Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
But I had to. My point was not as easily made if he was clutching me as he was, holding all the power. I at least needed the illusion that I had a grasp on some of it.
He glared at the distance I’d created between us but didn’t try to cross it, though his jaw twitched in obvious frustration.
I ignored how sexy I found that twitch. “For a man who’s structured his entire way of life outside the bounds of society-created rules, you seem very fricking determined to create them.”
His eyes narrowed. “Not asking you to follow society’s rules, babe,” he clipped. “Fuck, do what you want with them. Lie, steal, cheat, murder. I’m right by your side with you breakin’ society’s rules. But you’re gonna live by mine.”
I folded my arms, no longer finding the jaw twitch sexy because I was getting seriously pissed off. “I’m gonna live by yours?” I repeated.
He nodded once, as if it were a completely reasonable statement and not out-of-this-universe insane.
“You’re insane!” I yelled.
“You’re right, Will, I am,” he said, his voice a low rasp to juxtapose my near screech. “I’m insane, and therefore I will do fucking anything to keep you safe. Anything. I’m insane and my feelings for you are of that vein. It’s only a matter of fuckin’ time before you realize that.”
The words were a premonition. A dark one.
“You don’t think I’m strong enough for this, for us,” I accused.
His stare was unyielding. Cold. Unfeeling. Cruel. “No, I know you’re not strong enough. Don’t take it personally. Most people can’t handle this life. It’s a compliment that you can’t. Means you’re not broken beyond repair. Means your soul isn’t so fucked up that even the Devil wouldn’t take it.” He said it with the vacant humor I’d noted he’d clutched to in times of turmoil. Basically all the times we were together, since turmoil had become the norm for me. Turmoil was his constant. Chaos his companion. Pain his captain that steered his life.
I pursed my lips as I digested all his words. As they created little papercuts in my skin and his stare pressed salt into those wounds.
He wanted to hurt me with this indifference, drive me away.
He was succeeding.
“Right,” I said, my voice husky.
Then I turned around and walked calmly to my closet. He stayed where he was; I knew that mostly because I didn’t hear the low thud of his motorcycle boots on my polished wooden floors.
He was standing in the exact same position when I exited my closet, holding two things in my hands. Two things I’d bought in the middle of the night after a terrifying and erotic dream, my hands clicking ‘add to cart’ and typing my credit card info before I’d even fully woken up.
When the UPS guy had dropped them off two days later, my cheeks had flamed with shame, somehow certain he knew the contents of the box and was silently judging me for it. Not so silently judging myself, I’d buried it in my closet, telling myself I’d never use it but hoping that one day I would.
Not me. Someone else. The man who existed not in my dreams but in my nightmares. Not the hero on the white horse I’d read about all through childhood, had fantasies about in adolescence and said a sad goodbye to on my twenty-first birthday when I realized he didn’t exist.
No, this was the man I didn’t even let myself think about because he was borne from a dark and deeply unsettling part of me.
His eyes flared when he got a look at what was in my shaking hands. Every part of him turned wired.
I held out the objects, barely able to keep them in my grasp.
“Show me,” I whispered.
His eyes glued into mine. “Show you what?” he demanded, voice hoarse.
“Show me what you’re so certain I can’t handle.”
His eyes snapped down to the handcuffs, then back up to me. His body was shaking, taut, almost transforming with his need. With that dark need that had been lingering beneath the surface every time he touched me. What he had been holding back, even as he fucked me more brutally than any man had before.
Because that brutality was beautiful, perfect, wild, but I knew there was more. Something that wasn’t perfect. Wasn’t beautiful. Something he was locking down because he didn’t think I would survive it.
I wasn’t sure if I would either, but I was sure I wouldn’t be living, really living, if I let him walk out the door, out of my life.
Gage moved in a blur and pain exploded in my throat as his hand bit into it enough to steal almost all my oxygen. His cold eyes ran over me as I struggled to breathe. But I didn’t struggle out of his hold as I was sure he expected me to do.