be using them again.
Having left my gear bag in the bedroom, I pulled open the door and promptly froze.
Zane was in there—shirtless.
He was laid back on the bed with one forearm thrown across his face. I stared. Even with my mind in a million other places, I could appreciate how well he took care of his body.
“If you touch it, you’ll be able to memorize it better.”
I sighed and shook my head. “What…” I cleared my throat, cringing at the sound of my own voice. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you,” he replied casually.
“Shirtless? With a bottle of Grey Goose?”
He sat up in one fluid movement, muscles flexing as he settled his back against the suede headboard.
He looked down at himself, over at the nightstand where the liquor was, and then to me with an almost boyish smile on his face. “Looks like it to me, yeah.”
“Zane,” I groaned. “I’m going to say something I never thought I would say to you. Please not right now.”
“I actually imagined you saying please for a lot of other reasons.” He patted the empty space on the bed he was making look ridiculously small. “Come sit down.”
“Like this?” I gestured up and down my towel-clad body.
“Just like that.”
“Um, no.”
“No?” he repeated.
“N-o. No.” I tightened my grip on the towel and shuffled backward slightly.
His eyes tracked the miniscule movement.
A slow, deviant grin almost predatory in regard split his face in two. I knew not to trust it. It made my heart beat in a distrustful rhythm.
No matter how good his body would feel beside me, especially right now, going near him with nothing but a towel for armor wasn’t wise.
His eyes perused me from my feet to my head as if he had x-ray vision burning through the fabric. By the time he was done with his thorough examination, I could feel the red in my cheeks, causing his grin to widen.
“You’re picturing it, aren’t you?”
I furrowed my brows, not following him. “Picturing what?”
“My dick destroying every fuckable hole of your body.”
Now I am.
“No…” I heaved an exasperated sigh. “You are something else, Zane.”
He clicked his teeth at me in mock disappointment. “Addy, aren’t you in enough trouble already from that lie this morning?”
Trouble? I quirked a brow. “Does this behavior work with most women? Or is this a specialty reserved just for me?”
“Most offer me their pussy like it’s a delectable treat, never seeming to realize every other bitch has walls and a clit just like them.”
I hid a laugh behind my hand; the sound rattled inside my hollow chest. “So why do you want this one?”
“Because its mine?” He blinked at me as if I were a late bloomer in the thinking department. “You’re not a bitch. You’re my princess.”
Aw, that was sort of sweet.
He patted the bed beside him again.
“We don’t have time for this.”
“You’re right. We don’t have time for what I really have in mind, but we do have time for something...else.”
I had a good idea what that would involve.
“Not leaving till sundown,” he added, pulling a lighter from his pocket.
“Screw it,” I mumbled, walking across the room. Zane and I were both grown; I knew I had nothing he hadn’t seen before. This was the logic I came up with to make me think nothing would happen between us.
It was bullshit. He couldn’t look at me without my mind going to all the places it shouldn’t. We were meant to be rivals, enemies, debauched royalty of opposing empires, yet every thought I had of him was lecherous.
I kept one hand tightly clasped around the top of the towel as I climbed onto the bed. With his torso on open display, I got a clearer picture of the shaded tattoos all over him.
“What’s your favorite color?” he asked as soon as I was positioned beside him, offering me the joint he’d just sparked.
“Red, why? What’s yours?” I questioned, taking it from his hand and bringing it to my lips.
“Black.” He slid closer to me so that our arms were touching, and I was tempted to snuggle into his warmth.
After expelling a breath of smoke away from his direction, I passed itt back and nodded. “That’s fitting.”
“Favorite food?” He placed a hand on my thigh, just below the hem of my towel.
“Scrambled eggs.” I laughed lightly. “Is this twenty-one questions?”
“I was going for fifty, actually.”
“Why?”
He let his ash drop onto the floor with a shrug.
“You know that’s someone’s carpet?”
