Page 38 of Vicious Butterfly
“Why do you want to marry me?” There’s gotta be something motivating this. Guys like Tate don’t wake up and decide to marry random strangers.
He presses my nose as if I’m something adorable, asking cute questions. “Unless you want to make this a tell-all, why don’t we skip those questions? I’ll leave you to your business, and you leave me to mine.”
“That sounds like a great marriage—no communication, no sex.”
“Who said there wouldn’t be sex?”
“You said …” Fuck, I can’t even say it.
“That I wouldn’t fuck you till you begged me? I won’t. But you will beg me, dollface.”
A gigantic burst of heat sets my insides on fire. God fucking damn him and his infallible confidence. Is he always like this? His lips press to my neck. He’s deliberate, finding my spider tattoo again. He has some kind of weird fascination with it, like he does with me, but my brain goes offline when he fucking sucks on me like that. I slowly lose the will to care.
“Maybe I should fuck you right here, show everyone, including you, how mine you are? Hmmm?” he murmurs in my ear.
Okay, fine, he’s right. I want that. Him. God, do I want him, but I can’t. It’s not as simple as he’s making it. And what’s that stupid saying? Can’t give away the whole cow? No matter how much I want him to fuck me, I can’t let him until it’s for something I want. I’ll use any negotiating capital I have.
“Why me?” I push. He can tell me that without revealing whatever the fuck he wants to keep to himself.
He tilts his head, staring, as if he’s trying to figure it out himself. “It makes sense. I need to get married. You already know about my underground life, which makes things a lot easier. It’s a mutually beneficial situation.”
“I can’t be the only one who knows about your underground life, Tate.”
Tate pauses for a brief moment, as if maybe that hadn’t actually dawned on him. He quickly resumes feasting on my collarbone. “None of them tastes as good as you do,” he murmurs, getting distracted again.
“Tate.” I’m careful not to put my hands anywhere they can’t be, but he said his torso was okay earlier. Is that still okay? Slowly, I put my fingers against his ribcage. He flinches. It’s exactly like dealing with an animal that doesn’t trust humans.
What happened to him? Why can’t he be touched?
“O-Okay?” I check.
“Okay,” he says, eyeing me as if I might suddenly pull out a knife.
I rest my palms against his torso. It’s a firm torso; it rises and falls with careful breaths. Not in the same way someone does when they’re scared, it’s more defensive, like he’s waiting for an attack.
He backs me into the wall, pulling my leg around him. But what it also does is give him higher ground. More control. God, the man really has to be in control in every way. I think my question rattled him, but it hasn’t seemed to change anything.
“Look, it’s no secret that I want you,” he says.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to challenge that. Now he’s making it sound like some lust-driven need—the one-night-stand equivalent of whatever the fuck this is—but I’ve hadenough one-night stands to know that you don’t vow to claim the person in front of everyone.
This is something darker. Something dangerous.
I think I let a predator catch my scent.
But my self-preservation instincts must be broken, because I’m not heading for the hills. I’m opening my neck for him, an invitation he jumps on, lips attaching to my pulse point.
“Fuck.”
He’s the one devouring me, but I feel like I’m the one getting a taste.
“See, dollface? Your body knows its master.”
I bite back a laugh. He’s not wrong, but his sincerity is oddly adorable and terrifying at the same time.
Eventually, I give in, lost in his kisses against my skin, dizzy with the intoxicating scent of him. His hips move, our cocks brush against each other’s, trapped behind the confines of our clothes. Arousal fills my groin, sending heat to every place in my body.
Oh, God. This is probably how every fatal attraction starts.
