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She goes on. “So you won’t quit. You will stay and you will teach and you will protect and you will keep your students safe in order to absolve your sins. And as for Katrina, you were going to tell me you’d break it off, but both of us know you’d be lying. So I’m going to tell you this instead: There is destiny in the works, Ichabod, something bigger and greater than you’ll ever be witness to. Katrina Van Tassel belongs to Brom Bones—it is written in the stars, scored in the earth, burned in the ashes, and the more you get involved, the more your life will be at stake.”
My muscles tense. “Are you threatening me?” I ask gruffly.
“Yes,” she says. “This is a threat. And it’s not the only threat. If you don’t comply, we are telling Katrina that you killed your wife and meant it. Don’t think you can bluff your way out of it when changing police records is an easy thing to do. It would be so embarrassing for a school to have unknowingly hired a fugitive from justice, but I’m sure the world would move on pretty quickly. You, however, would lose her…and go straight to jail.”
“And so that’s why you hired me,” I say slowly, becoming sick with the realization. “Not because I’m a brilliant teacher but because you had something on me. Something you could use and bend to your will.”
She smiles and lowers several inches until she’s back on the ground. “We call it collateral. It’s what smart businesses do to protect themselves in this day and age. So be a good boy, Mr. Crane, and stay and teach and keep away from those who aren’t meant to be yours.”
At that, the door knob clicks and I turn to see it open by itself.
“You are a brilliant teacher, by the by,” she says as I step outside. “You’re doing what you’re meant to do. So keep doing it and don’t mess things up.”
Then the door slams shut behind me.
Chapter 9
Brom
Insistent rapping at my door brings me out of my dark thoughts. Thoughts I’m not sure belong to me or someone else. The other.
I get up and hurry over the door, the knocking continuing, assuming it’s Crane, hoping it’s Kat.
I open it to see Crane on the other side, fist raised to knock again, his face contorted, hair wet and sticking to his neck.
I’ve never seen this man look like this before. Haunted, broken and wild, an animal torn between being predator and prey, and for the first time I see what it must be like to be him looking at me.
“Crane?” I ask, wondering what’s happened. “Has the horseman—"
He bursts in the room, kicking the door shut with his foot as he grabs my face hard and kisses me even harder before I can finish the sentence. His mouth is lush and wet and warm but there’s no tenderness here, there rarely is these days, and he fucks me with his tongue like he’s taking complete ownership. My beard scratches against the stubble on his face and his skin is hot to touch.
He tastes like rain.
We both stumble backward until I’m pressed against the wooden wardrobe, the handle digging into the soft flesh by my kidneys but the pain only feels right. His fists go in to my shirt, holding on as the kiss deepens, becomes violent, and I moan against his lips, unable to contain myself. I haven’t felt this wanted and desired in such a long time. Last night was punishment, this is something else entirely.
“Hit me,” he rasps, his eyes like flint as he pulls back. “Hit me, Abe.”
I blink at him rapidly, at the sound of my old name, at the oddity of his request.
“Sir?” My old moniker for him slipping out as well.
“I said fucking hit me,” he growls. “Hurt me.”
I shake my head, licking the taste of him from my lips. I’ve been full of such hatred and anger towards him but now seeing him like this, wounded and lashing out, I can’t do it. The turmoil I’ve felt about him seems to evaporate.
“No, I—”
“I’m not asking, I’m ordering you to,” he says, grabbing me by the throat and spinning me around so that his back is against the wardrobe. “You fought back so well last night.”
“Crane…”
“What me to get you in the mood, is that it? Get you to hate me again? You seem to do it so easily, you slippery fucker.” He says this all with a sneer on his upper lip, his eyes flickering between madness and desire, if desire was a fever he needed to be cured of. “How about all the times I fucked your fiancée and made her come screaming my name? How I made her forget you even existed? How I told her she belonged to me and only to me and she wanted it, she wanted, needed, to be with me, not you, never you, you missed your fucking chance, you—”
