Page 79 of Apathy
I wrapped my arms around his neck as he pulled me closer to him and then flipped us, so that I was on top of him. What would life be like if I could do this every day? Wrapped up in the cocoon of warmth, consumed by him, consumed by these feelings he was evoking in me.
I swiveled my hips, earning a grunt from him, feeling the rising of his dick. He gripped my hands as I started dragging them down his chest, toward the edge of his jeans. There was a warning in his midnight eyes, but I wasn’t one to shy away from danger. If I was, maybe I wouldn’t be in all these fucked-up situations lately.
“You’re playing with fire, baby,” he grunted, earning a smile from me.
“I know,” I whispered, swiveling my hips again. “But I like fire.” I leaned down and pressed my lips against his, torturing both of us with excruciatingly slow movements. He wound one of his hands around my neck, holding me at the nape, while his other one slowly dragged over my lower back, all the way to my sleep shorts.
I moaned as he slipped his hand inside my shorts and my panties, and started kneading my ass, moving me on top of him.
God, if this was just a fantasy, I didn’t want it to end.
He started lifting his hips, now fully controlling my movements on top of him, letting me know that he was in charge. And I didn’t mind it. I didn’t mind it at all.
Sometimes I had a feeling that he knew what I really needed. Whether it was for him to give me space, or to take control, but he knew.
As he pulled my head back, holding my hair, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to accept his cruelty after all these nights together. The world was a cruel place already, where the strong fed on the weaker ones, and sometimes you had to become a villain to survive. But that I could live with.
What I wouldn’t be able to live with would be the world in which he and I ended up being simple strangers. Just two people who used to know each other but weren’t talking anymore. I wouldn’t be able to survive this entire year if he started behaving like this didn’t mean anything to him, because it meant everything to me.
Even though I was too afraid to voice all this out loud, I prayed to God that he would hear the cry of my heart, and that he would know not to let me go. If he did, I didn’t want to think what would become of me.
If he was just another addiction, just another toxic thing I accepted in my veins, I still didn’t want to stop, even if it killed me.
“Stop thinking so much,” he growled and bit into my lower lip.
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” He moved the hair that fell between us as he let me go, placing it behind my ear. “Here.” He tenderly pressed his thumb between my eyebrows. “You have lines here, and I don’t like seeing them, Moonshine.”
“And why is that?” I asked, my voice barely audible. I was scared he would hear the tremble. That he would know how much he affected me, how much I didn’t want to get back to the real world where he and I could never be together in the open. Where monsters like my father would never let me live my life how I wanted to live it.
Where my life was planned for me before I was nothing more than a little blip in my mother’s stomach, just because I was a legacy and I had to do something with my life. They wanted to control me. They wanted to tell me who I needed to be, just like they did with Dylan.
Every time I saw him since he finished high school, it was as if the brother I once had was slowly disappearing in front of my own eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time that he smiled, a real, genuine smile.
Before he started college, he used to smile all the time. People used to joke that the two of us were like the sun and moon—completely different on how we dealt with people, yet so similar.
Now that sunshine was gone from him, and I feared what would become of me if I allowed them to control me later. That’s why I had to leave.
That’s why I had to run as far away as possible, because there was no way in hell that my father would stop looking for me. Dylan might, if I told him I was safe and happy, but my father… No, that monster would never stop haunting me.
“There it is again,” Ash protested. “What are you thinking about?”
His eyes were a molten lava, burning into my own, waiting to hear answers I couldn’t give him. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, I did. I just didn’t know how to form the words, how to explain what was passing through my head. Or maybe I was still unable to come to terms with everything that has happened in the past two years.
He suddenly pulled himself up and leaned against the headboard, taking me with him. My legs were on his sides, my center pressed against his hardness, but I knew that he wouldn’t let this go, even if I started stripping right now.
He had that determined gleam in his eye, and the way he looked at me told me everything I needed to know.
He cared.
Ash cared about me—a thought that both scared and excited me.
It scared me because I didn’t know if he liked it or not. Did he despise it? Did he wish I was somebody else? Did he like me for me or just because I was a Blackwood?
Was he suddenly nice to me because he had something to gain?
But no matter how much my brain pushed me into overthinking, the fact that he seemed to care about me excited me. I couldn’t remember the last time that someone besides Dylan cared about me.
