AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Shit, he caught that. I swallow thickly. “Yeah. She is. She’s got really innocent eyes—like she doesn’t quite know what fear is. It’ll be a shame to watch Ari break her.” Phoenix sighs in my silence, then squeezes my hand to tell me to go on. “She’s thin. She probably hasn’t been eating well since the night at the bar—maybe before that. I can’t imagine being related to Guido Romano does wonders for anyone’s appetite.”
Phoenix snorts. “No.”
“I think you’d like her.”
“I’m not capable of that,” he argues.
I don’t call him out on his obvious bullshit. I know it makes him feel better to pretend like none of this affects him. I pull my hand out of his hand and push my fingers through his hair. He normally keeps it long, but he cut it short a few weeks ago, and it suits him. He’s got a gentle wave, the strands a sort of grey-streaked caramel brown, and it looks gorgeous in the sun.
“Her hair’s black,” I tell him.
“Like the color or like absence?” he asks.
Leave it to him to put it that way. “Like a raven—sort of iridescent in the right light. Her eyes are like the color of wet earth, and her skin is rich tawny. She looks nothing like Romano. I think she takes after her mum.”
He hums softly, then pulls my hand from his hair, kissing the tips of my fingers before biting my wrist so hard it stings. I suck in a breath, dropping the tablet as I tug him over my body to kiss him. We kiss like we fight—without a care in the world and desperate to win. He overpowers me in my exhaustion, though, and I’m happy to let him.
His kisses remain sharp as he attacks my jaw, my neck, down my shoulders. He scrapes along my stump, setting my severed nerve endings alight like lightning bolts that hit me in the gut and the groin and all the way down to my toes. He keeps going even when he can tell it’s too much, and just when it’s on the tip of my tongue to beg him to stop, he drops against me and lets me take all of his weight.
“Has Kane said what he wants to do with her?” Phoenix asks.
I’m a little surprised. If Kane opens up to anyone, it’s to Phoenix. Kane loved him first and will probably love him last. Kane loves him to the point of insanity, locking him away like fucking Rapunzel. Only there will never be a prince riding up to his rescue.
We’ve all tried. I tried—and I paid the price for it.
A month in solitude without a word spoken, without a single touch except for the whip against my back. It wasn’t until I dropped to my knees and swore I would never, ever beg for Phoenix’s freedom ever again that Kane relented.
And even then, he made me earn my way back into his good graces.
That’s the price of his love.
That’s why knowing Alice has no chance of living through this is actually her freedom. Because the alternative is so much more terrifying.
“He hasn’t said anything to me,” I confess.
Phoenix rolls off me and traces fingers over my throat, then over my lips. “Will you go visit her?”
I don’t answer that. I can’t. I want to say no because the more time I spend with her, the stronger these feelings will get. But I also don’t want to lie to Phoenix again. “Will you?” I counter instead.
He laughs. “You know I won’t.”
It’s the truth, I suppose. He won’t, because apart from Kane, Ari, and me, everything he’s ever tried to keep has been ripped away from him.
* * *
I staywith Phoenix until after dinner. His meds kick in sometime around the chocolate lava cake that Ari had the kitchen send up, and he slumps over at the table, so I get him into bed and then leave. He has night terrors, and for that reason alone, none of us ever sleeps with him. I love being choked as much as the next masochist, but it’s not the most pleasant way to wake up.
Especially since Phoenix is blind and can’t use those visual cues to remind himself who’s in bed with him.
I know that dying young for men like me is inevitable, but that’s not the way I want to go.
I stand by his door in an open button-up and jeans for a good long while until I’m sure he’s really out, and then I head down the hall. It’s only when I pass my room that I realize where I’m going, and I glance behind me to see if I’m being followed.
It’s only my paranoia talking, though. Ari’s worn-out from the playroom, and Kane left the property hours ago, probably to check into the info he was able to extract from the stranger we took alongside Alice. I still don’t know his name or where he came from. I sent Ari a message on his tablet asking, but he left me on read like the little fucker he is.
It doesn’t exactly matter, of course. We have Alice, that guy is dead, and it’s only a matter of time before Kane comes back and orders us to start working her over so we can get Guido on the hook. My heart’s beating in my throat at the thought of seeing Alice in Ari’s chair, and I shove the thoughts away when I reach the door to her cell. The little window is open, and I can hear her mumbling to herself.
Her words aren’t slurred, so I turn on my heel and head up to the kitchen because the least I can do is make her last few hours more comfortable. I’m not a gourmet chef or anything. The kitchen is normally Kane’s domain, so I throw together a sandwich and grab a couple of bottles of water and slap them on a tray before heading back down.
