Total pages in book: 178
Estimated words: 170884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 170884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Yeah. This was more my speed.
Pronouncements of love were wasted on me.
I didn’t do love. Not anymore. Love hurt too much, I’d learned, and the type of pain it caused was not my kink. Not even close.
Which was why I released his thumb with a pop and licked my lips before resting my hard gaze on him. “Get out of here, Turk.”
He stared at me a moment, unblinking, before he stood and tugged at the bottom of his jacket, straightening himself. When he held out a hand to me, I slapped it away, standing on my own and smoothing down the front of my dress.
Aslan stepped forward, closer than I would have liked him, and he searched my battered face. “I didn’t mean for this meeting to go in the direction it did.”
My chest ached.
I couldn’t deal with the affection that lined his voice. I didn’t want it. He needed to go.
Looking back over my shoulder, I shrugged it off. “Don’t worry about it.” Then I threw him my smiling eyes. “I just have that affect on people.”
Just leave.
He looked disappointed in himself. “You’re infuriating.” He spoke low, to himself. “Why the fuck do I want you so badly?”
With a light sigh, I sat back in my desk chair. “The same reason every other man I’ve screwed wants me, Sadik. I let you be who you want to be, who you really are. I bring forth your demons, and I fuck them too, because it makes me happy to see men lose control of themselves. Because it makes me hot to watch a good man be bad, and it’s so easy to do. Because I like to be taken rather then wooed. Pain makes me wet, and I know that’s screwed up.” I blew out a long breath and smiled warmly at him. “But that’s who I am. I couldn’t change, even if I wanted to.” My smile waned. “Believe me. I’ve tried.”
Didn’t he see what I really was? A cancer on this world, plaguing every man I met.
I was a sexually transmitted disease, and Aslan was just one of a long list of those infected.
The sad fact was men liked their girls insane. I was proof of that.
When he came to me, taking my face in his hands and looking deeply into me, my chest tightened at the concern in his eyes. He brought his full lips to mine, kissing me gently, and I let him, because I was a sadist.
My heart clenched painfully at what he said next.
“I know what your father did to you,” he spoke against my lips before pulling back. “Knowing what I know now, I’d have slaughtered him.” He held my face fast and looked down at me almost desperately. “I’d have killed him. Tortured him. Taken him apart, piece by piece, fed him to the dogs.” He was crazy. Why did I like that so much? “I’d have done it for you.”
A solid warmth spread through me. I should not have been feeling what I was feeling.
“I don’t need a man to protect me, Turk,” I told him, stepping back and watching his hands fall. Men had let me down my entire life, and I would never put myself in the position to have that happen again. “I save myself. Always have, always will.”
Aslan sighed, but he did it with smiling eyes. “I know.” When he turned to leave, he paused at my door. “See you later?”
Jesus, he was annoying.
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know how to take a hint, do you?”
He blew me a kiss, grinning hard, and then I was alone.
It was an odd feeling, really. For the first time since Twitch died... I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
As I sat at my desk with a throbbing mouth and a bruised temple, my lips thinned.
Why did that piss me off so much?
It was close to four a.m. when my doorbell rang.
Sliding out of bed, dressed in nothing but a tiny silk teddy, I reached for the Glock inside my nightstand. When I had it in hand, I looked through the peephole and frowned, throwing the door open and pointing the barrel of my gun at his chest.
“What are you doing here, Turk?” My voice was rough with sleep.
He looked down at the gun a moment before training his smiling eyes on me. “I missed you.”
Yeah, right. “Why are you really here?”
When he reached behind him, I stepped forward, face hard, and pushed my gun into his chest. “Fucking try it.” Wild-eyed, I pressed my gun into him hard enough to bruise and smirked. “Give me a reason. I dare you.”
But Aslan Sadik just watched me closely before pulling out the concealed item. He held it out to me, and my heart began to race.
“Is this a trick?” My eyes narrowed at him. “What game are you playing? I don’t know this one.”