Heart So Hollow (Dire Wolves Book 1), page 78
My jaw tightens with regret, “No,” I should’ve put a feed in her room, even though watching it would’ve been like dying every day. “But,” I smile, “I did see you give Hannah a couple of haymakers.”
I catch Brett’s cheek tense and she actually grins. I tighten my grip around her waist and run my other hand up her neck, slowly wrapping my fingers around her throat. She sinks further into my arms as I tilt her head back onto my shoulder.
“It was so fucking hot,” I breathe into her ear, clenching my teeth to keep it together because all I want to do is slam her into the mattress and bury my dick inside her where it belongs. “It’s more than I’ve ever done to her.”
Brett eyes me with a smirk, “So, you’re saying I did something better than you?”
I press my hips against her ass, getting harder the longer I hold her. I know she can feel it; her breathing says as much. “Baby, you do a lot of things better than me.” I brush my thumb back and forth under her chin, “you’ve always been good at saving yourself—even from me. Why do you think I passed you on the road yesterday? Because I was coming for you,” I turn her head to look at me, “I will always come back for you.”
I watch her eyes shift back to the screen and a shadow fall across her face. The longer she gazes at the image of the living room and Bowen meandering around the house, the darker her eyes get. “I hate him,” she whispers, “I fucking hate him. I want to watch him die 10 times over, and I want him to feel every second of it!” she vows, her chest heaving against my arm.
“I think that’s called vengeance,” I say, probably more excited than I should be as her benevolent heart begins to fill with the same poison that infects mine.
Brett takes a haggard breath, “Is this how you feel all the time? Thinking about all the things he…” she trails off, “how do you live like this?”
“You’ve seen how I live like this,” I reply as I press my lips to her shoulder and leave soft kisses over the bruises blooming over her skin.
She tastes exactly how I remember—better than everyone else. She’s a pure spring where everyone else is stagnant acid runoff, and all I want to do is get caught in her current.
Suddenly, there’s rapid movement across the screen and a woman appears in frame, barging through the entryway into the living room. She marches over to Bowen, who’s standing at the kitchen island, and begins shouting at him.
I lift my head with intrigue, “What is this?” I murmur.
It’s Hildy, shoving Bowen in the chest before she thrusts her phone in his face. The feed is muted, but I don’t move to change it. When I glance at Brett, she looks oddly content. She’s glaring at the image, but there’s a hint of amusement in the corner of her mouth.
“Is it fun being so vengeful?” she asks, not taking her eyes off the screen.
I shift my eyes between the screen and her profile, “Sometimes.”
Brett slowly reaches behind her back and trails her fingers down my stomach. My mouth falls open as she slips her hand down my boxers and runs it up and down my dick, painfully hard at this point. “It gets you going, doesn’t it?” she asks while stroking my entire length, “Pain and trauma turns you on.”
“That’s what love is—choosing who you want to walk through a lifetime of pain and trauma with.” I squeeze her throat and bite the base of her neck until she winces, “Lucky for you, I already know the way.”
She slows to long, hard strokes that are fucking torture, “I can see why you like doing this, watching things you’re not supposed to.”
She’s not wrong. I was that way before becoming her stalker; doing things I wasn’t supposed to, things deemed unacceptable by the standards of others. But I never cared enough about anyone to follow them around and hang onto their every movement—until her. But by the time I saw her, the years of heartbreak and rage had given birth to a macabre amalgamation of violent lust that still feeds my addiction to her.
“I like watching you,” I groan into her ear as I slide my hands up her shirt, palming her tits. “Do you like being a ghost with me?”
“I don’t know yet,” her cheeks twitch with amusement, “ghosts only have fun when they finally reveal themselves.”
My hands move over her chest, gently inching her shirt higher with each sweep of my fingertips. But I don’t move to take it off. I don’t push her.
