My cock was so hard I thought I was going to shoot my load in my pants like a goddamn teenager.

“Mine,” I said, my lips running from her tits to her ribcage, all the way up to her neck. Everything was soft and tan and baked by the sun. I kicked the door to my bedroom open and laid her on the dark oak platform king-sized bed. Her legs spread for me willingly, but her heart wouldn’t, and maybe that’s why she was the girl to make my dick extra hard and forget about all the others.

“Every inch of you is mine. Your breath is mine.” I squeezed her throat, sliding on top of her, my tongue exploring the space between her breasts, just above her lungs. My mouth moved like a straight arrow down to her belly button. “Your mind is mine.” I tugged at her hair without even looking up from her flat stomach, hearing her moan. She used both hands pushing my head down, her poise snapping like the flying buttons of a ripped shirt.

“Your body is definitely mine.” I shoved my hand into her panties and squeezed her pussy hard. “Admit it, Edie. You’re drowning in me, fast. You’re way past wet.” I let the word roll on my tongue as I slipped two fingers into her, playing with her arousal, and she was so soaking, and I was so fucking her tonight—yes—even if it meant it would put me straight on God’s shit list. “You’re mine, and you hate it. You’re mine, and I’m not a wave you can ride. I’m the fucking ocean. And every single day when you pull shit like stealing my iPad or my old phone or the fucking trash I keep in my glove compartment, you’re falling deeper. Tell me, Van Der Zee, do I make it hard for you to breathe?”

My mouth was near her panties. Her shorts were on my floor. I looked up to her, and she looked like she wanted to cry. How beautiful would that be? Her tears running down her perfect porcelain face. A broken doll. My broken doll.

“You do.” She inhaled sharply, watching me slide her underwear down her thighs. My heart stuttered unevenly at seeing her naked—completely naked—for the first time. Not in a compromising position against the printer, or in someone’s back seat with her top still on, but completely bare. I was still fully dressed, but somehow it didn’t make me feel less exposed. It made me uncomfortable, but not enough to stop what we were doing. “I can’t breathe when I think about the things I want to do to you, and I breathe too fast when I think about the things I want you to do to me,” Edie admitted.

“Tell me,” I whispered into the crook between her thigh and pussy, watching her whole body quiver under me before I’d even touched her. “What do you want me to do to you?”

“Everything,” she whispered. “I want you to do everything to me.”

I licked her inner thighs, her pussy, inside and out—every drop of her lust for me—then got up and reached for my nightstand, pulling out a condom. She peeled my shirt off in a hurry while I worked my jeans, the condom between my teeth.

“One thing, Edie. Whatever we do, we take this to our graves.”

“To our graves,” she echoed. “My father will take everything I care about if he finds out.”

Same goes for me, I thought bitterly. Only difference was, I was going to fight the motherfucker to the ground. She couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Same difference.

I rolled the condom on, feeling the familiar appreciative twitch of my cock. I stood on my knees, between her legs, then slapped and stroked my sheathed cock while fingering her. She moaned, watching me.

“I liked it when you bit my nipple hard,” she said. I ignored her, pulling my fingers out and coating her pussy with her arousal.

“You make me feel deranged with need,” she whimpered, just as I slapped her pussy for the first time. It made her body stutter and stir, and she let out a little yelp I stifled by shoving my wet fingers into her mouth.

“Shhh,” I said. “You said you like it. Show me how much.”

She sucked my fingers clean, and I cupped the back of her head, pulling her closer as I slid into her without warning. No different than any other woman I’d slept with before. Just the same, I convinced myself. Just the fucking same.

So fucking wet.

I thrust once, twice, three times, without asking whether it felt okay or any consideration, like I’d done with other women.

But hell if she felt like any other woman.

Edie moved underneath me, slow at the beginning, catching up with my pace. She grunted every time I entered her, scratching my back as I slid one of her calves against my shoulder and slammed deeper into her. She was tight and small, but the smile she gave showed me she enjoyed this agony the way I did.

Every time I felt this surge in my chest, I thrust harder, faster, more violently, trying to shake off the feeling that accompanied my tingling balls and tight muscles. She, in return, scratched harder, drawing blood from me, screaming my name into a pillow she flung over her face.

I rode her.

But she rode me, too.

“I’m close, I’m close, I’m close,” she chanted, and this was my cue to flip her onto her stomach, enter her from behind, and press her head against the pillow.

