Chapter 14

He took his eyelids for me.

The word rapist now adorns Kage's chest, and I nearly choked when I saw it written out, red and puffy.

Neo turns to me as the door to the basement shuts. He's panting, and the space between us is silent. What is there to say? I haven't dealt with the emotional trauma of what Kage did to me. Even though soon he'll be dead, I'll live with that moment etched somewhere on the edges of my soul for eternity. It'll be a driving force from this day forward.

Neo lifts me over his shoulder and carries me to our bedroom without saying a word. When he drops me onto the bed, there's a question in his eyes.

One I never thought I would see.

Neo is always one hundred percent himself, always unabashed about holding the hand of his insanity. But right now, he's raw and honest, honestly looking at me for an answer.

I was brutalized. There's no way around that. He knows he might have pushed me too far down in that basement. That he might have touched me too soon. Even though he wants more, he doesn't want me to feel like I have to.

Something in my throat makes me choke.

Emotions too fresh to unpack right now form a lump I can't seem to swallow past.

"If I was…"

I shake my head, tears falling from my eyes and staining my cheeks. "I wanted it. I felt more like me."

I've been struggling with this. The me that I've known since encountering Neo is who I always wanted to be.

He freed something in me. Something was always there, but it needed his key to unlatch the door it was hidden behind. From the moment he set me on the back of his couch and touched my body, I felt alive. I was animated, with a part of his spirit invigorating me and keeping me sentient.

While I was beneath Kage, as he grunted and writhed inside me, I was dead. It's not the kind of dead I enjoy, either. It was not the kind where I woke in Neo's arms, my body still throbbing from the hands that stole my breath and enlivened me.

No. It was the kind where I was emotionless and empty, like a vacant house sitting on a hill that everyone comes to look at but no one wants to live in.

I felt so alone.

Detached.

I felt like I was giving up the fight where I should have given one, but I couldn't bring myself to because losing that fight would hurt much more than giving over.

"Are you alright?" he asks. It's not the first time he's asked, and I know it won't be the last time.

I nod, sniffling to get control of myself. "I always want you to touch me, Neo. What happened with him… I don't want it to define me, and I don't want it to define us."

Still, he remains planted at the end of the bed, looking down at me like a fragile piece of glass.

Part of me wonders if it's him who needs to speak. He's done so little of it since I got back. I thought he was only giving me space, but maybe he's struggling too.

"Neo?"

Getting on my knees at the end of the bed, I motion for him to come closer. When he does, I wrap my arms around his middle, leaning my head onto his chest.

Sometimes, looking away from Neo is all it takes for him to feel comfortable enough to talk.

He rips me off him, grabbing for my face and locking our eyes in a gaze so intense that I think I might hold my breath.

Yup, I'm holding my breath.

I gasp for air, and he doesn't take notice.

"You are my fucking life. I don't say things I should when I should, stupid girl. I'm a fucked-up man, and I know that."

I open my mouth to interject, and he shakes his head once.

"I love you with every single cell in my body. I should have told you a million times over, but words are hard for me. Emotions are fucking brutal."

I swallow over the lump that's still searing my throat.

"When you went missing." He closes his eyes and takes a few steadying breaths. "When you went missing, I thought I was going to lose my mind, stupid girl."

A tear goes down his cheek, and I dutifully watch it trek over his bloody skin and disappear into his beard, which he hasn't trimmed in weeks.

"I am no longer Neo without Lyla," he admits, and a sob cracks through me like a whip, and I can't hold back the unbecoming noise I make as I break and wrap myself around him again.

Something in me feels whole again. I knew he loved me—of course, I knew—but to hear it…

I didn't think I needed to hear it.

But I did.

My heart is beating out of my chest when he grips my hair, tugging it tightly in hand only the way Neo Wade can, and peels me off him.

His kiss is like a swarm of bees surrounding my body. My ears fill with their hum as my body writhes from their sting as his tongue infiltrates my mouth and causes me to wail with pleasure.

His grip on my hair remains, but his other hand finds my throat and wraps around it tightly.

And I'm alive again.

As if he's breathing life back into me, he deepens the kiss, all the while grasping at me as if I'm going to run away.

As if I'm a ghost and he's my tether.

Suddenly, his lips are gone, his hands release me, and he backs up a few paces. He rubs his thumb over his bottom lip and watches me with a wicked grin.

"Lay back," he tells me.

"Well, I—" I protest, knowing it will get a rise out of him, which is my favorite game.

