Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 148397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Massaging my nape, I struggled to shed the tiredness that’d dogged me since Emerald Bruises. Just like Ily and I crashed for three days after our initial welcome into this cesspit, we both turned inward and lethargic.
For a week, we’d barely talked and never ever touched.
Something had changed between us, and I had no idea what.
Whenever she looked at me, sad secrets danced in her bright tawny stare. She smiled instead of glowered. She acted eager for my command despite the pain of her heavily bruised body. Her energy had turned softer, acting like a sedative against mine.
And it hurt.
Goddammit, it hurt.
Her kindness, when I deserved no such thing, chopped me into bleeding pieces.
Swallowing hard, I glared at my laptop screen. The glare from the sun throbbed in my skull. I sat beneath an umbrella by yet another pool in the western gardens, where a running track looped close by, revealing a few jewels who hadn’t been butchered a week ago.
Two girls jogged side by side, no doubt doing their best to expel the very real urge to run far, far away.
Dropping my arm, I flinched as darkness descended once again. Cloying and thick, veining over my heart until all I breathed was black.
He’s replacing them right now.
Where was Victor hunting?
How many had he already caught?
Guilt crushed my bruised chest as Peter’s and Ily’s voices braided together in my head, repeating that damn sentence.
“I see what you are now. You did come for us. You’re going to free us. I know it—”
Slamming my laptop closed, I swung my legs off the lounger and tossed the computer beside me.
Raking both hands through my hair, my eyes trailed to Ily where she exercised a few metres away. Carefully, slowly, hurt and healing, she flowed through a sequence of poses that had stupid names like bird of paradise, eagle, cat-cow, and tree.
She said it helped her pain and kept her muscles from seizing.
I said it was pure fucking torture.
Watching her contort into all manner of delicious positions?
Christ, it was unbearable.
Time slipped through my fingers as I became utterly entranced by her.
The way the sun glinted off her impossibly dark hair.
The way her body was strong enough—even after everything she’d endured—to plank and push-up, lunge and balance on one leg. I’d often wondered where she’d gotten her strength from.
Now I knew.
On her last sun salutation, she placed her hands into a prayer and bowed her chin.
I expected her to drop to the grass and slip into a meditation like she usually did, but she took a deep breath and lowered her arms.
Her eyes flashed to mine.
She froze.
I froze.
All that electrifying awareness that never stopped crackling between us increased to a thousand volts.
I grew hard as I pictured kissing her.
I trembled at the thought of going too far.
My heart squeezed in literal pain.
I.L.Y.
I love you—
Don’t.
The sooner I forgot what her name meant, the better.
“You’re still in there. I know you are. You’re still good—”
I swallowed a moan.
She asked me to play along with her.
She believed everything I’d done up till now was an act.
But she didn’t get it.
I didn’t want her begging at my feet as she played along with me; I wanted her scratching my eyes out and telling me to stop.
I wanted to hunt her down. But I didn’t want her to play dead and let me; I wanted her to scream and try to kill me.
Fuck.
Sourness filled my mouth.
It seemed my morality after murdering four men had returned, suffocating me under the very real knowledge that if I touched her now, I would pay for the privilege.
She only asked me to play along to earn her freedom.
I dropped my head and pinched the bridge of my nose.
She’d kissed me, hugged me, not because she felt anything for me but because she was so fucking brave and figured out how to manipulate me.
All it would take was making me fall in love with her—
I sighed heavily and stood.
She sucked in a breath, wrenching my eyes to hers.
Books and manuscripts might give me a way to survive each day, but seeing her standing there, brilliant beneath the afternoon sun…my attempt at a novel paled compared to her.
No fictional character would ever live up to her.
Christ, how did people do this?
How did they find the strength to care for someone and accept equal care in return?
I couldn’t be in my chaotic thoughts anymore.
Snatching my laptop, I stepped away from the lounger.
Ily balled her hands as if ready to fight instead of obey.
That one act of defiance made me rock fucking hard and starving.
If she cursed me. If she showed me a fraction of defiance, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I’d grab her by the throat and pin her against the willow tree. I’d be inside her before she gave me any sort of permission.