Total pages in book: 169
Estimated words: 167671 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 838(@200wpm)___ 671(@250wpm)___ 559(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167671 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 838(@200wpm)___ 671(@250wpm)___ 559(@300wpm)
“Sit.”
Ivy’s blocking the door with her arms folded.
What the fuck?
She stares me down for a moment, then sighs out loud, turns around, and rummages through a tiny medicine cabinet above her askew sink. My eyes follow the curve of her small body, the thin waist and bones sticking out of her yellow dress, along with the high-inched heels she’s wearing underneath. Those knees are barely thick enough to hold up that body.
Does she even eat enough?
And how the fuck does she go to school when she has a kid?
I swallow as she turns around and looks right at me, her alluring dark eyes catching me off guard. In her hands is a small box that she opens as she approaches me. But the moment she goes to her knees in front of me, that heart I thought beat only for violence suddenly beats out of sync.
“What are you doing?”
She pulls out a few cotton balls and pours some alcohol on them. “You’re bleeding.”
She holds it up to my face, and I flinch, which makes her pause.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go.
This wasn’t—
“It’ll sting a little,” she says, interrupting my train of thought.
Before I know it, she’s dabbed the cotton against my skin, but the pain doesn’t faze me at all. Blood drives me like adrenaline, even if it is my own I’m tasting. She doesn’t fucking know pain is the only thing that makes me feel like I’m alive. Like I can feel anything at all.
Because I’ve never felt anything other than anger and the need to kill.
Nothing.
Just like she said, I’m a psychopath.
I don’t have emotions.
Nothing.
Yet…
Her hand rises to dab the bloodied wound on my face, but I grasp her wrist midway there and force her to stop.
Stop this. Whatever it is, stop.
But the moment those eyes of hers find mine, I can’t even say the words I thought I wanted to speak.
What the fuck is happening to me?
“I need to clean it, or it might get infected,” she says, tilting her head. “Silas. Please.”
Please.
That fucking word.
She’s said it so many times before, yet it never, ever sounded so … satisfying.
I let out a breath and release her.
She composes herself and starts working on my wound again, but something about all of this annoys the living shit out of me.
“I wouldn’t have gotten this wound if you hadn’t fled the party.”
She pauses, her nose twitching briefly. “I wouldn’t have fled if you hadn’t busted into the room to catch me in the act.”
I raise a brow. “I wouldn’t have caught you if you weren’t being so obvious with your attempt to steal.”
“And I wouldn’t have to steal if I had money to survive. Money you hoard for fun.”
“I don’t hoard,” I growl.
“Do you need three phones and fifteen parties per month in your lavish mansion?” she asks.
My nostrils flare, and when I don’t respond, she keeps on dabbing my wound harder and harder like she’s trying to make me bleed even more.
“I didn’t fucking choose to be rich,” I say.
That’s your comeback? Jesus fucking Christ, Silas.
She throws me a damning look. “You think I chose to be poor?”
Fine. She wins.
My eyes travel across her face and those soft cheeks and lips that are in stark contrast to her bony, twig-like body. She got beaten up pretty badly, yet here she’s taking care of me instead.
What the fuck have I turned into? Max fucking Fletcher?
Suddenly, she sighs. “I just … wanted to thank you for helping me.”
My brows furrow.
She’s thanking me for killing now?
“You saved me.”
“All right. That’s enough.” I snatch the little cotton ball out of her hand and chuck it into the bin behind her. “I’m fine.”
But that raised fucking brow is still judging me like I’m a kid in need of a time-out.
“You really don’t ever let anyone help you, do you?”
“No one can help me,” I grit back.
Her lips slowly part, but not a single word falls off her tongue, and now I realize I may have said too much.
But no matter how hard I try, I can’t look away from those damn downturned lips that are so luscious they make me want to lick them and mark them as mine.
What has this thief done to me?
“You’d be surprised by how much people are willing to do for someone,” she says, getting up and packing up the items she used. “If you’d just show a little bit of appreciation.”
Fuck it.
I grasp her throat, fingers digging into her skin as I pull her face toward me and smash my lips onto hers.
CHAPTER 38
Ivy
My mind instantly turns to mush the moment his lips make contact with mine. His mouth shatters my resistance as he claims me like he’s never had anything sweeter than the taste of my lips. One devastatingly possessive kiss and I’ve already dropped everything I was holding.