Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Me.
But was she completely unwilling?
She despised me. Feared me.
But I saw something else beyond hatred and fright in her eyes. I saw lust.
The gold in her eyes turned molten. Was the flush in her cheeks solely from the run, the hitch in her breath caused by just fear and physical exertion? The way her rosebud lips had parted, her long eyelashes fluttering…
But I couldn’t trust my eyes. Not with my traitorous cock telling them lies. A cock that had never once influenced my decisions.
I rubbed at my eyes, the brush crumbling under my feet.
Fuck, I needed a coffee.
But I didn’t since Piper was a ‘caffeine addict’ as declared on social media. I was going to strip her of all of her vices, comforts. Withdrawal from substances even as seemingly benign as caffeine could help break a person.
Under the right circumstances.
I’d been confident that I had all of the right ingredients to break Piper. I just hadn’t accounted for my hunger for her. Hadn’t thought that she might possess all the right weapons to break me. An easy, lyrical laughter, a soft exterior hiding a will of stone beneath.
“Fuck!” I roared, slamming my fist against a tree, disturbing the silence of the woods.
Blood trickled from a cut in my knuckle.
Though I relished the pain, the relief that came from tearing open my skin, this mark was a problem.
It was not easily hidden, masked. It was somewhere that would declare my lack of control. Lack of power.
I thought about my initial feeling, waking up to find Piper gone. To discover I’d slept through her moving around the cabin. Leaving.
She could’ve taken the opportunity to kill me in my sleep. That’s what I would’ve done in her position.
But not everyone was like me. Not everyone killed easier than breathing, became a living nightmare to escape their own demons and needed to split their skin open to feel anything.
Not everyone was a monster.
Somehow, Piper was gentle. In this cruel world, she hadn’t been beaten down, embittered. Not even with the proof that goodness was not rewarded. It was only coveted by men like Stone, destroyed by men like me.
That wasn’t what captivated me about her, though. It was the fire that burned through that gentleness. She wasn’t weak. That defiant tilt of her chin, the way she overcame her fear of me. The confidence of her gait as she tore through unforgiving woods. Her sense of direction in a place that almost turned me around. Her chopping fucking wood.
I stared at my blood staining a tree that had likely been standing longer than I’d been alive, in woods that were older than our civilized country.
Civilized.
That’s something I wasn’t. Something I’d never be. A demon in a suit, masquerading as a human but not quite pulling it off.
We were different species. I needed to remind myself of that.
I did not deserve an ounce of pleasure or happiness the prospect of her promised.
And she did not deserve the lifetime of ruin I promised.
Then again, her life was already ruined with or without me.
Piper
The temperature was impressive, given how remote the cabin was, but even the scalding-hot shower couldn’t cure me, couldn’t chase away the chill nesting in my neurons. I’d investigated the hot water source—a large propane tank slightly removed from the house. I wanted to ask Knox about the plumbing, the running water. My guess would be some kind of gravity fed system from a nearby creek, or maybe a well. But no way was I making conversation with Knox after what happened.
It was selfish of me to take such a long and hot shower since the propane would eventually run out. But I didn’t give a shit about Knox’s hot showers. I probably should’ve at the very least thought about future me needing showers, but I wasn’t able to think practically right then.
I’d scrubbed myself raw, as if I could get the power of his gaze off my skin. It wasn’t on my skin, though; it was imprinted in my cells.
Despite the warmth of the shower, the body heat generated from the run and the rapidly warming spring morning, my teeth chattered.
I’d put on a long-sleeved shirt, a cardigan and leggings, trying to let my hair air dry outside in the sun while again nibbling on an apple and some bread.
My body was crying out for coffee, but a half-desperate search of the cupboards showed there was none to be had.
That further solidified my theory that Knox was some kind of robot or vampire. There was no way he could be human if he didn’t operate on caffeine. Especially considering the lack of sleep he’d had. And I assumed chasing, kidnapping and terrifying people took up a lot of energy.
Drugs, then, if he was indeed human. It had to be stimulants. I’d seen behind the curtain, discovering that many successful people were on some kind of drug to keep them up, to get them up, to bring them down.