Revenge at Raleigh High Page 10

  She’s as delicate and fragile as a china doll. Her features are so finely shaped and graceful that they contradict her true nature. It doesn’t matter how strong she is now, though. Unless she tells me to stop, that she doesn’t want me to touch her, then I’m going to devour her and to hell with the fucking consequences.

  Silver retreats a step, head craning back to look at me properly. The muscles in her throat work as she swallows again. “Take those shorts off. Now,” I command. “If you want to come in here and tease me, Silver, you’d better fucking commit.” I’m only wearing a pair of sweatpants, no underwear, and my cock protrudes out in front of me like an iron staff, tenting the soft material. I’m not embarrassed by how turned on I am. Far from it. When Silver’s eyes dart down to the situation between my legs, I grab hold of my dick through the sweats, squeezing until I make myself curse.

  “If you’re not naked in three seconds, Argento, I can’t be held accountable for what comes next.” I’m being pulled down into the madness of my own lust, but beneath it all I’m still thinking perfectly clearly. The moment I see hesitation flickering in her eyes, the moment I sense her heart skip a beat out of anxiety and not desire, then this all stops. I would never hurt her. I’d never ask her to do something she didn’t want to. I’d definitely never make her do something against her will and Silver knows that.

  She proves that when she takes hold of her shorts by the waistband and slowly pushes them down over her hips and then her thighs. I watch, fascinated, as she steps out of the puddle of red silk at her feet, my heartrate ramping up, the muscle kicking like an angry mule against the inside of my ribcage. She’s more than I could ever have dreamed of. How could I have possibly dreamed of a girl like her, when even the beautiful things I’ve experienced in this lifetime have all been ugly in comparison?

  My palms are burning, itching for me to reach and touch her, but I’m not ready yet. I want to take her in some more. I need to savor her. Taking a step forward, I’m pleased, and hard, and aching all over when she mirrors my action, stepping back, away from me. I gave her a chance to run and that time has passed. Silver knows this well enough, but it still looks like she’s planning on dancing with me a little all the same.

  Another step forward and Silver skates back, her bare ass nearly hitting the wall behind her. Her gaze flickers toward the bedroom door, and I relent a little, angling myself instinctively, making it clear to her that she can get to the exit if she decides she wants to bolt.

  Her nostrils flare as she looks back at me. Her back straightens, shoulders pulling away from her ears, and she shakes her head. “I don’t want you to do that,” she says. “Don’t give me an out. If I want one, I’ll ask for it.”

  I pause, hovering a foot away from her, pulling in slow, long, deep breaths in an attempt to calm the roaring in my head. “You’re in control of your fear?” My voice is muted in the heavy quiet of the room.

  Silver looks up at me, her jaw jutting out in defiance. “Yes. I can handle anything you throw at me.”

  She is so, so wrong. God, I’ve never met anyone so fucking wrong before in my entire life. I’m hardly going to give her a demonstration to prove that point, but still. Wrong. Reaching out for her, I take a lock of her hair and twist it slowly around my fingers. “You don’t know what you’re talking about...”

  “You think I don’t know myself? I’ll prove it to you.” Her tone is steady, confidence pouring off her strong enough that I’m almost convinced by her statement. “Kiss me,” she commands.

  Kiss her? I smirk, my cock pulsing painfully in beneath my sweats, begging to be unleashed. If she thinks me kissing her is going to prove anything, then she’s got another thing coming. I don’t think she’s thought this through properly, but still…I’m hardly going to deny her a fucking kiss.

  Prowling forward one last step, Silver tenses up when she realizes she’s run out of space and there’s nowhere for her to retreat to now. Her hands remain slack by her sides as I bend over slightly, lowering my mouth to hers. The kiss is like a searing brand, hot and dizzying. Her lips are so soft and pliable. The moment I make contact with her, my imagination riots over what could be done with such a soft, sweet, fuckable mouth. I’ve had my hands in Silver’s hair, guiding her head down as she takes my cock as deep as she can, but I’ve never made her gag on it before. I’ve never asked her to go beyond her capabilities. I’ve never asked her to give up oxygen in order to take another inch of me.