"I said lay back!" he growls, trekking toward me in three angry steps.

I smile, laying back on the bed as if I hadn't just taunted a beast.

"I should make you crawl," he snarls.

The idea of it alone sparks longing deep in my belly. Tingles of hungry lust move through my veins.

After what we just did and what's happened to me lately, we seem mad to be looking at one another and feeling what we are now.

But as the Mad Hatter would say, All the best people are mad.

"Take off your clothes," he orders.

I slowly take off my blood-covered sweatshirt and shorts. Neither of which had undergarments beneath them.

I toss them onto the floor, waggling my legs open and shut. Teasing him with peek-a-boos of my exposed pussy each time they fall open.

He bites his lower lip, the monster climbing to the surface as I watch his eyes darken.

"Edge of the bed. Now."

There's the Neo I know—the demanding, impatient man I've fallen madly in love with.

I scoot to the edge of the bed, letting my feet dangle over the side. Neo drops to his knees before me, pressing my thighs open almost painfully. But the heat coursing through my veins only adds to the building pulse of neediness in my core.

"Neo," I breathe, and his hungry eyes flick over my pussy as his dessert awaits.

"I don't want your words, stupid girl. I want your screams."

He doesn't let me get a word in edge-wise before his tongue collides with my cunt like the first few moments of a downpour, hard and heavy. He works over me until I'm arching off the bed, shouting incoherently to the ceiling, and gripping onto his hair for dear life.

When I come, he doesn't relent. Even though I'm still sensitive, he continues.

"Neo," I beg, wiggling under his authoritative mouth.

"More!" he commands in a graveled tone. I know better than to disobey.

I grip his hair with both hands, placing my feet on his shoulders for leverage, and grind on his mouth as though my next breath depends on it.

The room grows hot, and sweat beads on my brow, though my nipples could cut glass right now with how hard they are.

His fingers find my entrance with an expertise only a dominant male has. One who controls life and death. Specifically mine.

They crook upward, rubbing over my g-spot with unruly accuracy, and I know I'm going to lose it even as I try to top him from the bottom with my grip on his hair.

"Neo, holy fuck, don't stop."

When I feel a familiar rush of fluids, I try to pull his face away, but he wraps his hands under my ass, holding me to him, drowning in me.

"Oh, God!" My eyes roll back, and my toes curl on his shoulders. I throw my head back and scream his name, and I come undone again for him.

His eyes are feral when he stands and wipes his face clean on his arm. He grabs for me, lifting me off the bed and carrying me to the dresser. He drops me on top of it, spreading my legs wide and coming between them.

He has his cock out and in his hand before he stops and locks eyes with me.

"More?" he asks, and I nearly choke again on the meaning behind his question. The fucking coarse, sensitive emotion.

"More!" I shout in demand, and he tugs me to the very end of the dresser as he finds his way home, burying deep inside me and grunting in pleasure.

He falls over me, and I lean back to the wall behind us. His arms wrap around me as he fucks me hard and deep. I almost can't breathe.

This is home.

This is us.

Madness and anarchy come together in this life to create utter chaos and turmoil.

"You're fucking mine. This is fucking mine," Neo growls, biting my shoulder and piercing the flesh. I feel it give way to him, branding me even more than I already am.

"Yours!" I agree.

He feels so good that even though I've come for him twice, I feel the familiar tingle building inside again, rushing through me like an angry stampede.

"More!" I shout, tears of happiness coating my cheeks as he gives me just that, bending his knees and spearing into me faster, harder.

"God, yes! Yes, yes!"

The dresser bangs against the wall as we fuck relentlessly. Endlessly.

Even though we have a lifetime of this together to look forward to, it always feels dire.

Like at any moment, it's all going to end.

"Stupid. Fucking. Girl," he grunts out, making me barrel over the finish line and shake violently as I laugh hysterically at how good it feels to be back in his arms.

He thrusts once more inside me, coming as he shudders and holds onto me like I might slip away altogether. As if I'm the madness and he's being tugged back to reality.

"I love you," I say.

He kisses me, giving me the words he's already said but is too affected to give again.

"Are you ready to finish this?" he asks.

I swallow because I know what he means.

I nod.

"When we bury him, we bury it. Whatever happened, all of it, it all goes into the ground with him," he says.

I only nod again.

He steps back, looking me up and down.

I spread my legs, cum leaking out of my pussy onto the top of the dresser.

"You look fucking ravishing in my cum, stupid girl."

I smile, cheeks filling with rouge.