Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
His breath was heated, and it swarmed me as if he were a scorching, summer wind.
A torrid, unrelenting flame.
I curled my hands tight around the edge of the counter to stop from doing something absurdly stupid like running my fingers through his hair.
My love for him throbbed with agony.
“Does it hurt?” he asked as he dabbed the cut with a cotton swab.
“It always has.” The confession wheezed past my dried lips.
I could feel him swallow. The way his shoulders went rigid.
He angled his gaze up to take in my face, his words as broken as the shards of glass. “Who is it you belong to, Aster?”
It was the same thing he’d asked me last night, only this time, he wanted a different answer.
I knew it. Felt the possession in the way his big hand curled around my ankle.
“You.” It trembled from my mouth.
At least for a little while, I did.
Because he’d chosen to do this for me. I just hoped whatever reason he’d done it for didn’t destroy me in the end.
“Good girl.” I could barely hear what he’d said, though I felt the caress of it skate up the inside of my thighs.
Need boiled in my belly, pouring out to touch every nerve ending as he cleaned the small amount of blood from the cut and applied a bandage.
“There,” he murmured.
“Thank you,” I said again, pushing it around the lump that had taken my throat hostage.
Everything was thickened.
The air and his words and the severity of his gaze.
Then he pressed his face to the inside of my calf.
I gasped.
“Do you want me to ruin him, Aster? Is that what you want me to do?”
Anxiety clouded the desire. My heart thudded at a furious, wicked beat. “I just want to be free.”
Hatred clawed through his expression. Only part of it was directed at me.
Logan suddenly pushed to his feet.
Menacing.
Beautiful.
Terrifying.
He lifted his hand and touched the necklace I wore, as if the star had branded him, too.
“Do you love him?” His voice dropped low as he shifted his attention to the ring I hated that I wore around my finger.
“No.” I couldn’t stop it from bleeding with pain.
“So you did it for what?” His words became blades.
“You left me without a choice.”
He pressed his face to my neck. I nearly drowned. Fell. Dug my nails into his back.
I forced myself to hold tight to the counter before I let myself go.
“There’s always a choice, Aster.” He pulled back, hurt a whorl that eclipsed the light in his eyes. “There’s always a choice.”
“And you made the wrong one.” I shouldn’t have said it, shouldn’t have given it to him, but I was swept into his arms before I could think through the implications of what I’d done.
His nose was at my jaw. “Did I?”
I wondered if he didn’t know. If he didn’t understand. Or if the only thing that had really mattered in the end was the greed.
“I hate you. You’d do well not to forget it.” It sounded of pain. A rush of regret. Hurt that slayed.
My arms curled tighter around his neck. “I hate you, too.”
I guessed we were both good at telling each other lies.
Maybe it was the only way either of us would survive this captivity. The only way we’d make it through the torment of wanting something you could never truly have.
Because he could never know what his actions had caused. The dominos that had been set in motion. The promise I’d made the one thing keeping him alive.
He carried me into the main room.
Gretchen looked up from where she was dumping a dustpan of glass into the trash. “See, manners. It isn’t so hard, is it?”
He grunted at her. “Keep it up, Gigi, and your days here are numbered.”
She cracked up. “That’s cute, young man, considering this place would fall down around you if I weren’t here to keep it in order. Besides, I know how much you love me.”
He grunted again. “You really know how to bust a man’s balls, especially one who signs your paycheck.”
“Pssh. I’d do it for free since I love you right back.”
I felt the wobble of affection at the corner of his mouth, rising beneath the rage that simmered in the bare space.
I tried to ignore the way his body felt pressed against mine as he carried me through the main room and back into my bedroom. Tried to pretend my skin wasn’t shimmering with the vestiges of his touch when he sat me on the edge of the bed.
He started to turn and leave, though he paused when I called behind him, “You’re happy here?”
Logan glanced back. “My family has always made me that way.”
“I used to.”
He tapped the doorframe with his knuckles. “Yeah, but you stopped being her a long time ago.”
Grief cut through the middle of me, and I choked over the regret that wanted to get free when he walked out without saying anything else.