I roll my eyes and go over to the corner, picking up the pair of gloves that sit there and put them on.
“Okay, so now what?” I ask with a shrug of my shoulders.
“Now, use me.” His words steel my breath for a moment.
“Pardon?” Use him? As in… as a punching bag?
“The reason you have all of this aggression is because of me, so I’m giving you a free pass to take a few shots, work it out, and then hopefully we can move the fuck on with our lives without you hating me every goddamn second of every minute of every day.”
“This is nuts,” I say as I stare at him like he has gone insane.
“Not really. Come on, do your worst,” he says, holding his arms out wide, taunting me, egging me on.
“I’m not going to hit you, Nate,” I say adamantly as I start to undo one of the gloves with my teeth.
“Do it,” he goads.
“No.”
“Fucking do it, Kat,” he says, his voice louder, pushing me, making me want to scream in frustration.
“Why? What is the fucking point of this?” I say, raising my own voice to the same pitch that he did.
“Because maybe if you take a few swipes at me, just maybe you’ll start to fucking see that you don’t hate me,” he says, taking a step closer.
“That makes absolutely no sense,” I argue back, ripping the first glove from my hand and throwing it at his feet.
“It doesn’t have to make sense. I just need you to stop being so goddamn hostile.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have fucking kidnapped me,” I bite back.
“Kidnapped you? I fucking rescued you!” he shouts, getting in my face.
“And that’s your idea of rescuing someone? Marry me or die? And what the hell did I need rescuing from anyway? I had a good life, an honest life––”
“Yeah, so honest and good that you had a boyfriend who sent you to me, who made you come crawling for money before he gambled it all away on shitty poker games and cheap women––”
He doesn’t get to say anything else as the rage in me runs so fucking deep that I do what he asked, and I hit him. Right on the goddamn jaw. His head whips to the side before he turns back to me, his hand whipping out and grabbing me around the throat.
And I am anything but terrified as he throws me down and pins me beneath him, his legs straddling me, caging me, his free hand pinning both of mine above my head.
“You tell me that I don’t make you feel alive, Kat,” he says in my face. “Tell me that I don’t give you the best fucking high of your life.”
One… Two… Three… “Tell me,” he shouts, his eyes blazing, his grip a force to reckoned with, but I don’t struggle, and instead I shout back at him.
“YES! Yes you make me feel, Nate, but I also hate that you make me feel because I’m not meant to fucking like you…” My voice trails off as the heat of the moment becomes too much, and then his lips smash down onto mine.
I lose myself in his heat, his warmth, his tongue. It’s all so fucking good, and the emotions that he brings out of me are all-consuming.
I hate him.
I like him.
I want him.
I need him away from me.
I have to escape.
