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“The others?” I remember the man Beckett beat up when we were kidnapped so many weeks ago. He had been working for Raymond and searching for me after I escaped my room.
Ryker’s lips tighten. “Yeah. I counted at least twenty others here. I have no idea if they’re merely hired guns or actual co-conspirators. Either way, I haven’t brought up POP or The Divine One around them.”
“How do you think Raymond was able to assemble such a team underneath POP’s nose?” I murmur as I move toward the window. Surprisingly, it’s unbarred, though, when I try to open it, I find that it’s stuck.
“I think that depends if the men and women here know about POP…or are simply paid to guard the property.” Worry lines the space between his brows. “I probably should’ve asked Raymond all of these questions weeks ago, but…”
“But you died,” I finish for him, my tone absolute. “That’s a drastic change for anybody. You needed time to adjust and heal. You still need time.”
“But that’s the thing.” He stalks toward me with all the grace and lethality of a panther. I feel trapped in his gaze, in the coldness emanating from him in palpable waves, causing the room to drop a few degrees in temperature. “I’m not dead. I’m very much alive.” He reaches down to cup my cheek and force my head up.
“You may be alive, but you can’t tell me that this entire mess hasn’t impacted you,” I counter, frustration expanding the knot in my throat. “You’re not infallible, Ryker.”
His grip on my face tightens even further, but there’s no pain, only the strangest stirrings of desire that make me want to shift uncomfortably and alleviate the tension between my thighs.
“I want to kiss you now, Ellie.” His tone holds an edge of violence that makes my libido perk up. I’m about ready to burst, and he hasn’t even touched me yet. It’s been way too long since we’ve been together in that way.
But…
Ryker must see something on my face, because his own immediately darkens, that precise moment when the sun dips beneath the horizon and an inky blackness seeps across the sky.
“Who?” That one word seems to be pulled from the depths of his chest—a raspy, pained growl.
“I meant what I said before,” I whisper. “I love you.”
That darkness in his cold eyes doesn’t recede. If anything, it seems to expand, contracting around his pupils.
“Who?”
God, I don’t want our reunion to be like this. But I know I can’t go any further with Ryker until I make myself clear. It wouldn’t be fair to him, the other guys, or me.
“I love them too.”
I don’t need to clarify who I mean by “them.”
Tears scald my cheeks, and I suddenly can’t meet his gaze. I focus on the ground instead, on the way my fingers wring together in nervous anticipation.
“Wh-what do you expect me to say to that?” Ryker rasps, and the sheer anguish in his tone snaps my head up.
He moves away from me, as if my words are physical blows, and his hand closes on the doorknob. At some point, his hood must’ve fallen. His black hair stands out in all directions.
“Ryker…” I don’t know how to fix this. I just know that, if Ryker walks out that door right now, I’ll never get him back.
Is that for the best?
Would it be safer for him to leave me and this life behind?
Would he be happier?
“Do you want me to share you?” Horror splays across his face as he stares at me with wide eyes.
“It’s not?—”
“I always wondered what the others meant when they made comments like that.” Ryker seems to be talking more to himself than to me. Anger radiates from his eyes, but at least it no longer looks as if he’s going to leave. “But god, baby, you can’t seriously be asking me that. I love you. Only you. Is that not enough for you? Am I not enough?”
The tears are coming faster now. They seem to be branding my flesh.
God, how did everything turn to shit in a span of minutes? I was ecstatic to see and hold Ryker only a few seconds earlier, and now, my heart is in shatters, each piece cutting me up from the inside.
