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Storm dropped his gun from her and stepped back, grinning. “You’re gonna wish I had shot you instead,” he drawled just before I got to her.
She started to back up frantically, shaking her head and pleading with me to believe her. When she hit the wall, I was there. My hand wrapped around her throat.
“What did you tell them?” I asked her, flexing my fingers that ached to dig in. Make her pay for what she’d done.
“He asked me to look for her. Showed me a picture,” she rasped as I tightened my hold on her neck.
“Might want to get all the info before you kill her,” Thatcher called out from across the room.
“I can’t…” she gasped, trying to breathe.
I eased my grip just enough so she could talk. Thatcher was right. We needed all the information she could give us.
“Uh, Rumor, you need to go back upstairs, yeah,” Sebastian said behind me, causing me to swing my head around to see her standing there.
Fucking hell.
• thirty-seven •
“He had managed to reach my soul and wrap it around his finger.”
Rumor
I heard Sebastian’s voice, but I was frozen. Unable to look away from King. My chest hurt in ways I’d never experienced. It was hard to breathe. It didn’t matter that we were friends. Because it was more than that to me now. How could it not be? King had been…was…everything to me. He’d been my savior, then my friend, now my lover. How was I not supposed to feel more?
Seeing him with her. Again. Knowing what he liked to do with her and other women like her tore through me like a knife. The pain was almost unbearable. The truth sank in like a brick in my stomach…I’d let myself fall in love with this man. A man who would never be more than what we were. He would always want women like her. Need them.
King’s blue eyes were almost black as he stared at me. I’d caught him in a moment of his twisted sexual passion. I could see the way his pupils had almost taken over the color I had come to adore. I was so stupid. Last night, I had let myself believe he wanted me like I did him.
“Go back to the room, Rumor,” he demanded.
Really? That was what he was going to say? He had just been inside of me four hours ago, screwing me like he couldn’t get deep enough.
“Rumor! GO!” he shouted this time.
I couldn’t breathe. His words were equivalent to a boulder being slammed into my chest. I backed up slowly, not looking to see who else was in the room. I knew Sebastian was there, but I didn’t want to see his face. See the pity there. I was crumbling, and I needed to do it alone. Find a way to pull myself back together.
Turning, I ran. Back upstairs, just like I had been told to do. I always seemed to find myself in this position. Doing what a man ordered me to do. Falling for a man who hurt me. I should have never gotten in his truck that day. I should have gone back to the house and faced whatever was to come with Hill. The videos would have come out. He’d have been arrested. Or killed. I wouldn’t have to live in hiding.
But the Mafia…they might have killed me.
Shoving open the bedroom door, I went inside and slammed it behind me. My breathing coming in erratically. Each intake more difficult than the last. I looked to the closet, where my empty suitcase was stored. My clothes were all hanging inside now. The ones I had come with and the ones that had been given to me. I wouldn’t take those with me. I wasn’t taking anything from here with me. Just what I had come with.
Wrapping my arms around my middle, I sank down onto the edge of the bed. How was I going to leave him? I didn’t hate him. I wasn’t sure I ever could. I had let myself fall for him. That wasn’t his fault. It was mine. I was broken inside, and he’d come into my world, being everything I had never had. Giving me things I hadn’t known I needed. A family. A place where I was wanted. Someone I could trust. A place to feel safe.
But what was I to him? Was I only seeing this through my eyes? Had I just seen what I wanted to? Believed what I wanted to?
The door to the room swung open, and King stalked inside. His eyes leveled on me.
“That was not what you think.” His voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d been shouting.
I stared at him. The man who had so quickly and effortlessly become everything to me. Who still was.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I replied.
His nostrils flared, and he took another step in my direction. “Yeah, it fucking does. Don’t go there in your head, Rumor. I fucked you on that bed just a few hours ago. So, yeah, it does matter. You matter. What you feel matters to me.”
It was that easy for him. He said those words, and all the heartache eased. The misery I had found myself drowning in stopped. Air filled my lungs without stinging. This was worse than I’d thought. He had control over me and not just physically. He had managed to reach my soul and wrap it around his finger.
