AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Royce salutes me, then follows after them, closing the door behind him.
I’ve regained some of my composure. Thawing out a little now that I know Twig got what he deserved, I turn slowly so that I can face Ava.
She’s a little shocky—like I expected—though her voice is steadier than I thought it would be as she says, “You killed him.”
I did. “He disrespected you.”
“But… youkilledhim.”
The idea seems so foreign to her, I almost feel sorry to have to rip the wool away from her eyes.
“It’s not the first time I’ve pulled the trigger,” I shrug. Especially for Ava’s sake. “It won’t be the last, either.”
“But don’t you feel bad? You killed him like it was—”
“Easy?” I supply.
She nods. “Yes.”
“It is.” Now. “And, no, I don’t feel bad at all.”
I see understanding dawn in her eyes, followed by something I pretend isn’t horror. “You really are the Devil, aren’t you?”
I stay quiet because what can I say? She’s not wrong.
Ava takes a few steps back before moving around me. “You don’t have any feelings at all, at least not about me. You don’t care that you embarrassed the hell out of me, putting me on display like that—”
“I only did it because I knew you would get off harder than you ever had with all those eyes on you.”
Ava scoffs, but she doesn’t deny it. She can’t. When it comes to her exhibitionist tendencies, we both know I’m right about that.
Instead, she snaps, “So? You still killed a guy bacause of your precious rep,” before turning her back on me.
I let her take a few steps, then admit that I was full of shit before when I said I’d let her go. Hell, no. This woman isnevergetting away from me.
“I have feelings,” I toss after her before she can cross the room.
She goes still.
“I have feelings, Ava,” I repeat. “Lust. Anger.Obsession. God, when I think of you, I want you so bad, that I’ll do anything for you. And you got it wrong. Killing Twig… I could give a shit about my rep. I did it so my men know that they’re not untouchable. When it comes to you, my Ava… I’d kill every last one of them for you.”
The weight of that realization has her swallowing roughly. It’s probably way too much for her, but she gets past it quickly, instead focusing on something else entirely.
“What happened to calling me ‘pet’?” she tosses back at me.
“I still own you. There’s no reason to call you my pet when I can call youmine.”
She seems to like that answer. Moving into me, biting the corner of her mouth as if she has something to say but doesn’t know how to say it, she finally spits it out.
“All those feelings you talked about Link… there’s one you didn’t mention. What about love?”
Is she serious? I love her more than life itself.
This close, I can touch her. Collaring her throat, I tilt her head back, meeting the defiant look in her face—and the undeniable fear in her green gaze.
My stomach flip-flops. I’ve never seen her look at me like that. It’s only for a split second, there and gone again, but I saw it.
And I know I’ll only scare her more if I tell her that I never stopped loving her.