“I want to hurt you,” I said, because that’s what I always said, because that’s what I always felt. But I didn’t feel it now. I was on autopilot. Like people say they’re hungry at noon sharp just to get the fuck out of the office and take their lunch break.

“Then do,” she moaned into the pillow, completely pliable, and she fucking came, clutching my dick and shuddering like she was having a seizure. “Hurt me, Trent. I love your wrath on my skin.”

I wrapped her long hair around my fist and pulled hard, making her arch her back when she was on all fours. Her ass was round and white against her obvious tan lines. I slapped it.

At first cautiously, getting the feel of it, and when she moaned and clenched around me, barely making it possible for me to slide out and then back in, I slapped harder.

But I wasn’t feeling it. The need to inflict pain on her.

“Harder,” she groaned.

I slapped her ass harder, and the thwack! hung in the air. A red mark formed around her right cheek. I loved it. I hated that I loved it. What the fuck was wrong with me?

“Harder,” she yelped.

And I did, hating that my dick was so swollen and ready to explode to the pained sounds she was making. She confused me. I’d never felt guilty about the things I wanted. I did now.

“Harder.”

“No.”

“Trent.”

“No.”

“I need it.”

“You’ve had enough for one day, Edie. Your cum is all over my dick. I can eat you out if you want another orgasm.” Was I bargaining with her mid-fuck? That was a first. And a last. This chick wasn’t running the show, no matter how hard I wanted her tight pink pussy to milk my cock.

“If you won’t, Bane will.” I heard the smile in her voice but couldn’t see it. Fuck it. She’d asked for it.

Thwack!

We came together like a storm. Her grip on my cock tightened as my thrusts became erratic, jerking before I found my release. I swear I came enough to fill up a bucket in that condom. Shit, it felt good.

I pulled out immediately, rolling off of her and sauntering to the bathroom to dispose of the condom. I didn’t look back to see her when I washed the cum from my dick, watching it shrinking tiredly above the sink. I let her have my back, knowing if she caught my expression through the bathroom mirror, she’d flash a victory grin.

I made a note to never take the flash drive from my safe.

She was starting to feel a lot like an addiction. Couple more fucks like this, and I didn’t trust my fucked-up self not to hand it over willingly.

I WAS SIX WHEN I first realized there was something seriously wrong with my father. Way before the whole thing with Theo happened. It was a rare fall afternoon when Jordan had come home on time and my mother was “cooking” dinner in the kitchen. Or that’s what she’d called downing a bottle of wine while staring at the circling plate in the microwave warming up our meal.

Everything felt eerie, askew, and dangerous. Breaking routine scared me, but the idea of living with a man I barely knew and was too terrified to ask to tuck me into bed was scarier, so I’d obediently sat next to him on the couch, as he’d mindlessly watched a finance show on CNN and flipped through his mail. A commercial appeared on the screen, advertising a non-profit organization for abused and neglected animals. In the commercial, they showed sad puppy faces and disfigured kittens staring at the cameras, begging to be helped. One of the dogs was lying in a pool of mud. A fleabag made of bones and skin. Both its eyes were missing, and it looked like it didn’t have any teeth left. I’d gasped in horror, clutching the fabric of the expensive sofa in my tiny fingers.

“Edie, stop doing that. It’s suede. It’s a very gentle fabric.” He’d slapped my wrist, but not forcefully. Never forcefully.

I’d immediately let go, curling my spine, turning to face him. “Can we donate?”

“I donate enough at work.”

“Really? To shelters?” I’d perked up, desperate to cling to a positive thing about him. Building a character of the people we know is a psychological mechanism I would later learn can also bite you in the ass—because I’d wanted badly to believe my father was a good man and that my mother was okay. In my mind, he was caring and generous. Not calculated and indifferent. He’d given me a sideways glance, most of his attention still divided between the screen and the thick pile of letters.

“No. I donate to whoever needs my help in our community.”

“The commercial makes me feel funny, Dad. Funny…sad,” I’d admitted, looking away from the screen as the narrator explained all the horrific things these animals had been through. Back then, I still called him that. Dad.

“It’s life, Edie.”

“I can’t look.” My head moved back and forth, my knees tucked under my chin as I’d held myself together. “It’s too sad.”

“Life’s sad, so you better get used to it.”