Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83195 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
We’re alike in that way. Neither of us can resist the urge, but where she struggles against her demons, I’ve become mine.
It’s why she keeps running back to a world that she never should have been a part of.
I later found out it was her foster father who first introduced her to drugs when she was sixteen.
I hated the fact that, as a young man, I couldn’t always protect my sister. But Anya is the only person I know of who doesn’t need protection. She took back what was taken from her, and made herself a lethal woman. She cut men down for sport, used them for sex whenever she felt the need, and lived how she wanted to.
But Cinita has never truly escaped.
I killed her foster father last year, after I saw her dancing for the first time, hoping in some way it would set her free. It didn’t.
Now she sells herself to men who will only use her.
She’s still not willing to give me the name of the man who did this to her, choosing to protect him rather than herself. Is it fear or stupidity? I don’t entirely understand.
“Send my men if it makes you feel better,” Anya says gently after my long silence.
Dark brunette hair catches my eye, and I lick my lips in anticipation. I haven’t seen her for a whole fucking week, and it’s killed me not to touch her or even stand in the same room as her.
“I’ll deal with it,” I say as I hang up on Anya and pocket my phone.
Lena Love.
Fuck.
Her.
And the ballet dancer she works with, what was her name… Julie?
I step into the hallway in front of her, and she stops. Julie looks back and forth between us and then says, “I’m going to check on Cinita. I’ll give you two some time.”
Lena watches her friend as she leaves, then tucks her hair behind her ear and looks down at the floor. She has on a blue sweater, jeans that hug her ass, and a pair of cowboy boots.
I wait for her to say something since she’s ignored all of my calls and texts. Instead, she goes to step around me, but I sidestep into her path.
She glares up at me, agitated.
“We could play this all day,” I tell her.
“You don’t seem to take a hint well,” she fires back, rubbing her hands over her arms, and I wish it was me touching her. This little ray of sunshine somehow has me wanting to touch her. Something I’ve denied myself for most of my life, and for her I want to embrace and feel every inch. I refuse to look into it any further. I know I’m fucked-up. But I can’t deny the yearning I have for her any more than I could stop breathing.
“Not when it comes to you. You might think we’re done, but we’re not.”
She looks at me in disbelief. “Do you really kill people?”
That’s what she wants to ask me after ignoring my calls for a week?
“Sure, why not? Got someone you need dead?”
Her eyes widen in surprise before they narrow. Fuck, I love when they narrow at me.
“No, I’m being serious. Did you really kill Cinita’s foster father?”
I lean in close so I can whisper into her ear. She sucks in a breath, and I savor the hit I get of her floral scent.
“I sliced him from his cock”—I reach out and touch her chin with my gloved hands—
“to here.” I trail my hand to her stomach.
Her gaze doesn’t leave mine, and as I touch her, I notice how the voices and immediate revolt from touching isn’t as bad. It doesn’t cripple me, and I think it’s because I’m so fucking hungry for her. She’s the only thing that’s ever amounted to any bit of peace I’ve had, and it’s terrifying as much as it is unyielding. I need her.
“No. You wouldn’t have,” she says, shaking her head in denial.
She’s mistaken if she thinks I’m a good man.
I want this ray of sunshine to myself. I tried to stay away far too many times.
But I won’t lie or delude her into thinking I’m anything other than what I am.
A killer.
“Whose cock did you think you were sucking?” I ask. Surely, she’d heard enough to know that I’m not a kind man.
She immediately steps away from my touch, and I feel her absence heavier than I’d like to admit.
“Lena, can we talk about this?” I follow her as she heads in the opposite direction of Cinita’s room. She’s walking into a dead-end exit. I know because I made it my business to know every exit in this hospital.
“Funny, talking isn’t really your thing,” she retorts.
“Lena, please.”
It’s the please that has Lena spinning around with her finger pointed in my face, seething rage in my direction.