"What?" she questioned, but I didn’t dare turn back toward her. I could feel my anger taking hold of me, so deep-rooted that it started at my toes and crawled up my body like a living vine.
I couldn’t untangle myself from that anger. That hate.
I couldn’t do anything to kill it even though I had tried.
I jerked my clothes from my locker and threw them down on the bench behind me, the bench Josie was still standing by without saying a word.
"I’m not—"
I spun back toward her, and her words caught in her throat when she looked at me. I knew that she could probably see every bit of the anger I couldn’t hide any longer.
If the truth was what she wanted, here it was staring her in the face. This
was the real truth. The truth that neither of us could hide from. Her brother was a piece of shit, and I had been no better than him.
I had chosen the thing I hated most about him, and I had done the same to her. I had taken her feelings and used them against her. I used and used and used, and I couldn’t take a second of it back.
She wasn’t Frankie, and I knew that it was different.
But it was also the same.
"You should leave." I nodded my head toward the door before staring down at her. I needed to get away from her before I did something stupid.
I knew that I wasn’t capable of being the guy she needed or the guy she wanted. I wasn’t capable of anything good when she stood in front of me with that look on her face and this much anger in my veins.
But no part of me actually wanted her to leave. I wanted to bury my hands in her hair and slam her against this locker and never let her go. I needed her. My need was much more vast than a simple want, and I knew that she needed to leave.
If she didn’t leave now, I wasn’t sure I would be able to control myself.
My control already felt like it was on the brink of snapping and having her here in front of me did nothing to help it.
She was the knife that could tear me apart. She could cut through my restraint with a simple touch of her hands, and I knew that her touch could be deadly.
She was the only thing that I could see at that moment. The only thing that mattered, and I hated losing sight of everything else.
She was my blind spot, and I knew that she would be the thing that wrecked me. Her and her perfect lips and her sassy mouth.
"Stop telling me what to do." She balled her hands into fists at her sides, and I knew that she also had a rush of anger going through her. Whether or not she was angry with me wasn’t even important. What mattered was that as she continued to look at me the way she did, I wouldn’t care if she despised me for what I had done.
I would still beg her to give me whatever she was willing to give, even through her hate I would beg her for more.
"I don’t have time for this right now." I slammed my locker behind me and took a step to the side to get out of her line of sight. Nothing good was going to come from this moment, and I needed to get my clothes on and leave before she saw the bulge under my towel or the want in my eyes.
Cami has just told her everything, and all I can think about was how easily I could take her on this bench. That tiny skirt she wore would give me the easiest access to her, and I just knew that by the time I shoved it up her hips she would be dripping with as much want as me.
"So what? Only you get to decide when this is okay?" She waved her hand back and forth between us.
"I think you’re the one who decided this weekend." I smirked, and I regretted the words immediately. I may have let her make the first move, but every part of me had wanted her. I had wanted her far more than she could ever want me.
She opened her mouth to say something but hesitated. I hated the way she looked down at her feet. The way she questioned herself and what she would say in front of me.
But I had done that to her.
"What?" I asked and tightened my hand on my towel.
"Nothing." She shook her head and took an almost unnoticeable step back from me.
"No. Say it." I needed to know what she was going to say. I was dying for her to say anything that would make me feel anything other than what I was feeling at that moment.
"Why?" Her gaze snapped up to meet mine. "So you can hold whatever I say against me?"
That was fair. I knew it was, but I still hated it.
"The only thing I want to hold against you right now is me."
Her gaze trailed down my body as I spoke and stopped just as it met my cock. It jerked beneath the towel, already so fucking hard, and I could have died when her tongue snuck out of her mouth and traced the edge of her lips.
"Don’t do that." My voice was rough and commanding, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t listening to a single thing I said.
"Do what?" She hadn’t lifted her gaze.
"That." I reached out and gripped her chin with my fingers. I lifted her head until she was looking back at me, then ran my rough thumb over her soft bottom lip.
It was enough to undo me, enough to make me lose control entirely.
"I didn’t do anything." Her voice was breathy and laced with seduction, and I felt the sound as if it slithered over my entire body.
"You should leave," I repeated my words from earlier, but she still wasn’t
listening to me. Her gaze had dropped back down my body slowly, and I could feel her assessing every inch of me.
I didn’t have the restraint to walk away from her.
I didn’t possess that sort of control.
I took a step toward her, leaving the smallest amount of space between us, and our breathing melded together in one harsh sound. She was as affected by me as I was her, and I hated the hesitation in her eyes as she roamed over my body.
I hated that this girl could kill me with her touch yet she feared touching me at all.
But then something snapped in her. Something broke free and that bond of indecision snapped.
She stepped forward with pure determination in her eyes as she laid her hand on my chest and pushed me back into my locker. I cursed as the cold, hard metal hit my back, but I didn’t dare stop her. I barely breathed as I waited to see what she would do next.
She pushed up on her tiptoes, and her mouth still barely reached mine.
She held herself a breath away, and it was pure torture sitting there waiting for her next move.
Her hand tightened against my chest, her nails digging into my skin as she pushed her own chest against her arm. Her hand was buried between us, but I never wanted it to leave my skin.
It was so hot against me, so desperate yet so small.
"I hate you." She stared up into my eyes, and I knew that she meant every single word of what she just said. Regardless of if it was true or not.
"No, you don’t." I let the weight of my shoulders fall against the lockers, and let my focus be solely on her.
She was so damn beautiful.
She pushed harder against me. "Yes. I do. I hate you."
Her words should have sliced through me. They should have made me feel anything other than a raging desire to stop her words with my mouth on hers.
Every word that passed her lips only seemed to turn me on more. It didn’t matter if she was angry or happy or fueled by her rage for me, every part of her was an aphrodisiac that I couldn’t overcome.
"If you hated me," I looked down at her lips and watched as her bottom one trembled with the exertion of her breathing. "You would already be gone.
If you hated me, you would have left this locker room the moment you didn’t find what you came looking for."
She flinched, and I knew that she was seconds away from doing just that.
She would walk away from me just to prove that she could, and I was an idiot for pushing her in that direction.