Wicked Dreams (Fallen Royals, #1)(14)
The nurse tuts at me. She doesn’t do more than glance, because apparently Caleb’s word is law around here—even for the staff. “I’ll let him know, thank you.”
I have no choice but to go where he leads.
“You aren’t serious.”
“Can’t a guy bring a girl home?”
I roll my eyes. “Not when the girl is me, and the guy is you.”
He snorts, unlocking his car as we approach it. I’m not surprised that it’s a fast, expensive Audi. Matte black. The leather interior is black with lime-green accents.
He waits for me to get in and closes my door, sliding into the driver’s seat.
“Well?”
I glance at him. “What?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Back to school.” I glance back toward the doors we just came out of.
He snorts. “You’re a shit liar, Sheep. We’re skipping out on the last twenty minutes of the day. Don’t blow it.” His gaze turns contemplative. “Or do. After all, it’ll just make things more… interesting.”
I’m not afraid of him. Even with the posturing and the games. My head is spinning with everything that’s happened in the last week—at least that much is true—but suddenly, I don’t feel like he’s going to kill me.
And he knows it, judging from the expression on his face.
“Tell me,” he says. Dark and deadly. He’s back to how he acts in front of a crowd.
“Take me to your house.”
His face closes off. It’s the last thing he expected.
I feel like I’m the one disappointed. It rings through me like a bell in a minor key, too much dissonance to handle. How does he manage to make me feel so much with just a change of his mood?
“Now you’re playing the game,” he murmurs.
He guns it out of the parking lot, flying down streets that we used to run through. It’s surreal. It’s a dream-turned-nightmare.
“What if I don’t want to play?” I ask.
He turns onto a familiar road, easing into his driveway. He parks in front of the empty house and grins at me. It’s the smile that belongs to a madman, leaking darkness like an oil spill. “Sorry, love. You don’t get a choice.”
Caleb climbs out of the car. I take a deep breath and mirror his movements, following him up the front walkway. He unlocks the door and pushes it open, gesturing for me to go in front of him.
This place…
Memories sucker punch me. Chasing him around, eating dinner. My mother brushing my hair off of my forehead and kissing my temple.
“I changed my mind.” I back away, right into him.
He grips my arms and propels me forward, deeper into the house.
“Caleb, stop.”
“Who said we could stop?”
I dig my heels into the ground, but my upper body keeps moving forward. I take a step, then another, farther into the house that feels more like a ghost town than a home.
Room after room, furniture is covered in white sheets and dust.
“What happened?”
He laughs, squeezing my arms.
“Caleb.”
“I’m not sure a sheep should be so direct.” He talks above my head to the empty house.
We stop in the kitchen, and he shoves me forward.
The kitchen.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I say, turning back.
I try to slip past him, but he grabs me. Hauls me in. He lifts me and sets me on the counter, holding my hips.
I stare down at him. His eyes are level with my throat at this angle. “Caleb, please.”
“Please?” He watches me. “Since when does please work?”
Please don’t tell them, Margo.
His voice echoes out of the recesses of my mind, so loud that I flinch.
“One day I’m going to fuck you on this counter.” His voice is low.
My body is a live wire. One spark, and I’ll set this whole house on fire. One touch, and Caleb and I will go up in flames.
“You’re going to enjoy it,” he continues. “Even knowing what happened here. Because all you’ll be able to think about is my dick in your pussy, spreading you wide. Hitting every. Fucking. Nerve.”
One of his hands comes up and palms my breast.
I’m wet. It’s a new sensation, but Caleb is right between my legs, and I can’t move if I don’t want him to know.
He pinches my nipple, and I automatically try to lean away from him.
“Stop.” I hate how it shoots straight to my center. How everything inside me is alive in a way that it hasn’t been in a really fucking long time.
“You give in?” His eyes light up. “You like this, Sheep. Admit it and I’ll stop.”
He opens my shirt, inch by inch.
I bite my lip, refusing to play his game. It’s dumb, really. A tiny, terrified part of me is screaming to say whatever I need to in order to escape. To claim my sanity back, because he’s slowly walking us to the cliff’s edge.
Once we fall, there’s no going back.
“Admit you like it, and I’ll stop,” he repeats. He looks at my bra, tugging my shirt open wider. He pulls down the top edge of the bra cup. It exposes my breast, nipple hard under his attention.