Justin POV:
I opened my eyes in my apartnt, and for the first ti in what felt like forever... there was silence.
Real, undisturbed silence.
No number Nine clawing up from the cracks of my trauma, whispering about rats and blood. No number Seven humming threats like lullabies. No sarcastic number Five taunting with my failures. Just... silence.
I stared at the ceiling, shirtless, chest still slick with the remnants of sweat, skin faintly tingling from earlier. Muscles sore. Bones loose. Body spent.
Pretty Cat.
Even now, her na tasted like smoke and sin in my mouth.
Except it wasn’t her na I’d been moaning in my head when I had her against the wall. When I bent her over and grabbed her hips like she was my last anchor to this world. It was June.
Every sound that left Pretty Cat’s mouth was hers. Every breath. Every fucking whimper. I closed my eyes and I saw her—June, beneath , June gasping my na, June arching and clawing and taking it like she wanted to be ruined.
Because I needed it to be her.
Needed it like oxygen. Like blood. Like vengeance.
It had been weeks since June stord away from , fire in her eyes, betrayal in her voice. Weeks since I last felt anything other than rage and regret and that unrelenting storm of madness clawing at the back of my skull.
But tonight?
Tonight, with Pretty Cat’s hands digging into my shoulders and her nails raking down my spine like she wanted to tear apart and keep in pieces—
I slept.
Not just closed my eyes and drifted in that half-dream of paranoia and ghosts. Slept. Deep. Quiet. Black.
And now, I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling like maybe—just maybe—I was still dreaming.
I’d left her back there. Pretty Cat. In that room glowing red with secrets and sweat. She’d fallen asleep curled into the sheets, her mask on the nightstand, her body flushed and marked in the places I’d gripped too tight.
I couldn’t stay.
Because I wasn’t the man she thought she was fucking.
And she wasn’t the woman I needed her to be.
I ran.
Coward, maybe. Or maybe just a man barely holding the edges of himself together.
But sothing changed tonight.
The mont I walked out of that room, my chest cracked open, and it wasn’t Pretty Cat I ached for—it was June.
Only ever June.
She may hate . She may see every worst part of and flinch. She may think I’m unhinged, dangerous, unpredictable.
She’s right.
But she’s also mine.
And if I had to fuck her ghost into soone else’s body just to feel her again, then damn it—I’d do it.
I’d do it until I either made peace with the monster in ...
Or until she ca back and made human again.
June POV:
I was utterly and thoroughly fucked.
Like... spiritually rearranged.
My legs felt like overcooked noodles—shaky, unstable, absolutely useless beneath . Every inch of my body throbbed like it had been tuned into one giant bruise and blessedly, sinfully used. My thighs were sore. My back was tight. My neck wore the outline of teeth marks like a necklace only the devil could afford.
And my pussy?
Wrecked.
Devastated.
Gloriously ruined.
She rembered—oh, she rembered—every brutal, relentless thrust. Every punishing stroke. Every ti Bad Wolf had slamd into like he wanted to carve his na into my very soul. I could still feel him inside —deep, demanding, unyielding.
And my mouth?
Don’t even get started.
My jaw ached from being pried open, stretched wide, lips raw and swollen from the sheer force of his kisses—the kind of kisses that weren’t ant to seduce, but to claim. My throat still carried the ghost of his growls, my skin still tingled where his hands had pinned, grabbed, owned.
One look at right now and anyone with half a brain and an ounce of sexual experience would know—I’d been fucked. Not lightly, not politely, but absolutely demolished by soone who knew exactly how to ruin a woman and make her beg for more.
I barely made it out of the club before my legs started giving up on entirely. It was a miracle I got ho without limping like I’d just been tossed out of a window during a thunderstorm sex marathon. Which, frankly, wasn’t that far off.
I collapsed into bed fully clothed and slept like the dead for maybe three hours—maybe. Now I was staring at my ceiling, brain foggy, body wrecked, and one horrifying realization creeping up on :
I had five fucking hours before class.
FIVE.
I groaned, loud and pitiful, dragging a pillow over my face and letting out a muffled scream into it. My entire body was throbbing like a warning siren. No position was comfortable. I turned left—my hip cracked. Turned right—my inner thighs scread. Closed my legs—bad idea.
Everything between them still buzzed like it was haunted.
I didn’t regret it. God, no.
But also... who was he last night?
I an, yeah, Bad Wolf was always rough, always good—filthy and possessive and wild. But this ti? There’d been sothing more. Like he was angry at the world and I was the outlet he chose to destroy—and I loved it. I soaked up that fury like gasoline on fire and begged for more. But it had felt... different.
Like he wasn’t just fucking .
He was trying to forget soone.
Or maybe rember soone.
Either way, I wasn’t complaining.
I’d needed it.
After the disaster with Justin, after that goddamn janitor closet and the stupid way he whispered "liar" like he knew how I felt, only to walk away like a goddamn cliffhanger—
I was angry.
I was wet.
And Bad Wolf had scratched that itch so hard, I was raw in all the best ways.