  A slideshow of deviant, filthy images present themselves to me as I slip my tongue inside her mouth. Things I would never dream of really doing with her, because of everything she went through with Jacob, Cillian and Sam on that bathroom floor. It isn’t just that, though. She’s good. She’s sweet. She doesn’t need to be warped by my every vile perversion.

  She whimpers as I kiss her deeper, burying my hands into her hair, crushing my body up against her chest. Squirming, she seems to want to get even closer. Her breath is frantic as she takes hold of me by the wrist and guides my hand from her hair down…I think she’s encouraging me to touch her breasts, but she halts my hand by her neck, guiding me to the column of her pale throat.

  I suddenly realize what she wants from me, and a surge of need fires around my body like a bullet exploding from a gun. She wants me to choke her. My fingers tighten reflexively around her throat, just for a second, a deep chasm of satisfaction yawning open in my chest, but then I’m ripping my hand away, clenching it into a painful fist. “No. No fucking way. I’m not doing that,” I pant.

  Silver grabs my hand, holding it to her throat again. “You are. I want you to.”

  This time I move my whole body away from her, not trusting myself to stick to my decision. “No fucking way. We aren’t getting caught up in that kind of power play bullshit, Silver. Trust me. You don’t want it.”

  A stunned look of confusion passes over her face. “Trust me. I do.”

  “Silver—”

  “Haven’t you done it before?”

  “Of course I’ve done it before.”

  “Aren’t you into stuff? Doesn’t it turn you on?”

  “It doesn’t matter if it turns me on. It’s not…it’s not right. Not for us, anyway.”

  The confusion on her face disappears in a heartbeat, swiftly replaced by hurt. “So…you’ve fucked other girls before and been rough with them. You’ve liked it, it’s turned you on, but you won’t do it with me because…what, I’m too broken?”

  “No, Silver. You’re not fucking broken. I know that more than anyone.”

  “Then what? Why won’t you do it, even if I’m asking you to?”

  Fuck, I hate the way she’s looking at me. Like I swore I could give something to her, something that’s important to her, and now I’m going back on my word. Sighing heavily, I return to her, taking her face in my hands and I kiss her again. Relief floods through me when the stiffness in her muscles eases and she relaxes against me. I don’t want to disappoint her. I don’t want to let her down. I also don’t want to do something she thinks she’s ready for, only to scare the shit out of her and send her spiraling headfirst into some kind of dark fucking PTSD nightmare that she never re-emerges from either.

  My logic must be kind of obvious, must make some kind of sense to her, because Silver pulls away, resting her forehead against my chest, and says, “I’m not stupid, Alex. I don’t need handling with kid gloves. I know what I want.”

  I smooth my hand over her hair, resting my chin on the top of her head. This is fucking brutal. My blood is molten lava in my veins. My erection’s now so hard and painful that I want to pick her up and take her right here where we stand. “Okay, then why do you want that?” I ask. I have to know. If she can’t give me a reasonable answer, then there’s no fucking way I’ll ever consider doing something like that with her.

  At first, I think I’ve got her stumped; she doesn’t say anything for a long time. But then her even voice breaks the silence. “I don’t want to feel breakable. I want
to feel like I’m in control of my own body. It excites me to think of handing myself over to you, knowing that you could do absolutely anything to me, because I trust you and I know you’ll never hurt me, but the risk of it…the risk of it excites me, Alex. Is that what you need to hear to be okay with it?”

  “Don’t tell me anything because you think I need to hear it.”

  She takes my hand again, but this time she doesn’t try and wrap it around her throat. She firmly thrusts it between our bodies, down in between her legs. I react the same way any hot-blooded male would react. I stroke my fingers through the folds of her pussy, finding her clit, and her point is instantly proven. She’s not just wet; the insides of her thighs are slick with her need.

  “Fuck,” I hiss between my teeth. “Holy shit, Silver.”

  “I was thinking about you on top of me when I was touching myself upstairs. I was thinking about you holding me down. I was thinking about your hand around my neck, cutting off my air supply while you fucked me so hard I saw stars. And now you won’t give it to me.”

