Page 45 of Crave

“Lucky you got rid, then.”

He said nothing.

“Do you know who I am?”

He drew in a breath. “No. Not really.”

I studied him. There’s a rhythm to lies. I know them by heartbeat. By breath. He wasn’t lying. Or if he was, he was too clean at it. And the way he held himself, the fear and the heat all tangled up, threw me.

Didn’t like it. Didn’t like him getting under my skin like that.

“I mean…” He rubbed the side of his head where the wall had kissed him. “I know we’ve met.”

I let out a short, ugly snort scraping through the cold. “Right. So your memory’s not as filthy as the company you keep.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. A small, stupid movement making my insides fracture like ice. I hated it. Hated him for it. He threw me off balance the way a stray punch throws your whole guard out.

I got closer, lowering my voice to a deep threat. “Why’re you, a posh boy, on your knees for fifty quid on my turf, eh?” I caught his scent. Clean, expensive, wrong for this place. And, Jesus, it hit me hard. As if he’d rubbed fucking poison all over himself and I’d inhaled his toxic air. “Ghost send you?”

“Who’s Ghost?”

That answered that. “Who you feeding intel to, then?”

“No one. Seriously. I know nothing.” His voice came out thin, honest in a way I wasn’t used to. He looked as if he’d wandered into a room he’d never meant to be in. Embarrassed more than ashamed.

“You’re gonna have to explain why you offered your dirty mouth for fifty quid, then.” I didn’t soften it. “Explain why you wandered into my world and left your little cunt mates to rip off my line.”

He shut his eyes, wiped a shaky hand across his brow. Sweat caught where my breath had hit him. “I… fuck, I didn’t mean to take your money.” He dragged the words out as if they hurt. “It was a mistake.” He looked up, eyes wide, and rushed to correct himself. “Not what we did. Either time. I mean…I thought you were… into me. I was sadly mistaken when you handed me cash instead of—” he swallowed, voice dropping “—my turn.”

I watched him, and something inside me loosened. Then snapped. It shouldn’t have been complicated. It shouldn’t have bitten me like this. That I’d been wrong. That he wasn’t a paid thing chewed at the thin patience I’d hauled into the alley. And the anger tasted metallic and close, hot in my mouth. I didn’t think. Never did. I reacted. And I hit him. Hard. A sharp, feral cuff to his jaw. Puncturing the soft lie that’d been slow cooking in my gut.

He lurched back, cracking his skull on brick. His lip split across a tooth; blood welled bright and awful on his skin. For a second, the world shrank to the panic in his eyes and the hand he pressed to his jaw, clutching blood and bruise, and the hot sting burning through my knuckles. I hadn’t wanted to hurt him. And if I was honest, if I dug past the noise and the rage, I’d meant to hurt myself. And seeing that red, his blood on my hands, it tore at me. Split me wide open, tumbling out the things I’d been holding shut for far too long.

Shame. Hunger.

A stupid, aching want making no sense.

So I grabbed his jacket, slammed him back against the wall, and stepped in close enough to feel his breath. “Are you scared of me?”

He drew in a shaky lungful of air, a line of blood tracing down his jaw. “Petrified.”

Our eyes locked, and something shifted. Small, sharp, dangerous. That wasn’t the fear I was used to seeing. No flinch. No plea. A tremor underneath it. If it’d been anyone else, I’d have left them on the ground, lesson taught.

But him? He looked scared, yeah. But not of what I’d do to him…

Of what he wanted me to do.

So I got in even closer, lips a whisker away from his. “But you like it? That fear?”

He swallowed. “Yeah.”

Fuck. What was I meant to do with that? It was beyond reason. I’d never dealt with this. Not once. I paid for it. Took what I needed. Got my fix and left it where it belonged. Kept it right outside my world. I’d made peace with that. I knew I couldn’t have both. I’d tried once and fucked it up. What I had was all it was ever going to be. But there he was. Pretty as sin. Face marked by me. And I couldn’t fucking control it.

I kissed him. Hard. As sharp as I’d hit him. Tasting the blood for myself. Salt, copper, skin. He flinched, pain no doubt coursing through him, but he kissed me back. Just as feral. As fucking hungry. Tongue and teeth and blood. And I pinned him there with my body, right into that wall as if I could squeeze him into it, make us both squirm into brick and hide whatever this was.

Then I stopped. Pressed my forehead to his. Swiped a thumb over my mouth and tasted him. His blood, sharp and real. And when I looked down, I was hard. Rock fucking hard. So was he. He knew it. I knew it. I could see it in those pretty eyes of his. The raging fucking need for me to touch him. It was inevitable.

I undid his belt slow, eyes never leaving his. Gave him that heartbeat. The chance to push me off, to tell me no. Would I have stopped? Probably not. But the choice was there, anyway.