someone else’s calculations, but I have a hard time imagining I’ll get that lucky.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. For once, I wasn’t cringing, flinching, biting back sympathy.
I rose to my feet, slowly, and locked my chin in place. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” Did he really not remember? “My father used to beat my mother on a weekly basis, sometimes daily. I was sent away to Hillcrest because she feared he’d get me too. He wanted her dead. Remember? He would’ve killed me. You said it before, he’ll probably do the same to my cousin one day. I was born in darkness just as much as you. Maybe yours is darker, I don’t know, but it’s not like I ever decided to be normal. I didn’t like the ‘light’ life. I helped others disappear too. What do you think we see when we find them? Those people are at their lowest. They’re fighting for their lives. And we’ve been too late. Have I told you about those times?”
My voice sounded dull, echoing inside of me.
I kept on, though. He had to hear this. “Girls who got away from their pimps, who called for help. We get to a lot of them too late. We find their bodies. Or we show up to an empty hotel and get word a week later their body was identified in the morgue. Trafficked girls too. It’s not just rich assholes we save people from. It’s all walks of life. Girls who left home trying to get away from an abusive father or mother, get lured in by the promise of easy money, and get hooked on drugs. Prostitution. It’s those too.” I stepped toward him, my voice soft as silk. “Those girls you turn a blind eye to, who are trafficked in your territory, in your country. Those girls.”
He watched me come toward him, his gaze matching my tone. Like a loving snake waiting to pounce.
“What would you like me to do in those situations?” he asked.
“Stop them.” Easy. “Make that go away.”
“Just like that?” He gave me a hollow laugh. “You don’t know anything, do you, little girl?”
Oh, that fucker.
“I know the reason you reacted so violently to those people Brooke was staying with was because you recognized the signs.” This was the ace up my sleeve.
I stood almost toe-to-toe with him. “I know she was being groomed, and she didn’t even know it. She was living in that filth. It would’ve taken one bored night where she went upstairs and had a drink with them. One drink. One drug. A second night of drugs. More and more until she forgot why she was with them in the first place, until she was desperate and would’ve done anything. Or she would’ve started while she was high, out of it enough where they could use a camera on her. Right?”
I reached out, my heart jumping all over the place, but my arm steady.
I shouldn’t have, but I touched his chest.
His heart was racing just like mine, unsteady and erratic. Out of control.
I licked my lips and stared at his chest as it rose and fell under my palm. “You said no one was in the house, but that wasn’t true, was it?” I didn’t wait for the answer. I didn’t need it this time. “You had those people killed, and you burned down the house to destroy the evidence.” My eyes lifted to his now. “Didn’t you?”
He stared right into me, slipping past my walls, my barriers to see me naked and stripped bare for him. But I saw him, just as much as he saw me.
Slowly, he reached up until his hand curled around my neck.
He pulled me close, crushing my hand between us, and as he bent for my lips, he said, so softly, “You’re goddamn right I did. And I’d do it again.”
Then his mouth fused with mine.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
No words. None at all.
Just right now.
Need. Want. Claim.
Mine.
Our mouths battled, both of us trying to dominate the other. I was almost bursting with need.
I needed to feel him.
I needed to touch him.
I needed to claim him.
I didn’t care where we were. We could’ve been in the middle of the street, but I needed his touch on me, his body on me, his everything on me.
I needed him. My feelings were hot. They were demanding. They were dirty and complicated. They were everything in the gray part of life.
As we pushed against each other, our mouths laying claim, he ripped