Fuck.
I pressed my forehead against my knees, my breath coming in ragged gasps, as my tears soaked into the fabric of my jeans. This was worse than anythinghecould have done to me in this basement. Worse than choking. Worse than pain. Worse than violence. Because Nano had shown me exactly how broken I was, and he had done it without laying a finger on me.
The sound of footsteps behind me made me jerk upright, my hands flying to my face to wipe away the tears.
Shit. Shit, pull yourself together.But my hands were shaking too badly, as my breath still hitched, and my vision still blurred. The footsteps grew closer, heavy and deliberate, as I looked up, expecting to see Nano returning to finish what he had started. But it wasn’t Nano.
It was Carver.
His expression was unreadable. His hands loose at his sides as he walked over to where I was kneeling and squatted down beside me. Not touching me. Just... there.
I stared at him, my throat too tight to speak, my tears still streaming down my face despite my desperate attempts to stop them. Carver said nothing at first. He just looked at me, his gaze steady and assessing, like he was trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened.
Finally, I found my voice.
“Why didn’t he touch me?” My words came out raw. Broken. A confession I hadn’t meant to make.
Carver sighed, his gaze shifting toward the stairs, toward the door at the top where Nano had disappeared. For a long moment, he didn’t answer. And then, quietly, he said, “I don’t know.”
I waited, my breath hitching, as my hands curled into fists against my thighs.
Carver looked back at me, and there was something in his expression, something dark and knowing and almost... sympathetic. “But shit is about to get really fucking interesting around here.”
His words settled over me like a shroud. Because I understood what he wasn’t saying. Nano hadn’t walked away because he hadn’t lost interest. He walked away because this was a game. A psychological game that was far more dangerous than physical violence. He was showing me he could hurt me, that he had the power, the permission, and the desire. But he was choosing not to. He would make me want it. Make me crave it. Make me beg for it without saying a word, and when he finally gave it to me, I would be so desperate, so broken, so completely his that I wouldn’t even fight back.
And I would thank him.
Fuck.
I pressed my hands to my face again, trying to stop the fresh wave of tears that threatened to fall. But it was too late. Nano had already won, and I hadn’t even realized we were playing.
Chapter Seventeen
Nano
The stairs felt too narrow, the walls pressing in on both sides as I climbed. My boots hit each step too hard, the sound echoing off concrete like gunshots, like accusations, like the fucking screaming in my head that wouldn’t stop.What the fuck did you just do?
I didn’t know. I couldn’t explain it.
I’d stood there, mere feet from her, and watched as she kneeled on that cold floor, watched as her body trembled and her breath came in ragged gasps as her eyes locked on mine with something that looked likewant, and I fucking walked away. I just turned and left as if she were nothing. Like I didn’t fucking care.
Liar.The word ricocheted through my skull, vicious and unforgiving, because I did care. I cared too fucking much, and that was the problem. I had stood there looking at her, at the broken, defiant thing who had stolen from us, who had lied to us, who should have been nothing more than a job, and I wanted to touch her so badly my hands shook. I wanted to wrap my fingers around her throat. I wanted to feel her pulse hammer against my palm. I wanted to watch her eyes go dark and her body convulse and hear the desperate, involuntary sound she made when she came.
Fuck.
I shoved through the door at the top of the stairs. The wood slammed against the wall hard enough to crack, as the sound echoed through the narrow hallway, sharp and violent, but I didn’t care. Didn’t even slow down. The main room of the clubhouse opened up in front of me, too bright, too loud, too full of people who weren’t her. Bodies everywhere. Voices bleeding together into meaningless noise. The smell of beer and cigarette smoke and leather hung thick in the air, suffocating.
My chest felt tight. My skin felt wrong, like it was stretched too thin over something that was trying to claw its way out. My hands shook as I shoved them into my pockets and curled them into fists as I tried to make it stop.
Get it together. You’re losing your shit.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t think past the image of her kneeling there, waiting for me to hurt her. Those wide, trusting eyes looking up at me like I was something other than the monster I knew I was. I couldn’t stop hearing the way her breath had hitched when I turned away. That small, broken sound that had cut straight through me like a blade, and worst of all, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just made the biggest fucking mistake of my life.
I left her there. Alone. Vulnerable. After she offered me everything.
And I walked away like a fool.
The bar was across the room, and I headed for it without thinking, my vision tunneled until all I could see was the bottles lined up behind Xzibit’s head as everything else faded to gray. The pool table where Morpheus and Cerberus were racking up another game, the worn leather couches where a few of the younger prospects sprawled out watching some fight on TV, the haze of cigarette smoke drifting through the dim lighting. None of it registered. My boots hit the scarred wooden floor in a steady rhythm, each step automatic, as my body moved onautopilot while my mind was still back in that room, replaying the conversation that had sent me storming out.
