This would be a whole lot easier if she hadn’t packed her entire damned closet.
“Oh, but it is,King.” She spat the last, and I could feel her cross her arms over her chest.
A torrent of anger surged around her fear.
“I’m so tired of people thinking that they can just toss me around, keep me in the dark and tell me they’re doing it for my safety, like that is enough for me to blindly go along with yourbullshit. First my brother telling me where I was going, what Ihadto do, and now you.I count.”
Her tone was pure venom until the last two words croaked out of her.
I turned to witness her clutching both hands over her chest, and fuck, she might as well have driven a blade directly into my mangled heart.
Because I was moving.
Stalking her way.
Little did she know that she was the one with all the power.
The one who was sucking me in like she was her own orbit.
That thing about her that made her so dangerous to me glinting around her like a halo.
“You want to know what’s going on, Brinley? You want to know that your brother is involved with vile, horrible people? You want to know what it felt like when they had my sister?”
Horror unhinged her jaw. “Elena?”
The fire in her drained, likely doused as the torment I felt when Elena had been Kent Ellison’s prisoner gushed out of me like a ruptured dam.
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed heavily. Those eyes ablaze as they searched mine.
I pushed on, grating through the fury and hate. “You want to know that she still sometimes wakes up screaming at night? Terrified? Do you want to know how I refuse to let that happen to you?”
I was so close to her that I could feel the fine hairs lift on her arms. So close that the chills that raced across her flesh became mine.
My spirit lurched forward without my permission.
“Youcountmore than you fucking know.” It wheezed out. Stakes that struck into the ground like they were the one thing that could keep both of us steady.
Yeah. I was a fool to admit it. I shouldn’t let on the way she had me on uneven ground.
Our noses brushed, and I was inundated with her scent.
Almonds and apples and cream.
Leave it to Brinley Webber to have the ability to turn my voice into a forlorn plea. “Please…just let me take care of you.”
Confusion knitted her brow, though I could feel her softening. “I’m not weak or helpless, Silas.”
“No. You’re not, are you?” I breathed in what she exhaled. “But this is my job, Brinley. Taking care of people is the only thing I have. The only power I’ve got.”
I figured if I was already giving this much away, I might as well fully lay it out.
“Need you not to fight me on this. Because in my home? That’s where I protect the people I care about most.”
And I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight.
SIXTEEN
BRINLEY
