assault my senses. I pray for it to stop. I wail and scream and beg and cry and pull at my restraints, but it’s no use.
“Please. No more,” I whisper, as the terrible world I created spins around me.
It cuts off once again. “Last chance,” he warns.
“I…I can’t.” It’s as close to the truth as I can give him.
He descends upon me, wrapping his hand around my throat and squeezing. “That’s not good enough.” His eyes are bloodshot, his teeth bared like an angry animal.
I can’t help but again compare the Pike of now with the Pike I met on the road that night as I begin to run out of air. Everything is fuzzy.
He releases me suddenly, with an angry growl. I fall off the chair to the floor with a painful thud. My jaw taking the brunt of it as I gasp for air.
Pike’s bare feet move from one side of the room to the other as he paces the concrete floor. I know I’m going to die because I can never tell him what he needs to know.
I can’t help the laughter that bubbles up from somewhere deep inside, echoing in the room as if there is one of me un every corner.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Pike seethes, pointing the blade at me. He pushes me over onto my back and stands over me, a foot on each side of my elbows.
I smile up at him. “You’re going to kill me.” My voice is the textural equivalent of sandpaper.
“Still crazy, I see,” he snaps.
I shake my head. “No, you don’t get it. You’re going to kill me.” Another burst of laughter escapes me. I meet his beautiful angry eyes. “The only man whose ever kissed me.”
Chapter Eight
Pike
The only man whose ever kissed me
The truth is that if it weren’t for those words, she would probably be dead. The second they crossed her lips, I remembered feeling a need to press my lips on hers. How vulnerable she was. How weak. I wanted to protect her that night.
Now? I have no fucking idea. All I know is that the girl I tried to save, the only girl I’ve ever felt compelled to kiss in my life, is now my fucking enemy, tied up in my fucking warehouse like a junkyard dog.
And she’s not saying shit.
Worst of it all?
I still want to fucking kiss her.
Needless to say, day two also isn’t going fucking well. Mickey’s even more determined to push me off the fucking edge of whatever momentary moral dilemma I’m having. The truth is, that even if she tells me what I want to hear, the end result is the same. That’s how this shit works.
I should just put a bullet in her fucking brain and get it over with. But for the first time in my life, it doesn’t sit well with me. I’m not getting that blood-thirsty satisfaction from the thought of ending her life like I would after capturing an enemy. This feels more like taking a swig of the finest beer only to discover you’ve swallowed a wasp. It’s unsettling. And if it’s still alive? It also fucking stings.
Mickey. Her name is Mickey. She looks so different now, yet still the same. She’s filled out. Once all elbows and knees, she’s now the picture of an athlete. Strong lean muscles like that of a gymnast but with a ridiculous amount of curves. Thorne had been the one to strip her down and check her pockets for any sort of identification. I didn’t see the extent of those curves, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about them when she squares her shoulders in defiance and her shirt rides up high on her thighs.
Dark waves of long brown hair fall over her face. She jerks her head to the side to push the hair from her wide expressive eyes rimmed in red. Right now, those eyes are expressing a silent yet loud scream of rage and fear because her mouth is otherwise occupied.
Her lips are dark pink and her teeth are straight as she bites down around the gag. Her nose is small and straight. Besides the bruising from the headbutt and the vein popping out on her forehead, her skin is clear. Well, except for that little mark. She still has that freckle thing on the one side of her face between her nose and lips.
Of course, she does. Those things don’t exactly disappear.
She’s not the weak little thing she was back then.
But, she’s