Bleeding Heart (Captured Miracle Book 2)(12)

I turned my head away from him, blinking back my tears. I was frustrated and hurt and angry. My body was open to him, and even though he had rejected me - I still wanted him. For the first time, I was truly ready to lose myself in a man and he had rejected me. What kind of screwed up crap was that?

Calix lowered his head once more to my throat. He inhaled deeply and I felt my stomach clench. “Nova, I’m trying to be someone you want. I’m trying, in the only why I know how, to make you happy - to give you something you want.”

My heart ached. I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me so many times.

I said coldly, “If you want to make me happy, fuck me.”

He shook his head, lifting his head from the nook of my neck to glare down at me once again. “I will, love.” There was a darkness to his tone that gave me chills. “As soon as you’re legally my wife, I will.”

I stared up at him in defiance. “I think you should get off me now. I want to go inside and take a shower where I can wash you from my body - and then I want to go to sleep.”

“You’re angry.” He nodded. “But you’ll never wash me from your body, love. You can try, but I’ll always be there.”

I pressed my hands to his shoulders. “Get off!”

He pushed his still solid length against my core and I gasped, instantly aroused, and instantly angry for his action. My mouth opened to tell him off, but he caught my chin in his hand. “Don’t pretend you don’t want me, Nova.” He growled. “Don’t think for even a moment, that because I won’t fuck you, that I won’t take your pleasure in other ways.”

“Don’t do this.” I shook my head, feeling exhausted and confused. “I’m tired.”

“Have you forgotten that I know your body better than you know it, Nova?” He asked darkly. “Have you forgotten the ways I can make you melt in my mouth - make you plead and moan beneath me? Have you forgotten?”

Images of his head between my legs flared in my mind and I blushed scarlet. “No.”

He lowered his face to mine until only an inch of space existed between us. “Don’t think, that because my dick is hard for you, and I want to make you happy, that I don’t have complete fucking control of you. Don’t allow yourself, for a fucking minute, to entertain the illusion that you have power over me. You don’t.” Tears filled my eyes - but in this minute, he was immune to their glistening. “In four days you will be my wife. In four days I will fuck you senseless - I will have your body in every way that I’ve wanted it for two fucking years and you will accept me, love, because if you don’t, you’ll fucking regret it.” His tone was so cold that I couldn’t stop myself from shivering beneath him. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.” I whispered. “I understand.”

And I did. I understood his words, but what I didn’t understand was how he could wear the face of someone my heart was convinced I could love and then transform so quickly into a monster I could do nothing but loathe. It was this Calix that made me feel hopeless. It was this Calix that broke my heart and ruined my fantasies that maybe something beautiful could bloom from within this very horrible situation I was trapped in.

It was this Calix that made me think - I’d never been more wrong - never been more foolish. In the snare of a monster, nothing is beautiful.

Calix stared down into my face for long moments as I fought to keep my tears restrained. Then finally, he lifted himself from my body. I could see from my peripheral vision that he was still painfully hard, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand how he could maintain arousal after words as cruel as his. I knew I certainly wasn’t aroused. I’d dried up like a lake in the desert.

Sitting up on the towel, I caught the pool wrap Calix tossed down at me. “Put this on. We’re going back to my room.”

I nodded, but I didn’t speak. My heart felt as though it were being slaughtered with agonizing and slow precision in my chest. I hated how easy it was for him to cause me pain. It was the ease that he found in looking into my tears that solidified the assumption that he could never love me - and I was wasting my time trying to make him.

I felt hopeless. But despite the absence of hope I felt, I couldn’t simply accept his inability to love me as fact when that was the only thing I had left to hope for. It had only been one night. Every road I had ever travelled had its bumps - maybe this night was just a bump in our road. I had to believe, for my sanity, that this was only a bump or maybe a hill, and that we would make it safely over.