AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I set my phone and carton of orange chicken on the floor and slowly lifted my hands to cup her face. “I’m going to kiss you now, Lis,” I told her, giving her plenty of time to pull back if she wasn’t ready.
The wheels started moving in her head, and I could practically see in her eyes that she was arguing with herself over whether she wanted to allow me to kiss her. But by the time my hands touched her soft cheeks, she hadn’t shifted away. My breath caught, and I lowered my head, still going slow enough to give her time to get away from me if she wanted to.
My lips grazed tenderly over hers, tasting a little bit of the chicken lo mein she was eating, along with something else. Something…addictive. In my teens, I’d been bored and stupid. Drugs were easily available if you knew where to look, and I’d had plenty of cash to buy whatever I was in the mood for. I never allowed myself to get too attached to any of them, though. I just needed something to do to pass the time until I could get out of Creswell Springs.
But the flavor of Lis was too much. One taste and I fell in over my head, already drowning, craving that next hit. I thrust my fingers into her hair, tilting her head back just enough so that I could deepen the kiss. Nipping at her bottom lip, I was rewarded with her opening her mouth so that I could dip my tongue inside.
The full force of the drug that was this girl took root in my mind, making me an addict for her. There was no cure for the sickness that afflicted me. No antidote to wean me off. Not even the best rehabs could have helped me get over the need that wrapped its hooks around my every nerve ending and tightened more and more the longer I kissed her.
Lis made a sound, and I instantly jerked my head up, unable to determine whether the noise had been in pleasure or fear. Breathing heavily, I looked down at her through my lashes. She gasped, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
Fuck, she was even more beautiful with her lips swollen from my kiss. Pink darkened her cheeks, and her eyes glazed with the same need that throbbed through my veins. But there was more than just want in her blue gaze. The fear made me want to punch something, preferably whoever had caused her that fear in the first place.
“Garret…” she panted, touching trembling fingers to her lips.
“Tell me who hurt you, Lis,” I pleaded, a desperate man who only wanted to protect what was his. She deserved to have every last person who had ever caused her harm or fear annihilated, their entire bloodline put into extinction for daring to make her so much as flinch. “I swear to God, I’ll kill him. You won’t ever have a reason to be scared again.”
She clenched her eyes closed. “Whether he’s alive or dead, he will always live on in my head. He haunts me,” she whispered, but I still heard it. Shame. There was no reason for her to experience that particular emotion. The only one who should be ashamed was the one who had hurt her.
“Do you…wanna talk about it?” I asked hesitantly.
I heard her gulp, and after a moment, she slowly lifted her lashes, and that small show of strength made me so damn proud of her. “The beatings started before my mom died. I wasn’t even a teenager yet.”
“Was it only your stepbrother? What about your dad?” I guessed, clenching my hands at my sides, but she shook her head.
“No, he died when I was a toddler. Mom remarried, and my stepfather was good to me. But his son…” She shuddered and seemed to curl into herself right before my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“There is nothing to be sorry for, blue eyes.” I lifted one hand and stroked my index finger down her cheek. “He beat you?”
Lis caught my hand and clutched at it as she gave me a tiny nod. “At first, it was just beatings. But as I got older…”
“He raped you?” I rasped, trying to contain my growing rage.
I felt her tremble, but she gave me a dry laugh. “He couldn’t get his dick hard enough to rape me with it. I don’t think he was into girls. Hell, I’m not sure what he was into, but he got off on making me hurt. He would use whatever was on hand to…to…” Her voice shook, and I wrapped my arms around her, tucking her head to my chest as a sob escaped her throat.
The rage burned even hotter through me. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before, an inferno of anger and the need to make her stepbrother bleed the way he’d no doubt caused her to bleed. To hear his cries—his fucking screams—in pain and terror before I ended his pathetic existence and spared the world another day of him walking the earth.
Inhaling slowly, I tried to gather my control so I didn’t scare her. I wanted her stepbrother dead. If anyone deserved to meet the angel of death, it was that fucking bastard. But Lis had already had enough fear in her life, and I didn’t want to be the reason she felt it again.
When I felt like I could speak without growling, I tipped her chin back so I could look down into her face. “Baby, you have nothing to be scared of when you’re with me. I will never let anything or anyone hurt you again.”
“I-I think I know that,” she said after a few long moments.
“Good. If you haven’t already figured it out, I care about you, blue eyes.” I stroked my thumb over her bottom lip, wanting to kiss her again, but refusing to rush her. “I want to make you mine—” Fear filled her eyes before I could even finish. “But I swear to you, I can wait until you are ready.”
“Garret,” she muttered, pulling back and shaking her head.
“However long it takes, I don’t care. I’ll wait for when you are ready, Lis. I’m not going to rush you. This? Us? We will move at your pace. If all we do for the next week, month, year—fuck, the next decade—is sit here on your rug every night after you get off work and eat takeout while we watch anime, I’m there for that. But I can’t walk away from you. I won’t. Not when I care this much.”
She licked her lips nervously. “But what if… What happens if I’m never ready for…that?”
“However long you need,” I vowed, my voice full of earnestness. “I’m not going anywhere, Lis.”
Cali
I bent and tossed my hair over my head, fluffing the thick tresses. I’d just finished taking the curling iron to it, having spent the last two hours getting ready for dinner with Garret. He hadn’t given me a chance to back out of my promise to go out with him on my next day off, but that had taken longer than expected.
Many of the waitresses at the club had gotten sick the last three weeks, and I’d picked up every shift my manager offered. That meant I hadn’t had a single day off since before New Year’s Eve. Garret wasn’t happy that I was working so much, but my little nest egg was growing more and more with each shift, so I wasn’t going to let him pull rank and go above my manager’s head to Adrian Volkov to demand I have a day off.
