Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 724(@200wpm)___ 579(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 724(@200wpm)___ 579(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
I sneered, drinking in his face and the agonizing hurt in his stare. He might be learning how to read me, but I’d already become a master at reading him. And his features were carved with frustration. With need. With a hunger that only came from being denied true company. He’d accepted that he no longer wanted to be alone. I’d conveniently fit the role in becoming his valley companion. The only problem was, he hadn’t asked. He’d told, and well, I was stubborn when it came to being told anything.
I crossed my arms and ignored his previous question. “I’m not cooking for you.”
“You’ll do it because you owe me. I fed you each night for a week. It’s your turn.”
Spinning on his heels, he stalked through the door and left me with a dead rabbit, trembling anger, and the awful feeling that he’d won.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ONE HOUR.
I’d given her one hour to gut, skin, and cook that fat little rabbit.
I glowered at the paua shell clock in the library, slouching in Storymaker’s throne.
It’d been two hours and still no food.
What the fuck is taking her so long?
If I wasn’t so mad at her, I would’ve gone to check. Maybe I would’ve even helped her, especially with the messy parts. But I literally couldn’t be in the same room with her. Not after I’d witnessed her face slip into defiance, not when her body language shouted far louder than words, letting me know exactly what she thought of me, this arrangement, and the fact that she saw us as temporary instead of permanent.
Was this how she felt when reading me? Did my face give off similar hints that my emotions toward her ranged from rabid desire to fuming loathing? And if she could read me as well as she said she could, why hadn’t she stabbed that knife she’d commandeered into my heart by now? It was obvious she wanted to.
She wants nothing to fucking do with me.
Fury flowed in my veins at the unfairness of it. Couldn’t she see I was trying? I was doing my best to be human. To remember how to be kind and think of someone other than myself. It wasn’t easy after so long. It definitely wasn’t easy after the shit I’d endured.
But I was trying, which was more than I could say for her.
Instead of meeting me halfway, she was searching for that perfect moment of weakness to flee.
My jaw clenched with rage.
While she’d slept on the riverbank, I’d stupidly thought she’d felt the same tug of togetherness I had, and that’s why she hadn’t run. That she could feel—
There’s nothing to feel.
She’s mine to use as I see fit.
Nothing more.
If my screwed-up head had tried to make it into something it wasn’t, then that was the concussion’s fault, not mine.
Yet...
I’d thought we’d made progress today. I’d embraced the softer sensations inside me. I was going to let her take whatever pleasure she wanted from me, for Christ’s sake. Didn’t she know what a big deal that was? How much that would’ve cost me to let her use me after everything?
Instead of accepting my olive branch, she’d pretended things were better, all the while biding her time to run.
Damn girl.
Damn exhausting, infuriating girl.
I sank forward, resting my face in my hands and digging fingers into my hair. My anger switched to dizziness.
A split second of blankness came again. The library wasn’t known, my body wasn’t mine, everything about my world emptied of familiarity.
I gasped.
I fought to crawl back to who I was.
But it was all too much.
I was done.
My eyes snapped closed.
The smothering tiredness that I couldn’t seem to shake pounced on me.
I tipped forward.
The carpet embraced me with a hard welcome.
And then, nothing.
* * * * *
“Are you cold, little Kas?”
I huddled tighter into my ball on the floor. I wasn’t falling for that bastard’s question. Mr. Liven had a sadistic side that rivaled even Storymaker. He’d summoned me, abused me, then instead of releasing me back to the dormitory to lick my wounds with my Fable family, he’d commanded I slink to the floor by the bottom of the bed and sleep like the dog I was.
That was two hours ago.
In that time, I’d gone from cold to hypothermic.
I did my best to hide my shivers and the blue tinge of my bleeding body.
Snow blew in from the open window, swirling like icy dust and dampening the carpet with white flakes. He’d opened it when he’d worked up a sweat rutting into me. He’d left it open to teach me a lesson. A lesson in humility because I hadn’t begged enough to be abused.
“Seeing as you’ve been a good little puppy, you can sleep up here with me, if you want?” Mr. Liven snickered, yet another question full of blades to slice me with.