“So? They’re dead. This is their bed too, which has been fucked in about a million times.”
I wrinkled my nose and glanced down at the neatly made comforter. “That’s gross. Why do you always have to go there?”
“That’s all our world is, princess. Sex, power, pain, and us—the degenerate fucking youth.”
He reached for the bottle of goose and unscrewed the lid, passing it right to me without drinking any.
I shrugged and brought it to my mouth, taking a healthy swig. The burn was everything, settling deep in my gut. I took another and he laughed before finally answering my earlier question.
“Plus, I think I should get to know the gorgeous woman I’m going to be spending the rest of my days with.”
I nearly choked.
“Shut up.” I wiped my mouth with my wrist and handed the bottle back to him, diverting my gaze to a blank space on the comforter, feeling my cheeks warm. He’d sounded sincere.
Asshole Zane I could barely deal with. Sweetheart Zane would annihilate me.
“Are you fucking blushing?”
“No? No. Stop screwing with me. You know you and I—”
“We’re do or die,” he interjected.
I shifted and looked over at him, seeing he was serious.
“I…don’t you know I’m no good for you? You hate me, Zane. I can see it every time you look at me.”
“Every time?” He cocked his head to the side, stare boring into mine.
I rolled my lips, looked up at the ceiling, and counted to three. Zane was a mystery I was trying to solve in spite of all my protests.
He was danger. He was carnal sin. His soul was black and his hands stained red. He was everything I lived and breathed in the flesh.
He was tempting, so tempting.
I exhaled a deep breath and sat up on my knees, successfully dislodging the palm imprinting my skin.
“Zane, we aren’t friends. We aren’t lovers. Hating me even a little is enough for me to say—”
“Fuck this.” He slammed the bottle down, keeping his eyes locked with mine.
There was a momentary lapse, and then he pounced. A small squeak flew from my mouth as I went from being on my knees to flat on my back, staring up at him.
“Friends…lovers…mine. I’d say that trumped both the other titles.”
“You hate me!” I reiterated, pushing on his solid chest.
“You keep saying that.” He dropped his hands to my thighs and spread them, fitting himself between them.
“I hate you. I’m obsessed with you. You’re everything I want. I’m everything you need.”
His touch made it hard to breathe.
I tried not to get lost in the sensation, but it was a welcome distraction from the ache in my chest.
“All you want to do is hurt me. You’re mean.”
“Princess, you like it when I’m mean.”
“I do—Hey!” I crossed my arms over my chest as he pulled the towel away in one swift motion.
“Don’t hide from me,” he snapped, grabbing my wrists and pinning them on either side of my head. “You like it when I’m mean to you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t taunt me just to see how I’d react.”
“I never did that,” I objected, but there was no force behind it.
“Your heart speeds up, you breathe a little deeper, and your pussy starts to ache. You get wet, thinking of all the ways you want me to rip you apart.”
His heated stare traveled from my shallow, heaving breasts, down my navel to between my legs.
“Like now. You’re wet. I can see your pussy glistening.” The hands gripping my thighs began to glide inward, both going for the same place.
“You rubbed your ass against my dick the other night and, while teasing me is the right way to make sure you get fucked hard, all you really need to do is tell me you want it.”
His fingers reached my pussy, my stomach dipped and I swallowed, knowing he felt the truth dripping from it.
“I do want to hurt you. I want to see you bleed for me—scream for me. Break you over and over just to be the one to piece you together again. But I can make hurt feel very fucking good, princess.” He slid one digit inside me, deeper than he had the first time, pulling a soft moan from my chest.
“You’re so beautiful, Adelaide.”
I blinked at him using my full name, and his mouth covered mine not a second later.
Not tentative—rough and demanding. I let everything go and shut my eyes, parting my lips and giving him immediate access. It was just a kiss, yet it felt like my heart was melting, restraint and reasoning right along with it.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, squealing when he sank his teeth into my lower lip, the taste of iron hitting the tip of my tongue.