When I glance back at the screen, Hildy’s still shouting. Bowen reaches for her, but she swings her arm out, knocking him away. After another few seconds, she turns and storms out of the house. Bowen stares at the entryway for a few moments before turning and dragging his hands up and down his face. He goes still, and then, a switch flips and he grabs the edge of the bookcase and hurls it away from the wall.
“Uh-oh…” I hum against Brett’s cheek, smirking at the screen as Bowen begins tearing apart his house in a fit of rage.
I don’t know what he’s doing or what Hildy said to him, but it’s satisfying as hell. Dishes, picture frames, chairs—nothing is safe as he grabs for anything within reach and smashes it against the floor or the wall. A glass from the sink comes flying toward the lens, but detonates against the slats of the air register where it’s hidden.
Brett pulls her tank top over her head, tossing her hair to one side as she drops it onto the sheets. The feeling of her bare back against my skin is fucking euphoric.
“Colson,” Brett asks over her shoulder, “do you still like being a nightmare?”
“What do you think?” Against my better judgement, I hook my thumbs in the waist of her sleep shorts and slide them over her hips.
She reaches up and gently pushes my hands the rest of the way down until both her shorts and underwear drop around her knees, “Can I be one with you?”
I run my hands over her bare hips, teasing the crease of her thighs, “What’d you have in mind?”
“Give me your phone.”
Slowly, I release her and lean across the bed to the side table. Once I hand it to her, she taps the screen a few times and crawls back to the edge of the bed. I pull the rest of her clothes from her ankles, tossing them aside while I gaze at her bare ass swaying in front of me. Then she props my phone up against the base of the lamp and adjusts it until I can see her mirror image in the screen, lit by the glow of the TV in the background.
“Baby,” I say gently, “you don’t want him to have that.”
Brett settles back on her knees and shoots me a skeptical look, “You sneak into my house and rig up an entire surveillance system, but you can’t make a video self-destruct?”
I crack a smile. She’s right, I can do exactly what she assumes. And even if I couldn’t, Dallas could. Or Sergei with his endless supply of technology that skirts international law.
Fuck it. I don’t ask permission. And neither should she.
Brett raises up and wraps her arms around my neck, “What’s the point of being a ghost if you can’t scare people?” she asks while trailing her fingertip up and down the center of my shoulders. “Or are you worried I’m going to turn into you? Full of fire and ruin, burning everything that I touch.”
“Wouldn’t that be spectacular?” I smirk. “What a terrifying sight to behold, especially since you wanted me dead a few hours ago.”
I grab her waist and lift her away from me, leaving her kneeling in the middle of the sheets as I step off the bed. Then I open the closet and lift a black leather belt from the hook on the door. Shutting it behind me, I start feeding the end of the belt through the buckle.
“I’m not going to run from you,” Brett says with a slight smile, “I don’t need a leash.”
“Good,” I reach to the side and tap the dresser drawer with the buckle, “because I have all your underwear.”
She looks to the side as she feigns irritation, “You really are batshit.”
I move to the edge of the bed and nod down at the space in front of me. Like a good girl, she does as she’s told and crawls closer.
“You didn’t need a leash last time, either,” I loop the belt over her head and gently pull her hair out from under it, “but I know how much you love wearing mine.”
Suddenly, Brett’s eyes dart away, “He—um…” she hesitates, “Bowen fucked up my birth control…”
As vindictive as she’s being to him right now, it’s still cute that she feels the need to stop and tell me, as though she still has some sort of responsibility. As if it could deter me.
“Did he? That’s rude.” I cinch the belt in one quick motion, making her wince, and then tilt my head with curiosity, “Are you telling me this to dissuade me or entice me?”
She looks up with a hint of amusement, “I’ve never been a good liar.”
Now she’s just playing. She just wants to hear me say it. And I’ll happily give her what she wants, because she also knows I’m not some piece of shit like Bowen who tries to trick and assault women into birthing his young.
