Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Peyton

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, waking me up from the deepest, most boneless sleep of my life. I’m not even sure how or when my phone was placed there, but Granger must have grabbed it on the way out of my classroom, since the last place I remember seeing it was on my desk.

I try to reach for the phone, but the muscular male arm around my midsection refuses to budge, and helplessly, I sink back into the warmth of him. It’s so simple to let the contentedness take hold, safety and security making me almost drowsy.

But I fight against it, forcing my eyes to stay open.

I’m in bed with a man who stalked me. Based on how he’s holding me now, the possessive way he spoke to me, I don’t see him stopping.

And it excites me.

Makes me feel needed and important for the first time in my life.

More than anything, I want to ignore the warning voice in the back of my head telling me this is dangerous and let Granger consume me. He gives my body unimaginable pleasure. He loves me. Wants to care for me and protect me.

With the deepest recesses of my soul…I want to let him.

I want to give myself over to this obsession I feel building inside of me. It’s not one-sided. I’ve been fascinated with him to an unhealthy degree since the beginning—I just didn’t realize it. Didn’t know what the hot quaking of my body meant. Or the constant, rupturing sensation in my chest. But I know now that our deep, abiding fascination is a two-way street. Now what am I going to do about it?

Let myself get carried away?

Or break free before I end up in a dark, co-dependent, sex-fueled relationship with a man who spied on me, followed me, all but admitted he’d been fantasizing about pinning me to the floor, covering my mouth and taking me without mercy?

Realizing I’ve grown wet between my thighs, I struggle for focus.

What is the right thing to do for me? Stay or go?

As if Granger senses my thoughts, he stirs behind me, that arm tightening ever so slightly. Almost like he doesn’t want me to notice.

And I like it.

I like him holding me as if he’s ready to fight to the death to keep me.

I shouldn’t, though. I shouldn’t be breathless and achy over his treatment.

“Who would be calling you this early in the morning?” Granger asks in my ear, his voice deceptively calm.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Can I look?”

When his sex thickens against my backside, I sense he liked me asking for permission. Oh God, I liked it, too. I loved it. So much that I can almost feel my pupils dilating, my nerve endings zapping. “Yes,” he says, finally, but he keeps a firm hold on the back of my neck as I lean toward the side table to retrieve the phone.

“It’s the school,” I murmur, frowning at the screen. “I hope nothing is wrong. They left me a voicemail.”

“Listen to it.” His open mouth glides along the breadth of my shoulders, making my eyelids flutter. “On speakerphone.”

I nod jerkily, tapping the screen and settling the phone back onto the table. I’m stunned when I hear the principal’s voice sounding grave on the recording. “Yes, hello. This is Principal Laughlin from the Royal Oak Academy. Miss Pruitt, if you’re listening to this, we know you’ve been taken. The security cameras captured footage of your abduction last night. We have sent the police to your apartment to determine if you’re there.” He clears his throat. “If this is Miss Pruitt’s captor, please return her home safely. We have your imagine on camera and the police will be much more lenient if you cooperate.”

The voicemail ends.

Neither one of us breaths, but the tension coils in the man behind me.

“The school has this address?” he asks mildly.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I updated their records when I moved.”

“So they’re coming. Here.”

Without saying the words out loud, I know we’re thinking the same thing. The police are under the impression that Granger abducted me—and to be fair, they aren’t wrong. He caught me when I ran, put me over his shoulder, took me home and tied me up. But I have a choice to make. I can allow the police to believe Granger is my abductor and free myself from these addictive shackles.

Or I can change their minds.

Slowly, Granger’s hand curves around my throat. “Do you think prison bars would keep me from you, Peyton?”

God help me, my sex clenches, my heart firing on all cylinders in my chest.

I close my eyes and search for the right answer to this situation.

Let this hunger take root and grow gnarled and twisted or rip it out before there’s no turning back?

But is there turning back now?

His skin against mine is warm, his heartbeat strong against my spine. Even his hand on my throat is thrilling and grounding at the same time. Granger came into my life like a dark, avenging angel and even then, on that road, the connection was already forming between us. It strengthens by the minute, leaving little hope of severing it.

This isn’t the life I pictured for myself, though.

I’ve always craved normalcy. A respectable life that would separate me from my past struggles. This relationship with Granger…it’s wild and turbulent.

What should I do?

There’s a loud knock on the front door of our apartment—and I’m no closer to deciding the best course of action. My heart climbs up into my mouth and I turn to face the man behind me, his brow drawn in worry. Panic. Not from the police. Oh no. This is not a man who fears anyone. The panic stems from the decision I’ll make.

We stare into one another’s eyes for long moments until another, louder knock echoes through the apartment.

“You have to let me answer,” I whisper. “This isn’t going to go away until they’ve spoken to me.”

“No,” he rasps, his throat working with a swallow.

“Yes.” I smooth out the furrow of his brow with my thumb. “If we’re going to be together, you’ll have to trust me.”

“You ran from me less than twelve hours ago.”