  If I had to complete a sobriety test, I’d fucking fail. I’m drunk on Silver. Wasted on her. The way she’s talking, the way she’s pulling my strings, the things she’s asking of me…I hate that it’s all affecting me so badly, but I can’t fucking deny any it. I want to dominate her. I want to own her body. I want to possess her in a way that feels new and a little frightening even to me, for fuck’s sake, and if I start…

  Jesus, forgive me, there won’t be any stopping.

  “Alex, I—I need it,” she whispers. “Please.”

  I have limits. There are lines even I won’t cross, but when Silver begs me for something with this kind of despair in her voice, I can’t fucking say no to her. When she shoves her hand down the front of my sweats and grabs hold of my dick, whimpering as she closes her fingers around me, I know I’m going to give in to her. I shouldn’t fucking do it. It’s so fucking dangerous, and it could jeopardize everything we have, but I’m fucking lost to her.

  I rub my thumb over her lip, snarling like a savage dog as I push it into her mouth, past her teeth, and I press her tongue down, feeling her shake against me. “Say the word, Silver. Say the word when you’ve had enough, because I—I don’t think I’ll know when to stop.”

  My hand is around her throat a second later. The base of her skull is flush against the bedroom wall, and my fingers are driving into her pussy, thrusting up inside her. Her eyes are wide as I tighten my hold around her neck, and she lets out a strained desperate moan as I lean my weight against her, making it hard for her to breath.

  My dick’s so hard and so fucking swollen that it feels like it’s going to explode as she pumps her hand up and down my shaft. She isn’t holding back. She’s jerking me off so hard that it actually hurts, but the pain only urges me on, making me react in kind, fucking her with my fingers until her back is bowed and her eyes are tightly shut, her face turning a worrying shade of crimson, visible even in the dark of the room.

  “I want you, Alex. Fuck. Please. I need you inside me right now. I can’t take it. I need to come.”

  It’s a relief that she can actually still speak. It’s a relief that I’ll be able to hear her if she tells me to quit. My heart’s racing as I pick her up, bodily lifting her from the floor, my fingers gouging into her skin as I carry her over to the bed and I throw her down on the mattress. My sweats are down my legs and gone in an instant. She claws at my back in a frenzy, and I snap out a rough, tight string of curse words as I shove her legs open and fall on top of her. There’s no hesitation. No moment of caution while I check to see if she’s okay. God help me, I push myself inside her so forcefully that her whole body tenses, locking up, her back curving away from the bed.

  “Alex! Fuck, Alex! Oh my god!”

  I draw back, and then slam myself into her, my synapses firing, every part of me out of control—but no, there it is. I feel it: one tiny, tenuous strand of restraint, pulled taut in the back of my head, warning me not to go too far. So long as that single strand exists, I know I’ll be able to keep myself in check. We’re balancing on a knife’s edge, though. I don’t want to mark her. I don’t want to bruise her…

  But then Silver’s hand is winding its way into my hair, pulling hard, and she’s issuing an order through her bared teeth. “Bite me, Alex. Fuck, bite me. I want your teeth on me. Make me scream.”

  I do it. I bite down on the tender skin of her shoulder close to her collar bone, and Silver lets out breathless, wordless scream that catches me off guard. I clamp my hand over her mouth grinding my teeth together as I growl into her skin, knowing it’s already too late. Too late for everything. Her father probably heard her. I’m too close to coming now to stop, and so is she. We cling to each other, hands digging into each other’s flesh, both of us possessed, rapt, maddened by the sensation of our bodies moving against one another in time, seconds away from diving headfirst into a black, dizzying decent.

  The shockwave hits me like a hammer to the back of my head. It’s pleasure, but not like any other kind of pleasure I’ve experienced before. This is almost panicked, chaotic pleasure, cutting the tendons in the backs of my legs and my arms, rendering me useless as I thrust into her one final time. Silver’s thighs tighten around my waist, squeezing hard enough to make me see fucking stars, her head thrown back, her face a rictus of oblivion.

