AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What did I tell you?” he repeats.
“That his blood would be on my hands.” I swallow audibly as he moves toward me. My pulse intensifies and moves lower in my belly, with one heading in its sights.
“Well, looks like it’s on my hands. Now doesn’t it, pretty one?” he whispers, wiping his metallic-scented hands over my lips. My stomach roils, but I manage to keep the contents inside. If only for a moment.
Ryker. He hurt Ryker. And it was my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“Here you go again with your lies. You’re going to have to be tamed, little one. Don’t you think?”
I nod frantically in his hold as he tips my head back, admiring his artwork on my face.
He smiles, and my stomach tightens. Beautiful teeth gleam at me from behind his rugged, full lips. “You look good in red, little one.”
He leans down and brushes his lips across mine, and I can’t help myself, l lean into him, sinking into the twilight zone with the man Ryker thought was a figment of my imagination. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, brushing mine with the ferocity of an F-5 tornado.
When his fists clench my hair, tugging to the point of severe pain, I break the kiss and squeal.
“Do not disobey me. You’ve awakened something in me. Something that’s been asleep a long time. Something I don’t know that I can control.”
“I’m sorry, and I’m afraid,” I say before he can ask me questions, as he did last night.
“With good right, little one. With good right.”
CHAPTERTEN
Gage
Fire cascades within as her kiss sears my soul. It’s as if her name is slowly being tattooed into its flesh. I reach up and touch her face, the blood from my sullied hands stretching across her skin, painting her with my misdeeds.
“You hurt him?” she asks. Her tone is only above a whisper.
I shake my head. I’d wanted to. Fuck I’d wanted to. He stormed in here like the fucking muscle-bound fucktwat he is, and I’d escaped onto the back porch. He’s not like me. He announced himself, blistering through the house like a fucking bull in a china shop. He’d given me plenty of time to get out the backdoor.
The blood was from the deep gash I’d received sneaking over the back fence only moments ago. But does she need to know that? No. Fear is an amazing motivator, when used properly.
Still, I shake my head. “No. Not yet.”
She tugs my hand off her face, looking at the wound that’s still pulsing along with my heart.
“This is bad,” she assesses. “And I assume you don’t go do the whole mainstream medicine thing?”
She’s read the situation perfectly. Since I watched my mom die in the discomfort of a hospital bed, littered with buttons and tubes sticking out of everywhere, I’d never returned to any medical institution. Too many astringent scents and dark reveries.
I shake my head.
She nods and then sighs, tugging me toward the kitchen and pushing me down into a chair at the table.
“I’ll get the first aid kit.” Her face pulls tight, filling with emotion that’s written right at the surface. She shakes it off and moves out of the room. She’s wondering why she’s going to help her stalker, no doubt. Shit, I’m wondering the same thing. But her touch, her presence, it’s enough to blind me to anything resembling reason.
I hadn’t meant to call out when I got inside this evening. No, I wanted to figure out how the fuck she’d gotten away from me. I needed to find her escape route and seal it off. But when I heard a man’s voice at the front door, and the sharp uncomfortable tone she had with him, I’d known she needed an out. Another escape. But this one I knew about; this one I handed her.
She brings out something wild in me. Something innate that begs to be loose; freed.
She hisses when she turns my hand over, assessing where to start her bandaging process. She’s really going to do it. She’s really going to help a man she fears. I know she shows signs of arousal that ebbs and flows when we’re close, but that’s adrenaline confusing her. My little one hasn’t been touched much. I can tell. It’s in the way she kisses lazily, unfamiliar with the process itself.
“This needs stitches but I think if we clean it really well, and use some of these butterfly strips, it might heal on its own,” she says absently as she tweezes chunks of debris out of the wound. I don’t even twitch, and she notices the lack of humanity.
