Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Shame wrenched through his expression. “This hatred inside me, Raven.”
I didn’t have to search around to grasp his meaning. Didn’t have to hunt for what he was referring to.
It hovered over us. A grim, bloodthirsty specter that clung to our psyches.
Did he think I didn’t understand it? That I didn’t feel it myself?
“You’ve always blamed yourself,” I murmured.
Otto flinched. “Of course, I’ve always blamed myself. It was my fault.”
My head barely shook. “I don’t think so, Otto. I don’t think there was anything that either of us could have said or done that would have stopped her from pursuing him.”
Haddie had thought she was in love with Gideon, and he’d convinced her that he was in love with her. But it’d all been a ruse. Gideon using her as a puppet to stoke the contempt between him and Otto.
I still didn’t know why Gideon had despised Otto the way he had, the way he’d wanted to ruin him.
But they’d felt the scourge of it after Otto had retaliated.
Grief seized my heart as I thought of it, the loss that permeated the hole that had been left after she’d been stolen from us.
Agony tore through Otto. Palpable and alive as he stared at me, never looking away.
“That right there, Raven. What I just saw play out in those beautiful eyes. The demons and scars that remain. That’s why I’ve been terrified of giving into my love for you. Because I bear the same wounds, but they are so vile and ugly and gnarled that I know the only thing I’m going to do is taint you with it.”
“I hate them, too,” I admitted on a devastated whisper.
Sorrow pulsed through his features, and he ran his callused palm over my cheek before he set it on my jaw. “I don’t just hate them, Raven. I want to destroy them. End them. And I won’t stop until I do.”
Knots curled in my stomach, and his thick throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. As he opened up to me the way I’d wanted him to do.
Begged for him to do.
But I didn’t know how to handle this.
“I’m sick with the need for revenge,” he continued, his voice coarse and jagged with the admission. “So sick that I hate that someone else got to end four of them that day. Hate that they took the vengeance that was mine. Have hated them for so long for taking that from me. But no one is going to steal the vindication of ending the rest.”
What did he mean? Was he…actively seeking them out?
Oh God.
I couldn’t breathe as I flew upright. My back was to him as I struggled to get oxygen into my lungs. Trying to suppress an anxiety attack from bubbling up and taking over.
I could feel his shame roll over me in surging waves.
His reticence.
His acceptance of the conviction he was sure was coming.
“That’s why, Raven. That’s why you should stay away from me. That’s why I’m terrified I might be the reason someone is after you. That’s why I’ll never be good enough for you. I’m fuckin’ sorry I’m not better. I want to be. Fuck, I want to be better. But I’m not, and there’s no stopping this part of who I am.”
Tell him, tell him, tell him.
My insides screamed, but I couldn’t get the words to form on my tongue.
Otto released an agonized sigh from behind, and I felt the bed shift as he sat up on the opposite side. “I’ll take you back to River’s.”
Is that what he thought? That I’d reject him because of this?
I flew around and had myself plastered around his back in a flash, my arms banded around his body. I pressed my face into the side of his neck, gasping as I breathed him in, and I told him the one thing that I could manage. “Do you think I could ever blame you? They’re monsters, and none of them deserve to live. Not after what they did.”
FIFTY-THREE
OTTO
“Not sure this is a good idea.”
I wasn’t sure if I was talking about actually going forward with my birthday party tonight or the skirt that Raven was currently wearing.
God knew I was going to lose control in front of everyone there with her dressed like that.
Woman looking like the only place she belonged was on the back of my bike.
Wearing this black leather miniskirt that came up high on her waist and a lacy black tank with her bra showing underneath. She had on those same five-inch heels she’d had on the first night I’d had her. When we’d crossed that line there’d been no coming back from. The ones I’d promised that I was going to fuck her in one day.
The long black locks of her hair were done in cascading waves, and they draped down her bare shoulders, caressing all that soft flesh.