Page 47 of Devil

I’m shaken enough to be angry. “Don’t make me sound foolish. Please. I just don’t understand why, if you want to hurt me inyourown way, you care if I’m hurting inotherways.”

“Birdie, I only warned you about the hurting because the rest of what I feel doesn’t require an explanation. The hurting…the pushing…it’s part of thisthinginside me when it comes to you because I also want to fuck your mouth and your cunt, I also want to spoil you and dote on you. I want to ruin you all goddamn year until you’re as bad as I am.” He stops, breathing hard. He’s come closer since he started speaking, his exhales tickling my mouth, his hands possessive and unrelenting on my neck, not pressing in enough to make me faint but enough to make me aware that he could.

He walks me back three steps into the wall, my back flat against it, and I’m breathing as hard as he is, terrified, panicked, relieved. This is it, this is what I’ve been dreading since I agreed to his terms, and he’ll force me now; he’ll throw me down and yank my jeans down and shove himself inside me, and then it’ll be over, my sin complete, the bargain fully inked, and I won’t have to be afraid of it anymore.

I can tell he wants to. His hands quake around my neck, and when his mouth slashes over mine, it’s hot and demanding and…entitled. Like it was at Evelyn, like it was inside his truck. Like he’sowedme and he’s going to take what he’s owed, and he’ll wage a war on anyone who tries to stymie his will.

His tongue pushes against my lips, and when I don’t open for him fast enough, he reaches up and presses his thumbs to the corners of my mouth to part my lips. The kiss is invasive, slick, and then he shoves his hips against me, a hard, forceful motion that presses his erection into my stomach. “I want to be the only thing you’re scared of, the only thing that makes you tremble.” Another shove. “I want all the suffering in your life to have one cause, one name. And I want you to love it so much that you smile when you so much as whisper my name.”

His voice is dark, vibrating with intention, with a frantic undercurrent of desperation that makes my scalp crawl.

But then why am I reaching up to hold his elbows? Why am I hoping he’ll wrap my legs around his waist and pin me against the wall?

Why is there a part of me that wants to crawl toward the awful future he’s promising?

His kisses get even harder, bruising, panting, and then his hand is moving down, a rough drag over my T-shirt–covered chest to my belly and then to the waistband of my jeans. He pops the button and unzips me with no trouble, like he does this one-handed all the time. And then his fingers are in my panties, intent, searching, until they graze against something and I whimper.

He doesn’t linger there, though, his fingers finding the soft furrow and then the opening within. With utter shame, I feel his fingersslidebecause I’m…I’m slippery there. His head drops forward and then he’s breathing open-mouthed against my neck, his entire body shaking.

His fingers are barely inside me—a quarter of an inch, if that—but when they give a push, maybe another quarter inch, I grab at his T-shirt. To stop him, to encourage him, I don’t even know. I just know that everything feels hot and wrong and I don’twantto want it, but I think I want him to make me.

“Is this when you hurt me?”

It takes so much to ask the question, but I have to know. I have to know if it’s coming.

Tension ripples through him—I feel it in his chest against my hands, I feel it in his thighs pressed to mine, I feel it in the fingers that I think want to push deep into my body—and for a shimmering second, I think he’s going to say yes. I think he’s going to drag me to the floor or toss me over his shoulder and carry me upstairs. The hard flesh mindlessly grinding against my stomach is so hard that it doesn’t even feel like it can be flesh anymore, and the hand that’s pushed its way into my jeans and is making it impossible to close my legs is a hand that won’t be denied.Hewon’t be denied.

Bell shoves himself away from me. Literally. Braces his hand against the wall and shoves.

His hand tears out of my pants; my neck is abruptly cold; he’s three or four feet away suddenly, staring at me with eyes gone nearly black. I can see his shoulders move with how hard he’s breathing, and his mouth is open and wet, and two fingers on his right hand…glisten.

“Bell?” I whisper. And then when I see the irritation tighten his jaw, I try again. “Ry?”

He shakes his head once, hard, and closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, his entire body loosens, his expression sliding into something friendly, charming. Safe.

“I completely forgot,” he says, offering me a sheepish smile. “I have a meeting I need to get to. I’m afraid I’ll need to go into the office. You don’t mind, do you?”

My back is against the wall, my jeans are undone, and my neck is damp from his mouth. My entire body is one big pulse. I blink at him.

“Great,” he says smoothly, as if I answered him. “I’ll be back before dinner. Lunch is ready in the fridge; make sure you take your antibiotic today too. And make use of the studio!” he calls as he starts climbing the stairs to his bedroom. His demeanor is easy and loose, but his right hand stays half curled by his side. The first two fingers are so wet that I can see them shimmer from here. “It’s yours to use.”

I stay at the foot of the stairs long enough to realize how pathetic it would look if I was still here when Bell came back down, so I button up my jeans and scurry into the ground-floor bathroom. And then I take a minute in front of the sink to gather myself. My hair is mussed, my mouth is swollen, my cheeks are red, and my neck is too. I grip the sides of the sink and try to grapple with the fact that I’m not feeling relief right now—nothing evencloseto relief. It must be because I want it over with, because I need the uncertainty to end. Because I feel this…this…thingbetween us like ripe fruit only barely still clinging to the branch, and it’s going to crash to the ground, and the suspended threat of it, the feeling like it could fall at any moment…

It wouldn’t be so bad if I only felt it like something between us, outside myself, something that only existed in the discrete moments when we were physically together. But for the last two days—maybe since that day in my studio seven years ago—I feel itinside. Like Persephone with her seeds or Eve with the apple, I ingested my own sin, and now I’ll never be free of its stain. Of the sticky, sweet syrup on my tongue or pooling hot in the cradle of my hips.

I hear Bell come down the stairs and then the echoing sound of the front door closing. I take a deep breath.

Tonight. He’ll do it tonight.

That comforts me a little, and I wish I could say it was only for the sake of getting it over with and not the tender ache between my legs.

If I had any complaints about the gilding of my cage, however, that day alone in the house assuages them. Bell’s kitchen is practically bursting with food…fruit of all kinds—bananas and apples in the pantry, berries in glass containers in the fridge—yogurt, cheese, crackers, bread. Cereal, oatmeal, small heaps of potatoes and onions and garlic in ceramic bowls. There’s a small cache of microwaveable meals in the freezer, along with single-serve cartons of soup in the pantry, but most of what I find are either staples, ingredients, or produce. He doesn’t seem to snack a lot—except for a half-empty box of protein bars in the pantry and another half-empty box of frozen waffles in the freezer.Thatbox is the size you can only get from a wholesale club.

In the fridge is a glass container of kale salad and another with a sandwich. My name is written neatly on a sticky note atop both—I recognize Bell’s handwriting from when he was in my class. I imagine him making these for me this morning, writing my name, and my pulse jumps a little. My cheeks get hot.

He made lunch for me.

I…I don’t know if I can remember the last time someone made lunch for me. Perhaps my grandmother, packing up a bag lunch for school. Maybe Kaitlyn asking if I wanted her to put more pizza rolls on the baking sheet while she was making some for herself.