Page 84 of Vicious Butterfly
Tate sucks me dry, until I don’t have any insides left, and I can’t move. Not on my own, anyway. I’m a limp spaghetti noodle that he hauls to his bare chest, where I Velcro my torso to his. I indulge, laying my head on his neck, breathing in sync with him. His solid, sweat-slicked body rising and falling with mine.
It happens again. The feeling.
Home.
Like a damn beacon.
I think Tate sucked my brains away.
Tate made me move. And get dressed. I tried to stay shirtless like he is, but he said, and I quote, “No one gets to see what’s mine. Put your fucking shirt on.”
I thought about pointing out the fact that I’m a hockey player, and I’m fully naked in the dressing room all the time.Something he’ll know, but we’ll leave that for another day. I also thought about making him wear a shirt—I don’t want anyone looking at him either—but he’s letting me touch him today. I don’t know if this is a barrier I’ve passed or a one-time-only deal, so I want his bare skin out and available to me for as long as possible.
We’re holding hands. We hold hands all the way down the hallway and into another room. It’s beige stone. Chains hang from the ceiling. Blood’s spilled across the floor. In the center, in nothing but a pair of black boxers, Kline hangs, breaths shallow. His dark blond hair’s matted, his left eye swollen, with bruises splotched up his torso and down his legs. He’s strung up, arms overhead in a way I know from experience isn’t comfortable. He’ll feel like he’s suffocating, unable to take a full breath.
Somehow, he’s still conscious, and when he sees me, he smiles. “There’s my beautiful bride,” he slurs out, voice raspy—probably from screaming.
Well, that was a fucking stupid thing to say. Tate’s knuckles crack across his face, a tooth sails through the air and skitters across the stone.
“I will rip your lips off. You only need them long enough to tell Ryan what you told me about the deal between Klines and Savages. Go on.”
“It can be a marriage with any Savage,” he says.
“You’re not taking Griff or Rosaline,” I snap, but my brain does the math. “Including Father?”
“Yes.”
He was acting weird that day. Staring out the window. Is there a chance he actually felt some sliver of guilt? Nah. He was probably worried I’d find out.
“As soon as your father became available, I wanted him,” he admits.
“But he doesn’t want you.”
“Not so much.”
“And apparently he gets a choice, and I don’t.”
He tries to shrug, somehow forgetting he’s trussed up, wincing. “Let me down from here, VanCourt.”
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”
“I have no further plans of pursuing your boyfriend, so long as you follow through on your promise to give me Henry,” Kline says to Tate.
“You what?” I say.
“Come with me, dollface. I’ll explain everything.”
“Don’t you dare leave me like this, VanCourt. Get back here!”
Tate shuts the light off, leaving a screaming Kline behind. We make a stop in the armory to grab Pearl. He makes a point of showing me she’s not loaded. “Remember that for later,” he says.
“What the fuck are you up to now?”
He doesn’t answer, leading me back to the arena level, then ground level, then up to his office. He’s still not wearing a shirt. I get the feeling that’s kind of a big deal. I can see everything, including how big that scar is across his chest. It runs from just above his armpit across the midline of his chest. It’s nasty. The pinkened skin jagged, sunken, bunching like one of Rosaline’s scrunchies when he moves.
Slowly, I bring my hand to his pectoral. He watches it, fascinated as if he can’t believe I can touch him either. “What’s this from?”
I chance running my fingers over it. He actually fucking lets me. It might be kinda weird, but that makes me feel special. No one can touch him, but I can.
