Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 30428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
“Did the car belong to a man? On the shorter side with blond hair?”
“Yes,” he says, sharply. “Who was he to you?”
“Was?” I whisper, every inch of my skin beating like a heart. “I don’t know him. Never spoke to him. He just…he watched me clean recently. It was creepy.”
Koen’s voice is deadly cold when he says, “He’s never going to do that again, is he?” He leans in close to rub his mouth against the skin under my ear. “I might be unable to kill for a living anymore, but this is different. It concerned you. I snapped his fucking neck for looking at what’s mine. For thinking of doing more.” He presses his bared teeth against my neck. “The fact that my Meg was his final vision on this earth burns me alive. I want to claw my way into hell just to rip the image of you from his head.”
“Koen…” I whisper, my fingers clutched tightly in my lap, scared by the impulse to kiss him after he told me something so bloodthirsty.
“Am I scaring you?”
“A little,” I manage, trapped in a rush of awareness. Of him. Of myself. Of the entire universe. This is what he does—he makes me feel sharply awake. Perpetually energized.
Koen presses his forehead to my temple and without taking his eyes off me, he lifts the violin bow from his lap, sliding it down between my legs. Playing the inside of my high inner thigh, right on the edge of my stockings, as if I’m the instrument. “Have I convinced you yet that I’m worth a little fear, Meg?”
“Yes,” I breathe, my sex in an uncomfortable clench. Dampening in my panties.
“You could be saving a lot of lives by quitting your jobs.”
“I can’t.”
A whimper leaps out of my mouth when he presses the violin bow to the juncture of my thighs, right along that wet valley, dragging it up and down, up and down. “We’ll discuss your job later.” He cuts the station a sideways glance. “For now, let’s do what we came here to do. I’m getting jumpy with so many people around you.”
In a haze, I glance around the train station and spot four people, in total now, the woman in the sunhat long gone. “It’s practically empty.”
Instead of responding to that, Koen taps the bow against my pussy. Tap. Tap. Tap. “If I had my way, I’d be the only one who comes within a hundred yards of this.”
“I can’t always let you get your way.”
His right eye ticks. “Case in point, we’re in a train station when I’d like to be banging your fucking brains out in every room of our house.”
I trap a moan with my lips. “Our house?” I murmur a few seconds later.
“Everything that’s mine is yours, Meg. I’m laying it all at your feet.”
My heart squeezes up into my throat and I’m forced to blink away the moisture in my eyes. Is he still going to feel this way after I tell him I met him under false pretenses? That I have an agenda that involves sending him back to an unhealthy and dangerous lifestyle?
“Is it possible to fall in love with someone so fast?” I say out loud, failing to limit the words to the inside of my head.
“No,” he says, his voice unsteady. He drops the violin bow back into his lap and cups my cheek, turning my face so I can see the gravity in his eyes. Enough gravity to fill the cosmos. “I’ve loved you since the bathtub.”
“I love you, too.” If my heart constricts anymore, I’m going to flatline. “Maybe we should go home.”
I’ll tell him everything once we get there. I swear.
His lips twitch. He’s coldly beautiful when he’s speaking about murder. But when he’s amused, he could pass as a Hollywood heartthrob. “One song, then we’ll go. I want you to hear the music that plays in my head when I look at you.”
10
Koen
Isettle the violin onto my shoulder and place my chin in the leather chinrest.
My bow waits on the strings for my equilibrium to restore itself.
Meg just told me she loves me.
Right on the heels of finding out I murdered a man for her protection.
I’ve found the one woman on this earth who could love a monster. Who could love me for exactly what I am, no qualifications. I think there’s even a forbidden part of Meg that is excited by the predator inside of me, and I’ll be grateful for that until the day I die. If the danger lurking inside me keeps her safe and makes her wet, as a bonus, I’m going to be the last one to question that blessing.
My bow begins to move on the strings. I’ve never played a happy song in my life and this music was only composed in my head, but it’s the most accurate portrayal of my feelings for her. The high-pitched beginning and the slow, winding drop into dizzying notes of desire, obsession, commitment. There’s the lighter section to represent her making paper airplanes and flying them in my living room. The way she teases me. The way she lifts the veil of darkness every time she walks into a room.