My eyes fly open and I mutter another curse when I feel the sting of my cut. I look down again at the six-inch slash oozing garnet blood across my otherwise smooth and unremarkable skin.
“It hurts,” I gasp, “fuck, it hurts.”
“It should,” Colson gazes up at me, “because there’s nothing dead about you. I could bleed you dry right now and you’d still have more life in your eyes than I do in my entire body. Even if I’m never able to feel like you do every day, just being with you is the closest I can get to being whole.”
He lifts my torso to his mouth and runs his tongue under my breast, trailing the dripping blood to its source. I wince at the sting of him sucking the wound, but he holds me firm with both arms, grinding me against the thick ridge of his cock straining against the fabric between us.
“Colson,” I breathe into his thick, feathered hair, “you’re not dead, either. You’re real, and you’re alive, and I want to feel you inside me.”
When he lifts his head, his lips are tinted with ruby and his chest is smeared with rusty streaks of blood, “Can I have you bare?” he asks while he massages the small of my back.
I take a breath and open my mouth, but nothing comes out at first, “Um,” I swallow, “are you clean?”
He nods.
“How do you know?”
“Because I got tested.”
I don’t miss a beat, “When?”
And neither does he, “The first day of class in January,” he nods to the bedside table, “it’s in the drawer.”
Eyeing him, I turn and slowly crawl to the edge of the bed. When I open the drawer, there’s a folded piece of white paper inside, just like he said. When I look at, it is in fact a report from the student clinic. I stifle a laugh when I see the date—the first day of classes.
“I am, too,” I volunteer, folding the paper back up, “clean, I mean.”
Colson leans back against the headboard, “I know you are.”
I still my hands, “How?”
“Because you called to reschedule your gyno exam before class started one day. They test you while you’re there, right?”
My brow shoots up, so much for confidentiality.
“Yeah, um,” I toss the folded paper back onto the bedside table and crawl back to Colson’s lap, “I’m also on the pill.”
“You know those mess with your head, right?” he asks as I settle onto his thighs.
I barely suppress an eyeroll, “Oh?”
Colson cups my face and pulls me close, “They change your brain chemistry,” he says between soft kisses, “and can cause depression and anxiety.” I reach for his pants and pop the button as he speaks, “They can even change who you’re attracted to.” He sucks in a breath as I slowly tug his pants off his hips, “It’s very irresponsible of you.”
The arrogance—the audacity—of him trying to educate me on the pitfalls of hormonal birth control while I’m literally undressing him, as if my life as a woman isn’t one cost-benefit analysis after another.
“Are you afraid if I stop taking them, I’ll be repulsed by you?” I reply sarcastically, “On the contrary, my hormones seem to be benefiting you right now.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Colson grabs my waist and pulls me back onto his lap, “but I hope for your sake that you’re still this much of a slut for me when I decide to put my kids in you.”
I lean down and tease his tongue with mine, “I haven’t decided if I want you putting your kids in me.” But the metallic bite of my own blood on his lips says otherwise.
“You will,” he nods, digging his fingers into my hips as I start grinding on his cock, already dripping and rigid against his naval. “Fuck, baby,” he groans through his teeth, “just put me inside you.”
I reach down and fist his cock, then raise up to notch him inside me. But when I try to sink down around him, I hesitate, digging my nails into his shoulders as a sharp pain radiates down my thighs. Half-suspended over his lap, I try again, but all it does is push the air out of my lungs. Colson just watches me with a ravenous grin that gets wider each time I fail.
“I…can’t…” I pause, because I can’t believe I’m about to say this shit—the one thing you never say to a man because it’s never true…
“You won’t fit.”
Colson chews his bottom lip, the corners of his mouth curling as he looks me up and down, “Give me your hands.”
I sink down onto his thighs as he reaches for his belt on the mattress. He waits for me to raise my hand and then loops the strap around my wrists, pulling it tight through the metal clasp. When I wince, he looks up at me with a slight smile and slowly raises my arms over his head until they’re resting on his shoulders and my bound hands are clasped behind his neck.
“I need to tell you something,” Colson reaches behind his head for the slack hanging from my wrists and loops the belt over the railing at the top of the headboard, “the first time I saw you wasn’t in class. It was at the Sig house,” he says while knotting the strap, muscle memory guiding his hands behind his head.
“When?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the knot getting tighter by the second.
“Right before winter break,” he replies, “you were there with Barrett. You were wearing these leather leggings and this white sweater that hung off your shoulders. You looked incredible, and that’s when I decided you’d never go home with anyone but me—ever. I was about to come over and talk to you, but then you—” Colson pauses and his blue eyes go dark, “disappeared.”
He gives the strap a sharp jerk and the headboard shudders like a punch to my chest.
Oh, shit.
“You were there?” I croak.
“I was there,” he nods, “so, imagine my disappointment when I didn’t get to talk to you.” He loops the strap around itself again and gives it, and the headboard, another sharp jerk, “Did you have fun with Trey that night?”
“No,” I mumble, my arms trembling as I shake my head, “not at all.”
