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)
I knew this only because I was fighting against my molecules, every cell in my body telling me to claim her.
Not just to claim her but to … take care of her.
I’d never taken care of anyone in my life. Never wanted to. Hadn’t even cared about anyone beyond my brother. And the way I showed that was by keeping my distance, only appearing when he needed a villain.
Piper didn’t need a villain. She needed a hero. One to save her from me. But there was no one walking this earth strong enough to go to battle against me.
Except herself. She was the only one who could save herself from me.
Once Piper was in the bathroom, I returned to the stove. She’d devoured the plate of rice and beans earlier, and it had been hours since she ate that. She needed more calories.
She needed her health if she was going to fight. Fight me.
Because I was starting to understand that I wasn’t strong enough to fight against her.
And if she gave up, we were both doomed.
Piper
I decided to take a shower after relieving myself. I was still coated in dried sweat from the run, from desire, plus dirt and blood. I needed to wash it all away. Magic it away. And water cleansed. I could close my eyes and will it to. For the water to wash away the things that didn’t serve me. Enchantments I was under that weren’t safe.
The warm spray did nothing for my tense muscles, and it was only after I got in that I realized I hadn’t brought in clean clothes.
The cabin had a washing machine and a clothing line I had planned on using since I was down to one last pair of clean underwear—though I could’ve sworn I should’ve had two. But I’d packed under duress, so it’s not like I was a reliable narrator when it came to cataloguing my underthings.
I could’ve put my dirty clothes and underwear on, but I already felt dirty enough, even after my shower. I’d been unable to instill it with any magic.
I wanted my clean clothes, and the towel I wrapped around my naked body covered me more than some of the dresses I’d worn before. And if I was honest with myself, some naughty, devious part of me liked the idea of walking out there in a towel. Testing Knox, coaxing that intensity out of him. And out of me.
My hatred of him and his cruelty weren’t enough to make me stop wanting him. He was playing games, wasn’t he? In order to break me. He was starving me when food was within reach. His very presence was a game.
And he was starving too. Starving for me. I’d seen it in his small lapses in control. And I got an inkling that he wasn’t the kind of man to feel a hunger like this. That whatever was between us was novel to him too.
Turnabout was fair play.
So taking a deep breath while giving myself a mental pep talk, I walked out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped around me.
The towel itself wasn’t a thick, large bath sheet like I was used to. The one indulgence in my life was expensive linens and towels.
This was a cheap towel, barely large enough to cover my torso and butt. But it did. Barely. It helped that the butt in question had shrunk somewhat during the past week.
Regardless, I was still exposing a lot of skin, and it was the suggestion that I was entirely naked under the thin piece of fabric that I hoped would serve to do something to the man made of stone and darkness.
Walking through the main room of the cabin, I didn’t look at him. I made it my mission to walk slowly, confidently, as if doing this wasn’t making my stomach pitch and my skin prickle with nerves and excitement.
My romantic life had always been very vanilla, very civilized, no games, no hard to get, no fuckboys. I specifically chose men who called when they said they would, had manners and didn’t play games with me. Who wouldn’t threaten or stalk me when I broke things off. Although it was increasingly hard to pinpoint which man would do that. Up until that point, I’d been lucky with the men I chose.
Safe.
Boring.
That’s what I thought my kink was. I’d lived my formative years under the whims of an unstable and violent man, never knowing if he was going to hug me or hurt me.
The uncertainty and the constant state of fight-or-flight was what I was healing by going for the safe men.
Or so I’d thought.
I’d deprived myself, starved certain parts of myself that I kept hidden. Because despite all the wrought emotions around my current situation, the core part of me was … excited as I walked through the room with my captor, naked and wet.