I groaned again, rolling out of bed with the grace of a three-legged goat. I waddled like soone who’d just been rearranged by a freight train—which, again, was not that far from the truth. My reflection in the mirror was a certified walk of sha fantasy: swollen lips, bruised collarbone, mascara smudged from the night before, and a look in my eyes that said I’d seen heaven, hell, and maybe limbo all in the sa evening.
My phone buzzed. Class reminder. Great.
Four and a half hours now.
I needed a hot shower. A gallon of coffee. A very understanding pair of sweatpants. And maybe so holy water.
Still... as I shuffled to the bathroom, my thighs protesting every step, I smiled.
Because for one glorious night, I hadn’t been June, the girl with too many questions and a heart that couldn’t stop chasing ghosts.
I’d been Pretty Cat.
And I’d been wrecked by Bad Wolf.
And fuck, did I need it.
I’d soaked in the hot tub for three hours.
Not on purpose. I’d passed out.
Sowhere between "ow, my thighs" and "holy shit, my ribs still ache when I breathe," I must’ve drifted off in the water. My skin was pruny, my hair damp and wild, and I looked like the aftermath of a spa date with Satan—but sohow, I felt a little better. Looser. Less like roadkill.
The kind of post-sex soreness that walks the line between brutal and blissful.
Still, my body was far from recovered. My back cracked like a damn glowstick when I stood, and my legs gave a very dramatic protest as I limped to the sink.
I needed coffee.
Gallons of it. Injected. Mainlined. IV-drip optional but encouraged.
And comfy clothes. Soft leggings, oversized hoodie. Preferably one I could cocoon myself in until further notice. My body needed comfort. My soul needed caffeine. My dignity needed to be hidden under seventeen layers of cotton and sha.
Because—let’s be honest—Bad Wolf had left hickeys.
Not small ones. Not gentle love bites. No. The man had branded like I was his favorite chew toy and he didn’t give a damn who saw.
My neck looked like it had lost a fight with a particularly horny vampire. My collarbone? A damn warzone.
And all I could think was—God help if Justin sees this.
Not that I owed him an explanation. He’d left in that godforsaken closet like a bad plot twist. He’d whispered "liar" in my ear like he knew exactly what kind of dirty, shaful truth he’d stirred up, then walked out like the main character in a villain origin story.
But still.
I didn’t exactly want him to see the proof that I’d gotten absolutely railed by soone else just hours later.
Even if that soone else wasn’t just anyone.
Even if that soone else was the one man who knew exactly how to fuck until I couldn’t think.
Bad Wolf.
Fucking Bad Wolf.
If he only knew how ssy my life really was. How complicated my fake-boyfriend arrangent was. How utterly, stupidly entangled I still was with a man who—
God, no. I wasn’t even going there.
I pulled on a hoodie, one with a deep hood and sleeves long enough to swallow my hands. The neckline was high, blessedly hickey-proof, and soft enough to make feel slightly less like I’d been exorcised through sex.
I wrapped the string ties tight and stared at myself in the mirror.
Puffy lips. Faint bruise under my jaw. The kind of dazed, sex-drunk look that scread wrecked no matter how much mascara you applied.
Hot.
Tragic.
ssy.
And definitely not ready for class.
But skipping would an staying ho, and staying ho ant overthinking. It ant replaying scenes that would wreck my developnt and bring back voices that are starting to fade.
It ant questioning if maybe—maybe—there was sothing real buried under all this fake-boyfriend chaos.
And honestly?
I wasn’t ready for that level of emotional masochism.
So instead, I made coffee.
Like, three mugs of it.
Chugged one, burned my tongue. Didn’t care.
Burned through the rest like a girl preparing for battle. Which, in a way, I was. Because if I saw Justin today? If he was there, stalking the back of the lecture hall with that broody, I-might-kill-soone-today look in his eyes?
I had to pretend I hadn’t scread soone else’s na last night.
I had to act normal.
I had to survive.
God help if he noticed the bruises.
Not that I owed him shit.
I didn’t.
We were fake. We were a farce. A façade held together by bad decisions and mutual attraction and a web of secrets thicker than my morning coffee.
But still... I didn’t know if "fake" was even the right word anymore.
We weren’t dating.
But we weren’t not.
He’d touched like I was his.
Kissed like he wanted to break sothing open.
And the way he’d looked at Nate?
That wasn’t pretend.
That was mine.
And I hated that a part of —deep, twisted, not-so-secret—liked it.
Liked the idea of Justin being jealous. Protective. Murderously possessive.
But I also knew better.
Because whatever this was between us?
It was built on a foundation of lies. Twisted truths. Trauma. Violence. Split identities and dangerous n.
It wasn’t real.
And even if it was?
Real didn’t work for people like us.
I slipped on my sneakers, tied the laces with shaky hands, and took another burning gulp of coffee before heading out the door.
Praying to every god who’d listen that Justin was too busy torturing soone in a basent to show up to class.
Which, in itself, was a horrifying thing to hope.
But that was my life now.
Sadistic jokes and hickey-covered regrets.
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