“Then I guess he’s going to watch me put my baby in you tonight, isn’t he?” I loop the slack around my fist, “If it means that I can completely erase him from your body, then I’ll keep going until our baby has your nose and my eyes.” I lean in close to her with a cruel smile, “Then I’ll send him a birth announcement. Any more concerns?”
She gives a quick shake of her head, “No.”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” I ask with satisfaction.
She hesitates for a moment, but only because she’s so damn stubborn, even now. It’s like a reflex to her. But, soon, she starts nodding her head vehemently, “Yes.”
I run my tongue between my lips hungrily, “Because now you’re the one who doesn’t want me to leave?”
She grinds out a nod, still holding on to some shred of defiance toward me. It’s a high that remains unmatched; the ability to hold something as powerful as her in my hands and, with a twist of my wrist, bring her to her knees. But it’s not keeping her there that does it, it’s the feeling of her tapping out when she’s had enough and knowing I’ll listen to her. It’s feeling her sink into me because she trusts me with her whole life.
And she always has, even when Bowen got into my head and I hurt her because I ignored my problems with fast cars and too much alcohol. She might’ve been afraid of me after that, but when she finally let me get closer, I knew she still trusted me.
I grip the belt at the back of her neck, “You still love fighting me,” I say, hovering over her face, "so much that you came knocking on my door and now you’re melting into my bed, your pussy soaking my sheets, but you still can’t come right out and say what you really want.”
Immediately, Brett’s eyes go dark and I see that familiar twitch in her eye as her jaw tightens with indignance beneath my grip. I’m so hard just looking at her that it feels like my dick’s in a goddamn vise.
I brush my nose back and forth against hers, “Is it too much like saying I won?” I taunt her.
“Yes,” she growls, her expression toggling between disdain and excitement.
“I hope you never change, Brett. As much as I love seeing you finally surrender to me, I hope that, deep down, there’s always that little spark of hate that keeps you alive. And since you’ve already tried to kill me once tonight, I think we’re even.” I twist my wrist, making her cheeks flush as I cut off her air, “Now you can start fucking me back to life.”
After a few moments, I release my grip and let her gasp a lungful of air. Once she catches her breath, she gives me a coy smile, “You’ll fuck me like I want you to, now?”
I shake my head, “I’ll fuck you like I want to, and I’ll do it until you forget every other name that came before mine. And then you’ll see what it’s like to love me the way I love you.”
Her eyes lock on mine and even though she gives an eager nod, her expression says otherwise. And that’s how I like it, that same fear and apprehension that washed over her the last time she realized what kind of nightmare she was dealing with. Except, by the time she realized it, it was too late for any escape. Now, Brett’s volunteered herself to be part of the nightmare. And I’ll oblige her because it’s just as much for her as it is for me.
With a rough jerk, I pull her against my chest and start tightening the belt again. My phone sits on the side table, etching this scene into the ether. Tears well in the bottoms of her eyes as she starts to suffocate, and the tighter I squeeze, the harder her fingertips dig into my shoulders. But she hasn’t tapped out yet. I reach down with my other hand and slide it between her thighs, flashing her a feral grin when I feel how soaked she is. Her mouth falls open, but no air rushes in or out.
She taps my chest a moment later, face flushed and eyes wet. And the instant she does, I let go of the belt and push three fingers inside her, drawing a gasp followed by a curse as she clings to my shoulders.
I grab her waist and pulse against her wall, “Oh, you’re going to feel so good,” I groan, “you’re still a tight fit for me, aren’t you?”
I’ll do whatever she wants me to do because she needs to see what it feels like to be on the other side—what it feels like to take your power back after being beat down, torn apart, and everything stolen from you. In her case, it’s not just some sex tape made in a dim bedroom to stick it to her sociopath fiancé; it’s karma. And it won’t fix everything, but it’s a start.