His hands went beneath my ass and used it to lift me higher on the bed. Instead of returning to hold me, I heard the sound of his zipper going down.
My eyes popped open, my nerves fraying inside me. If I truly wanted to object, this would have been the time for me to open my mouth.
There were no further words spoken, no questions or doubts voiced.
Regardless of what we did or said, this was where we were going to end up.
He stared at me as he shoved down his pants and drawers, not completely removing them. It wasn’t fair how gorgeous he was.
I scanned over his perfectly muscled chest, down his torso, and stopped at his long, very hard cock. I bit my inner cheek as the insatiable need between my legs turned into a throbbing.
There was metal bar going through the head of his dick that had me burning with curiosity. I wanted it inside me.
He slowly climbed up onto the bed, placing his body between my spread legs.
The tip of him pressed between my lips, wedging at my entrance.
He braced one hand above my head. The other he used to hitch my left leg over his hip.
“Scream as loud as you need to.” His taunt was accompanied by a devilish smirk and a thrust of his hips. He pushed and pushed until he was seated deeply inside me.
The pressure of being stretched to the maximum and stuffed full of him almost trumped the burning sensation his rough intrusion had caused.
The air rushed from my lungs on a scream. I grabbed for his shoulders just as he withdrew, and then he slammed himself in again. He cursed beneath his breath, grabbing for my right leg and hooking it around his hip like he had the left.
“You’re mine,” he affirmed, his stare blazing into me.
I felt as if he were seeing more than my outer shell, seeing everything there was to see as he proceeded to fuck me in earnest.
He buried his cock deeper and deeper inside me, fucking me harder the louder I moaned while staring into my eyes. I knew he wanted me to understand that this was his way of staking a final claim. He wanted me to feel his possession, and I did. I felt him everywhere.
His solid body dwarfed mine. Every time his muscles flexed, I felt them beneath my fingertips, breathing him in with every little gasp. His stare reached a private space inside me I never let anyone into.
“Fuck, princess,” he growled, planting himself impossibly deeper and wrapping a hand around my throat.
The mattress creaked beneath us and sweat-slicked skin sliding against sweat-slicked skin.
I called his name, trying to run from the brutal way he was pounding into me. The intensity and fullness were too much.
His grip grew tighter around my neck. It felt like he was truly trying to rip me apart. Pain was a close companion to pleasure, and both fought for precedence.
The metal bar hit a sweet spot, and suddenly I was working with him, gripping him tighter to keep hitting that same place inside me. My pussy flooded with arousal, drenching his cock so thoroughly, a squelching sound filled the air with every thrust he made.
“Remember what I told you last night?” he questioned, his grip tightened more, restricting my airflow.
I croaked out an undecipherable reply . I was climbing rapidly, unrecognizable sounds pouring from my chest.
“I can feel it. I can feel you. Come for me, princess. Come all over my dick,” he rasped in a guttural tone.
As if his words were the permission I needed, the climax hit strong and he dug his fingers into my throat, capturing my continuous moans in his mouth as I shattered around him, dragging my nails down his back.
Specs of white invaded my vision as he continued to drill me into the mattress, not letting my throat go until his own release was over.
When his dick swelled, he didn’t pull out; he emptied himself inside me with a satisfied curse and rough, even thrusts.
We stayed joined together, him barely out a breath, watching me struggle to catch mine as he slowly removed his hand from my throat.
When he pulled out, I glanced between us, seeing my juices and blood all over his cock. My eyes met his; I licked my lips and swallowed.
He ran a gentle finger up and down my swollen slit, pushing me into another small orbit of pleasure that had me shuddering beneath him as a primal look washed over his face.
My demise stared back at me from within his napalm eyes.
TRES
traditus
Amant similes diabolis
Chapter Sixteen
Sedecim
I pulled my shorts on with a wince.
Adding my tank top and boots was more of the same.