“I know.” If I’m going to get to that door, if I’m going to have a chance to decide my own destiny at all, I need to find a way out of this bed. So I lean in and kiss him long and full on the mouth, my chest tightening at the way he kisses me back. Like he’s never going to see me again. “Things are different than they were twelve hours ago, aren’t they?” I murmur against his lips.

He takes two hasty breaths. “I don’t know.”

“They are,” I say, kissing him again, stroking the hair back from his forehead. “Trust me, Granger, okay?”

His nod is stiff, but he gives it. And I don’t wait. I climb out of bed and find my skirt, zipping it on while the knocking grows louder, more insistent. Granger sits up and watches me from the messy sheets, his eyelids hooded, mouth in a tight line.

That’s the moment I realize I love him.

I love him for letting me make the choice. For giving me his trust, even though it’s hard for him. I love him for his jealousy, his possessiveness, his protective nature and the way he’s made himself vulnerable to me, despite how hard that must be for someone like him.

Dressed now, I take one last look at him and leave the room on trembling legs, calling, “I’ll be right there,” at the rattling door, afraid if I don’t say something, the police are going to break it down.

The walk to the front door is the longest of my life, the distance seeming to double with every step I take. And that’s exactly why I know I’ll never be happy without the man in the bedroom behind me. Because each step in the opposite direction of him makes me miserable. All I want is to be back in bed with him. I want his obsessive hands all over me. I want his darkness spread all over me so I can revel in it—and I want to give him my own in return.

I could open the door and tell the police that he did, in fact, kidnap me and hold me against my will. It just wouldn’t be the truth. Even being restrained in his bed gave me a deeper sense of rightness than I’ve ever felt in my life. I can’t live without it. Or him. The very thought of him being taken out of here in handcuffs makes me so anxious, I can barely breathe as I settle my hand on the lock, sliding it across and opening the door.

The faces of five officers stare back at me. They don’t look relieved to see me alive and well. No they take one glance at my disheveled state, the red marks on my wrists, and their attention sweeps the apartment behind me, trying to find Granger.

The threat.

“Can I help you?” I say, my throat scratchy from screaming.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” One of them draws his gun slowly. “Is there anyone else in the apartment?”

Moment of truth. “Yes,” I answer. Then louder, “Yes. My boyfriend.”

That gives them pause. “Your boyfriend.” They exchange looks. “You were abducted last night at your place of work by a man known as Granger Hoskins. A felon, ma’am. Is he in the apartment with you?”

“Granger is my boyfriend.” I wet my lips, a sense of purpose settling over me, making my voice sound more confident. “And he didn’t abduct me. We were…roleplaying. We didn’t mean to alarm anyone.”

“Roleplaying,” one of the officers echoes doubtfully.

The newly twisted part of me chooses that moment to rear its head. I’m surprised by the pride that comes along with it. I want to own what I have with Granger—and I have to, if we’re going to be happy.

“Yes, roleplaying.” My voice dips to husky and I lovingly rub my wrist marks against my cheek, sensuality uncurling inside of me like smoke. “I went willingly. Very…willingly.”

I sense movement behind me and turn to find Granger outlined in his bedroom doorway, one forearm propped high on the door. “Hello, officers,” he drawls. His voice is casual, but his eyes are rife with intensity, boring into me, making me feel feverish. “Let me put on a shirt.”

Granger turns in the doorway and I gasp.

His back is covered in scratch marks. Fresh ones.

In slow motion, I look down at my nails and find them tipped with red.

Heat climbs my thighs at the visible proof of my pleasure. At it being broadcast rather inappropriately. Intentionally. To let the other men know how satisfied I am in his bed. It’s bad. It’s good. It’s us.

An officer coughs behind me. “I, uh…don’t think a shirt will be necessary, Mr. Hoskins. We’ll let the school know Miss Pruitt is safe and sound.”

Granger nods once, his expression hardening, no longer friendly or casual. Instinctively I know he doesn’t like men near me. At all. He prowls toward me and I turn into his arms, tipping my head back to sigh over his gorgeous face. The jealousy displayed there. “If you’ll excuse us,” he says to the officers, reaching over my shoulder to close the door—and immediately backing me against it, our mouths fusing together wetly, desperately.

My skirt is ripped up to my hips by impatient male hands and I wrap my thighs right where they belong. Around his waist. He grinds our foreheads together while reaching down and unzipping his jeans, a moan breaking past my lips at the feel of his shaft prodding the entrance to my sex.

“Let them hear you,” Granger rasps in my ear, filling me in one savage drive. “Just in case they have any more doubts that you love riding this dick—and this dick only. You love it. Tell them.”

“I love it,” I whine through my teeth, Granger pounding me roughly against the door, rattling the hinges. “And I love you, Granger. I love you.”

He pauses, lifting his head to stare with a look of wonder on his face. “You…chose me. I can’t believe it.”

“Feel me,” I whisper, wrapping my legs as tightly as they’ll go, clenching my intimate muscles where they cradle him. “Believe it.”

“I love you,” he groans, burying his face in my neck. “My fairy.”

“My dark prince,” I whimper back, the door beginning to shake again with each one of his frantic drives. And for the rest of our lives, he certainly lives up to the name.