Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 130048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Wait…no—
I scrambled to speak. “No, I—”
“She said she’s only put up with you because you had money. Money that she gave to her adoptive brother for touching her the way you never could.” He chuckled as his tone turned blacker than midnight. “She said at least he made her come—”
“No!” I shouted. “I didn’t—”
“What?!” Sam roared. “She said that?” His face turned ugly as all his hate arrowed into revenge. “You really are a piece of fucking work, Ily. I knew it. I knew you were fucking him. The amount of times you were in his bed when I’d call. The number of times he picked up the phone and refused to put me onto you. He thinks you’re his and now I know why! Fuck, I knew I never should’ve wasted my time on you. You’re nothing. Nothing, do you hear me?”
My ears rang.
I floundered. “Sam, I never—”
“She also said she fantasises about your father.” Henri kept going. “He’s the one with the real power, not you. It’s him she wanted to spread her legs for and—”
“Shut up!” I yelled. “Lies. It’s all—”
“Fuck it!” Sam fisted the money and backed away. “Take her. Fuck her. Hurt her for all I care. I’m done.”
“Sam. Wait...I didn’t. I never—”
But it was too late.
Without another word, Sam turned on his heel, threw aside the velvet rope barricading us from the rest of the nightclub, and vanished into the pulsing, body-writhing dark.
Chapter Five
……………………………….
Henri
WELL, THAT WAS FUCKING HELL.
I swallowed a despairing groan.
I’d just given an English bastard ten thousand euros—that may or may not be counterfeit—and now had a woman hissing and spitting like a feral kitten, scratching at my wrist and promising ungodly harm to me if I didn’t unhand her that instant.
All of that was bad enough.
Terrible.
Criminal.
But the true crime wasn’t the fact that I’d just bought this girl from a man who wasn’t her keeper and had absolutely no right to sell her to me, but because I’d fucking enjoyed it.
I trembled with lust so black, so thick that I was surprised I still walked on two legs instead of four.
I sweated like a man being burned alive.
Because I was.
Burning with need.
With want.
Burning, burning, burning as I fought the claws of the carnivorous beast within me.
I was close.
Far, far too close to the precipice.
The precipice I’d fallen off once and only once.
The cliff that’d ensured I’d ended up at the bottom, horrified and petrified, coming face to face with what I truly was after a lifetime of hiding. It’d been the catalyst that drove me to seeking out my half-brother and practically dropping to my knees on his doorstep to help me.
“Let go of me!” she screeched, dragging her talons over my wrist for the hundredth time.
I didn’t wince even though it hurt.
My body was over sensitized.
Everything was too sharp, too potent, too tantalising.
If I focused on her scratching and the lacerating stings she granted, then I didn’t have to focus on everything else.
On the blackness.
On the deep, dark desire that snapped and snarled, wanting to be free, needing to snatch her and kiss her again. Kiss her until I tasted her tears and ate up all her screams.
Fuck.
Fuck!
This was bad.
Very, very bad.
I was losing control.
I knew I didn’t have the strength to do this.
“Why did you do that?” she yelled over the pumping music. “Why did you lie to Sam about what I said?”
Her voice cut through the haze in my mind.
I snatched that sliver of light, clinging to it with all my might.
“I overheard your entire argument,” I replied, hating how gruff my voice was. How hard it was to speak around the thorns of lust in my throat.
Locking my fingers tighter around her wrist, I dragged her unceremoniously through slightly drunk, mostly high party-goers. “He seemed like a cunt.”
“No more so than you!” She scratched me again, layering pain with pain. “You goaded him into doing something completely out of character—”
“Out of character?” I spun around and faced her.
She slammed into me, and sweet mother of everything fucking holy, I almost ripped open her top and feasted on her nipples that were hard and saluting me. I didn’t give a shit people would see. All I cared about was finding a way to rid myself of this curse before I did something utterly unforgivable. “Let me ask you. How many times has he belittled you? Used your family as a tool of scorn? Put down your job, your hobbies, your life? How many times has he manipulated you into fucking him?”
The girl—Ily—leaped back, stopped short by my hand on her wrist. Her eyebrows shot up to her pink-and-purple-strobe-light-painted hair. “What?” Her nose wrinkled. “That’s…that’s not any of your business.”
“Ah, see. That’s where you’re wrong.” I jerked her close again, our noses almost touching. “I know guys like him. I know how they feed on another’s confusion as they twist words and circumstances. I’m surprised you still have your fight. After the way he tried to keep you under his thumb tonight, I can safely say he’s been doing it for a while. He’s gotten quite used to making you bend to his wishes, and what’s worse is you let him.”