Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104239 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104239 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My teeth sink into my lip as I weigh my options. Honesty seems the only way to go. “I was looking for you. I woke up from a nightmare and couldn’t find you.”
He closes the door before punching a code into the alarm system to keep it from wailing out his arrival. Maybe if I make a run for it, he won’t be able to catch me. Where would I go? I only know there’s something dangerous about him right now. I don’t even know if I’ve ever seen this side of him.
Fear roots me to the spot by the time he begins stalking toward me. That’s the word for it, too. An animal with prey in its sights. His hands are fisted, and he’s breathing heavily.
What did I do this time? Why do I deserve this now?
It’s only once he’s close enough that the light I just turned on in the kitchen washes over his face, and the sight makes me recoil, my fear forgotten.
“What happened to you?” Reflex makes me reach up to touch his bruised jaw. The mark is dark purple, ugly, and covers most of his cheek. The eye on that side is a little swollen, too, with a big bruise forming beside it and a cut running through his eyebrow.
He slaps my hand away before I can make contact, then takes hold of that same wrist and squeezes hard. “You were just looking for me, huh? That’s all you were trying to do?” Now that he’s this close, I can smell the whiskey on his breath. It doesn’t bode well for me. He’s obviously not thinking clearly.
“Yes. You weren’t there. I was worried.”
“You were worried?” he taunts before laughing nastily. “You thought something bad happened to me? As if you could do anything about it even if something did happen. Try again.”
There’s no talking reason into somebody who’s beyond this point.
“What else would it be?” I whisper. The sight of his hate-filled eyes makes me tear mine away. Only now, I’m staring at what’s obviously dried blood on his hands and wrists. A lot of it, too.
He snickers. “What? You don’t like seeing me bloody? What if I told you the guy who bled all over me is dead because I killed him in a fight?”
“You did?” I can barely get the sound out through my tight throat.
“And then I drank half a fucking bottle of whiskey because I could. Because I’m alive, and he’s not.” He hauls me close, and yes, the coppery stench of blood is all over him now that I’m up against him. “And what do I find when I get back? I find you trying to run away.”
Fear trickles down my spine. “I wasn’t! Where would I go?”
“You’ve snuck away in the past. How the fuck should I know?” I don’t have time to come up with a defense for that before he makes up his mind, bending slightly and throwing me over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” I try to kick out with both legs, but there’s no budging the iron bar of an arm he’s wrapped around my thighs.
“Taking you back where you belong,” he snarls, bouncing me as he marches toward the stairs. Fear has me in its grip now. I know what’s coming next.
On the way up the stairs, he mutters to himself, “Think you can leave me… you belong to me… ungrateful bitch…”
Tears fill my eyes, but I know arguing with him is useless. I’m not ungrateful. I wasn’t trying to leave. I don’t know where his mind is right now, but it’s not here with me.
He barely takes time to close the bedroom door behind us before marching me across the room and throwing me onto the bed. I land hard enough to almost bounce off, but he blocks me with his body to stop that from happening. I manage to get on my hands and knees and start scrambling for the corner of the bed, but he’s too quick for that, too.
“Running away again?” He grabs me by my ankle and tugs hard. I grab for the blankets, anything to stop this, but it’s no use.
“Why are you doing this?” I’m talking to myself since Lucas yanks down my shorts and thong at the same time, his short nails breaking my skin and making me hiss in pain. Instead of stopping him, it seems to egg him on. He delivers a hard, unforgiving slap against the place where he scratched me, and I howl with my face pressed against the mattress.
“You can do better than that.” He strikes me again, on the other cheek this time, and I yelp from the force. Blazing-hot pain radiates from that spot outward.
“No, stay that way,” he growls when I try to lift my head. To help things, he puts a hand on the back of my neck and presses me farther into the mattress. Over the sound of my heart, I hear him lower his zipper.