“Don’t do that? This is your sage advice?”“Yeah.” He burped and blew it out the side of his mouth. “Sorry, the burritos we had for lunch are kinda comin’ back on me.”

“―I love you. He breathed down the side of my neck.I nodded. ―I love you too. And the smile on his face when he leaned back, so wide, so arrogant, so relieved, so smug, was not to be missed. I had created a monster with four little words.”

“You’re mine,” I told him, kissing each of his eyes before I looked at him. “No one gets you anymore; no one touches you anymore. Right?”He nodded, and I felt his heated breath fan over my face. “Put me up against this wall.”“No.” I shook my head. “No one sees you but me. No one hears you but me. All of you, your skin, your smell, your cum, all of it is mine, and especially your voice when you scream my name.”

“I never told anyone about waking in the night to him standing over me with a knife. It was small, one of my switchblades, chosen for carving.His seeping dick twitched as he bent toward me, his slick left hand went down on my sternum, the other holding the knife like a scapel. "What're you gonna do?" I asked, reaching for him, my fingers closing around his hard, wet length."Carve my name on your skin so everyone knows you're mine.”

“I love you" I sighed, unable to keep the smile from my face,leaning back and looking at him through heavy-lidded eyes. "I really do"."I know", he grunted, very pleased with himself. “You can’t live without me. I’m like cheese.”

“I don’t need a happily ever after, J, I just need the ever after part. The adjective can be whatever. Up and down ever after, sometimes rocky ever after, crazy ever after—I don’t give a shit. As long as you stick around, we’ll just do the best we can, day after day.”

“We’re not breaking up because you want to do the noble thing for me,” he said, his voice dropping low in warning, the edge there, dark and twisted. “You will never get away from me; you should resign yourself to that now.”“Lan––”“I’ll kill you and then myself, that’s a promise.”The way he said it, so matter-of-fact, I really should have worried.”