Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Especially when hearing me say it, he leans down. He brings his face—God, his mouth, soft and pillowy—so close to mine that we’re breathing the same air. And I realize I want to kiss him. I realize I’ve wanted to kiss him since that night. Since the night he put his mouth on me.
My pussy.
Because how is it that he kissed me down there but never on my lips? How is it that I’ve spent the last six months imagining his lips on my lips, and I’ve yet to taste them?
When he grabs my jaw, I realize I’ve wanted him to touch me since that night too. Because he hasn’t. Which is a feat in itself since we’ve ridden on the same horse for hours; I’ve sat with my spine almost fused to his chest; he’s lifted me onto and off the saddle with his hands around my waist; I’ve redressed and bandaged his cuts, but still it feels like we haven’t touched at all.
He stretches my neck farther up, tilting my head back and bowing my spine, and I think it’s going to happen. I think he’s two seconds away from kissing me. But then he cocks his head to the side as a cruel light flashes through his face. He tightens his fingers on my jaw, and using his grip as leverage, he gives me a push and my body goes swaying.
Back and forth like a pendulum. Like a piece of meat.
A swinging doll, naked and humiliated, at his mercy and his whims.
My shoulders scream in protest. My wrists are flayed, but the most painful thing is the shame in the center of my belly. The most painful thing is the thump of my naked spine against his bare chest when, after letting me swing for a few seconds, he rounds my hung body and brings me to a stop with his splayed hand on my trembling belly.
He plasters himself to my back as he rasps the very first words he’s spoken to me since he rescued me from the bear. “Do you know how long I’ve waited to hear you say my name?” Through my broken and heaving breaths, I try to look back, but he presses his hand on my belly, making me arch up as he commands, “Eyes up front.”
“A-Arsen, you—”
My words stop when I feel something pressing at my pulse.
When he uses that something to inch my head up. I don’t have to look to know what it is. I know exactly what it is, even though I’ve never—not ever in my entire nineteen years on this earth—had it pointed at me.
A gun.
He’s holding my chin up with the gun pressed just under my jaw, and I don’t know how, but it still feels hot from when he used it to save my life. My muscles are locked tight in fear and I know my eyes are open, but I don’t think I’m seeing anything other than dark spots. And in that darkness, I hear him say, “Back when we were writin’ to each other, there were so many times I wanted to tell you my real name. Wanted to see it written in your handwriting. I’d sit there, in my bunk, and hunt down the letters of my name in the words you wrote. And then put them together in my head, tryin’ to imagine what my name would look like in your small fancy handwriting. But then”—he breathes out behind me, grazing his stubble along the side of my cheek—“I get out and I meet you, but you refuse to say it. You refuse to say my name.”
I swallow. “I-I was angry. I was angry that y-you lied to me. That you—”
He presses the gun harder and I flinch. “I know you were. I am too.”
“I—”
“I kept thinking about it. I kept imagining it. The moment you’d say it. The moment I’d make you say it. But then you did and I—” He takes another deep breath, his hot chest sliding along my spine. But this time, when he exhales, I hear a slight hitch in it, a little shudder that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if we hadn’t been plastered to each other. “You screamed my name. In fear. In panic. And I thought I’d lose my mind. Thought I’d come out of my skin if I didn’t find you. If I didn’t get to bring you back where you fuckin’ belong.”
My heart clenches then, clenches and clenches, and I try to look back at him again. But he presses the gun harder, and I have to stay put. I hate it. I absolutely hate it, but I do. Instead, I dig the back of my head into his sweaty chest. “I-I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I thought I’d tear this world apart. Turn it upside down until I found you. And the only time that’s happened was eight years ago,” he continues, his words hot, his breaths hotter. “I didn’t like it back then and I like it even less now. So do you understand what I’m sayin’ to you?” He inches the gun up, pressing it against my lower lip, as he continues, “I’m sayin’ don’t fuckin’ say my name, yeah? Not my name, not another word. Until I tell you to. Is that clear?”