  “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.” She chants the words over and over, her cheeks flushed with blood, crimson from the exertion and the savagery with which we took one another.

  I hold onto her, muttering sweet things into her damp hair, a sated weight lying heavy in the center of my chest, knowing full well that this is what that it must feel like to lose your mind.

  Our breathing eventually slows, and when I pull back, looking down at Silver, she looks up at me with dazed eyes, pupils swallowing her irises, contentment etched into the features of her face. It’s only when I allow myself to look down and I see the smear of dark red against the paleness of her skin that I understand what I just did.

  I bit her so hard that I drew blood.

  “Fuck!” I shove myself up, reeling away from the evidence of my own stupidity. “God, I’m sorry, Argento. I didn’t mean to...”

  She frowns, looking down at herself, straining to see why I’m so horrified. She touches her fingers to her shoulder, her brows knotting together when they come away red. “Oh.”

  If the pleasure I felt a moment ago when I was still inside her was great, then the guilt that follows is inconceivable. I can’t wrap my head around it. “Where’s…fuck, where’s your first aid kit. Let me find something to—”

  Quickly, Silver sits up, placing her hands against my bare chest. “No! No, Alex, stop. Don’t freak out. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  “NO! IT’S—” I stop myself, trapping the words behind my teeth. Shouting’s the worst possible thing I can do right now; it’ll only make things worse. Taking a deep breath, and then another, I sit back onto my heels, covering my face with one hand. “It’s not okay,” I force out. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Her hands brush over my shoulders—soothing, placating circles that should make me feel better but don’t. “Alex, please. Don’t do that. Really, I’m fine. I asked you to do it. I told you to. It turned me on, for fuck’s sake. I just wanted you so badly. I needed it to hurt.”

  I needed it to hurt.

  Christ.

  I let her pull my hand away from my face, even though I’m still stumbling over the fact that I made her fucking bleed.

  “Alex, look at me, okay. I love you. It’s what I wanted. You’re being silly. It’s a tiny little graze. There’s barely even a mark. Now, please…will you just hold me? I wanna lie on your chest for a second before I have to go back upstairs.”

  I do look at her. I look deep into her eyes, trying to find some sort of hurt or disturbance there, but there’s nothing. She seems totally…normal. The knot of distress that’s cinched tight around my
heart loosens a little, but it doesn’t disappear altogether.

  I’m vibrating, full of nervous energy as I lie back down on the bed beside her and she wriggles her way into my side, resting her head over my heart. My erratic pulse doesn’t slow until I feel her fall slack against me and she passes out.

  I wait until I’m sure she’s well and truly out for the count before I carefully pick her up from the bed and carry her up the stairs to her own room.

  8

  SILVER

  The wind howls and moans all day Saturday, rattling at the windows, and great curtains of snow sweep across the Walker Forest, shrouding the Sitka, larch, and the mountain hemlock in shawls of white. Dad manages to speak to Mom and Max in the morning, making sure they’re safe, and when the power goes out again around three in the afternoon, he descends into the basement to turn on the new generator he purchased from Home Depot with a gravely smug look on his face.

  If my father heard any of the noise I made last night when I paid a visit to Alex’s room, then he doesn’t say anything about it. Honestly, I doubt he knows I snuck out of my room and tiptoed down the hallway, past his room, and down the stairs. When Kacey and I were still thick as thieves, I used to sneak out of the house every other night and I never got caught once. I know precisely where every creaky floorboard is in this house. I also know just how deep my father sleeps.

  Alex spends an inordinate amount of time doing push-ups and sit-ups without his shirt on. I sit and peer at him over the top of the book I’m pretending to read, enjoying the view, but also slightly worried. He’s tense. Agitated. Pulled taut as a bowstring, ready to snap any second, and I know why. I pushed him into doing something he was uncomfortable with, and now he just can’t seem to make peace with himself. He paces in front of the bay window in the living room with his hands on his hips, huffing and blowing like a horse that’s been ridden too hard. It’s painfully clear that he wants out of the house. He's trapped, and it hurts like hell that he wants to get away so badly. I do understand, though.