“No.”
“This blood-splattered version of me repulses you. I see it in everything you’re trying to hide. Preachy little Ayda with her angelic eyes and her beautiful morals. How can something so white love something so dark? Tell me you hate this...” His hand rose between us—the one currently gripping his Glock with angry, pulsating fingers—and I felt the tip of the cool, heavy metal press against my stomach. “Tell me. Tell me I’m wrong.”
I lifted my eyes to meet the rage in his. The blast of cold that emanated from them almost made me buckle, but I held my head high and met him toe to toe, eyes rock steady. “You’re so fucking wrong.”
“You sure about that?” He took one step then another, and another, moving the two of us without effort, just pure manipulation until I felt my heels and ass hit the nearest wall. Drew glanced down between us, and he rested one hand high on the wall behind me, leaning all his weight on it. His wrist hanging down between us twisted and turned slowly, the gun touching me and moving away repeatedly before he drew a line with the tip of it from the lowest part of my stomach, right up to the bottom of my ribs. “I’ve been told there isn’t anything I can’t do. Pretty sure I couldmakeyou hate me…” His eyes snapped up to mine, low and dark as he studied me through his heavy brows. “It wouldn’t take me long. Just a few truths that could make you sick.”
I’m not sure how I kept the outside of myself so steady when there was a part of me inside that was trembling like a dog that shit on the rug. Like this, he was so big, so imposing, and so intimidating. There was a tiny part of me that was cowering in fear, and willing to concede to his threats. But therest of me, the large part of me that knew my lifewasDrew Tucker, squared her shoulders, looked him dead in the eyes and said, “Prove it.”
He tilted his head to one side and studied me. I saw his flicker of doubt before he smirked and leaned to whisper in my ear. “I always told you we’d go up in flames, Hanagan.”
Then Drew moved his gun, trailing it up and over my breasts at a torturously slow pace, before he brought it back down to trace the curve of my waist, over my hips and to my thigh. With his lips still hovering near my neck, I could feel his every breath.
When my own exhale fell from me in a stutter, he must have thought he’d won. The gun inched higher, the sight on the barrel pressing against the seam of my jeans in the most intimate spot he could have hit. The whole world seemed to spin around me as pleasure and fear mingled and flooded my body with adrenaline. Whether bravery or stupidity, I raised my hand, fisted his hair and moved my lips to his ear.
“I love you. Pull the trigger.”
Those words were his awakening.
The reminder of what we’d almost lost once already—what neither of us wanted to lose again.
Drew’s eyes widened, his body going stiff as I held him in place. There was no way to tell how he was going to react until a few heartbeats later when he hitched in a sharp breath, and the edge of it caught in his throat. Then he moved quickly. My body was slammed back against the wall, my collarbone gripped with his free hand while the gun stayed between us, and Drew’s lips crashed against mine aggressively.
I kissed him back, our teeth grinding together as we pushed and fought against one another in a bid to get closer,to fill in the gaps and finally fill in that space that lingered between us. When the gun pressed against my hip, I groaned, my hand finding his and pulling the Glock easily from his grip.
Irrational anger seemed to come with the transfer of power, and before I’d really thought about it, the safety was off, the gun was cocked, and I’d pressed the barrel against Drew’s temple.
He froze, his eyes opening to look at me while his mouth was still resting against mine, open and, I assumed, stunned.
I had his attention now, and I intended to keep it until I was finished saying what I needed to say.
“If youeverquestion the way I feel about you again, you will feel every ounce of pain that you’ve put me through. You fall, I fall, and that’s the deal from now on. You don’t get to decide if you’re worthy of my love. That’smychoice.”
His eyes drifted to the side only briefly, as if he was checking to see if there really was a gun pressed to his head before he looked back at me. The silence lingered. It always did with him, but I held my position, and when I saw a flicker of recognition and familiarity in the spark of his eyes, I knew I had him.
“Fuck,” was all he whispered.
It was all I needed. All I wanted.
Slipping the safety on with my thumb, I released the clip and slid the gun onto the closest surface all within the space of a breath.
Once again, we were on even ground, and I wasn’t going to waste a second letting him second-guess himself.
Pushing both of my hands into his long hair, I fisted my fingers and pulled him back to me, the adrenaline now ebbing through me.
His arms and his mouth claimed me like it was the very first time they’d ever been allowed to touch my skin. Drew bent at the knee and pulled me against him, dragging my body up against the wall and hooking his hands under the tops of my already-bruised thighs. He didn’t care that he was still in his cut and his heavy, bloody clothes. He didn’t care that there was blood on his face, his hands, in his hair. Neither did I. It felt like we’d been apart forever. With just one test, I’d passed and brought something of him back.
Drew’s mouth moved everywhere, his lips sucking and his teeth biting along my shoulder, my neck, and trailing up to my ears. He was a starved man, and I was all he wanted to make himself feel full again.
“I’ve missed you,” he muttered as if he hadn’t meant to say it out loud—a thought he should have kept private which tumbled over his lips as he devoured me.
He wasn’t the only one who’d missed this. I would love Drew Tucker however I could get him, but he’d scared me tonight. I knew he wouldn’t have hurt me. I knew his threats, though very real, had been just that: threats. No, he’d scared me because I knew how close I’d come to losing him entirely to the demons that walked around hidden in every shadow he’d created.
Chapter Ten
DREW
She’d won.