Releasing her, I collapse back against the pillows where the last belt I used on her is still knotted tight and frayed from where I sliced it off her wrists. I beckon to her with a curl of my finger and watch her slink over the sheets toward me, crawling over my legs and straddling my hips.
She’s a fucking vision; thick, muscular thighs spread wide and her pussy weeping straight onto my dick while her long curls fall over her shoulders, framing her gorgeous tits. Behind her, the glow from the camera feed shows the wrecked house and Bowen skulking from room to room.
I run my fingers beneath my belt still cinched around her neck, “I’m going to get you a proper collar to wear around my house. Would you like that?”
She rolls her pussy back and forth over my cock, “I’ll wear your collar around my house...”
“Then I’ll build you a house to live in with me,” I say as I guide her hips back and forth, “and that’s all you’ll wear.”
“In Colorado?” she smirks.
How’d you guess? I smile to myself, because that’s what you think about late at night when it gets quiet? She doesn’t know how accurate her assumptions are.
I nod to the headboard above me, “Grab it,” I command, “you can begin where you left off.”
Brett reaches for the edge of the headboard and looks down at me through her arms, her hair brushing the side of my face.
I tip my chin, “Raise up.”
She does what she’s told and I slide down the bed until I’m staring up at her soaking wet pussy. Then I watch as a clear drop trails down the inside of her thigh. “You let me suffocate you,” I lick her skin clean, following it to its glistening source, “now I want you to suffocate me.”
As soon as I pull her hips down, melding my mouth to her clit, she starts raking her fingers through the top of my hair and grinding on my face. And I can’t get enough; drinking her in and hearing her desperate moans while I work my tongue over her is nirvana.
Jesus Christ, she’s a lot more fun when she’s not having one moral dilemma after another…
Soon, I feel her thighs tense and the familiar movement of her torso flexing and her movements slow. When her breath catches, I grab her waist and hold her down on me, licking hard circles as she starts to tremble. The surge hits her and she lets out a high-pitched moan, rolling her hips faster as I drive her into the stratosphere. As soon as her movements slow, I quickly slide out from under her and she reaches for me eagerly when I get up and back her into the headboard.
My mouth quickly finds hers and I start devouring her with long, deep kisses. We’re all hands and heat and desperate breaths reveling in this moment where there’s no one but us. I jerk my boxers down and kick them off before reaching behind her neck and tearing the belt from its buckle.
“Don’t you—” Brett glances down as I drop the belt, but goes silent when I pull her face back to mine.
“No, I’m not going to tie you to it,” I hum while massaging the pink stripe imprinted across her throat, “I’m going to nail you to it.”
In one motion, I reach down and hook my arm under her knee, hiking her leg up and grabbing the top of the headboard. She grabs the top, bracing her elbows on it as I press her back into the wood. Her expression changes to both excitement and terror as I do the same with her other leg until she’s suspended at my hips with her thighs spread wide.
“You look scared, Honeybee.” I love the fear in her eyes, every fucking time.
“Yeah,” her eyes dart up and down between us, “yeah, I’m scared, Col.”
“You should be,” I give her a once-over, trapped between me and my solid oak headboard, “is it because I about tore you apart last time?”
She nods, trembling with both fear and desire, and all I want to do is make her squirm even more.
I lean closer to her face, looking her dead in the eyes, “Has he kept you ready for me?”
She hesitates and her expression falters, “What?” she scoffs, unsure of how to respond.
I tense my jaw and try to keep a straight face. God, I’m such an asshole. Brett might murder me before I can even get my dick inside her again. I see the momentary, subtle change in her eyes as she tries to decipher my tone. She wants to know if I’m serious, if I’m really asking this or if it’s some kind of sick joke. When the corner of my mouth twitches with amusement, she begins to relax.
“Answer me, baby,” I grind my hips against her, sliding my cock over her slick cunt, “I need to know how to take care of you.”
Her mouth opens and she trembles as soon as I start moving, “Y-yeah…” she creaks out between breaths.
