“You what?”
His jaw clenches for a second. Then, “I’ve been looking for the right words and I… I don’t think there are any. And if there are, I don’t know them. So I’m going to do what I did weeks ago. On another one of the nights I hurt you.”
I finally give up the fight and hold on to his t-shirt. I fist it with my fingers, crane my neck up, before whispering, “What did you do?”
He looks down at me, his breaths hot and sweet, strawberry-laced. “I walked out the door. Deleted that video. Deleted all the videos I had no business taking in the first place. Walked to my truck, and then I…” Another lick of his mouth, making it glisten even more, and this time I’m pretty sure he’s remembering something while he does that. “I sat in it. I took off the boot I made you ride, the one you came on, and…” Another pause. “And licked it.”
I jump and my fist twisting in his shirt even more tightly. “You licked your…”
“Yeah,” he says outright, unabashedly, without restraint. “I licked it. I licked your cum off my boot, because…”
“B-because?”
His eyes burn as they flick back and forth between mine. “It’s bad manners, see. It’s bad manners to let it go to waste when you made it for me. When you gave it to me. As a gift.”
“I—”
“Your cum. You did, didn’t you? Like the most precious gift.”
Dumbstruck, I nod.
“Yeah, you did. You were so innocent. You still fucking are. But you were so brave. You’re always sobrave. Such a good girl. A hard worker, aren’t you?” I nod again and he keeps going, “And you did work hard for it. So,sohard. Twisting your hips, writhing your body, playing with your perky, plump tits. Giving me the fucking show I asked for. So I had to. I had to, because your pussy made it for me. She made it so I could eat it and lap at it, drink it and fill my hungry stomach with it. And you know I’ve been hungry for a long time, yeah?”
I blink, my belly feeling heavy with arousal. “A long fucking time,” he almost groans, his nostrils flaring. “So hungry for you, baby.Sofucking hungry for your pussy. So.Fucking. Hungryfor any scrap you’ll throw at me.”
I shiver so hard at it that my knees almost buckle, but I hold onto him as I say, “But you don’t have to be any longer. I’m here. You can?—”
“So I licked your cum off my boot and kicked myself in my head, cursed at myself for being such a cruel, filthy asshole to you, to my sweet Little Strawberry. And every time your taste would hit me, my dick would get so hard, yeah? It would grow along my thigh, sit fat and heavy, and fucking leaky. But I didn’t touch myself. I refused to touch myself. I refused to give myselfa single ounce of pleasure after what I did to you. So then it became a ritual. Every time I wanted to punish myself, I’d lick my boot and let my cock get heavy. And I kept doing it. For days, for weeks, even though I’d licked the leather clean and your taste was gone, I kept licking it like a starving dog because that’s what I was. Without you.”
I let go of his t-shirt and go up to his face, cupping his hard jaw. “Shepard?—”
“I call everyone who wants to sniff under your skirt a dog, don’t I? But the truth is it’s me. I’m the dog. An animal. Who wants to sniff under your skirt, lick your skin, bite your body. I’m the one who wants to rut inside you and leave my mark everywhere. Even on the inside.”
“Shepard, please, listen?—”
“And then, every time I saw you during those weeks, every time I stopped by the coffee shop during your shift and saw you, all sad and heartbroken, talking to your fucking boss, I…” He grits his jaw. “I wanted to barge in and fucking punch him in the face and while he was lying on the floor, bleeding out, I wanted to say sorry. For everything.”
I felt him, back then. In those days. I felt him watching me, and while it completely makes sense now that I know him, know the crazy level of obsession he has for me, it still steals my breath away. It still makes my heart hiccup and skip a beat. That he watched me even when I thought he hated me.
“Everything?”
“For blackmailing you. For showing up everywhere in those early days. Forcing you to give me a lap dance every night, sneaking into your room. Recording you without your knowledge. Asking you to let me fuck you for money. I wanted to say sorry for every single day I’ve been in your life since the night of my engagement, when I chased you down all so I could get to talk to you.”
I know I’d figured it out already. That that’s what he wanted to do. That’s why he came after me, because he wanted to be close to me. Because even though he was fake-engaged to his girlfriend, he was still obsessed with me. I was the other girl and he wanted to make a connection. But him saying that, acknowledging that, makes me so happy, and also makes me want to burst into tears. Because only he would do something like this. Make me feel so much I don’t know what to do with myself.
“But I didn’t know how,” he goes on, breaking my thoughts. ‘I haven’t been very good at saying sorry. So I kept licking my boot. Because I had to find some way to apologize,” he tells me, regret slashing and chiseling his features into hard points. “Some way to soothe the hurt I caused. Because the thing is, baby”—he leans closer—“that one way or another, I keep hurting you, don’t I? I keep doing fucked up things to hurt you.”
Still cupping his jaw, I go up on my tiptoes. “Then, stop. Stop hurting me.”
His jaw goes back and forth under my palm as he rasps, “I don’t know how.”
“Justtalkto me,” I insist. “Tell me how youfeelinstead of shutting down and disappearing. Just?—”
He shakes his head. “I’m not good at that.”
“But—”
“It’s not evenaboutthat,” he cuts me off. “See, I thought about it on the way over.”
