howling, then my fingers, circled around his hoop, blood dripping down my wrist.
She has her hands in fists by her sides, and she shakes her head. “Jeremiah, you didn’t have to do that,” she says so quietly, I can barely hear her over Roman’s howls.
In the distance, Nicolas is zipping up the black bag, pretending not to pay any fucking attention.
I shrug. “Would you like to kiss him better?” Closing the space between us, I drop the ring, circle my fingers around her slender wrist as I drag her flush to me, his blood against her skin. I bow my head, thread my fingers through her hair and grip the back of her skull. “Wanna practice being a mommy with him now, baby?”
“Fuck off, Jeremiah.” She tries to jerk away but I grip her tighter, pressing so hard against the bones in her wrists I feel them rub together.
“Should’ve told him that when he came to sit beside you, sis.” I brush my lips along her cheek, to her ear, bite the tip of it gently, enough that she stiffens against me, one hand pressed against my chest. “You know I don’t like when people touch you. People that aren’t me.”
Roman is still sniffling at my back, but I ignore him as I run my bottom lip over Sid’s ear, feel her shiver even as she tries to back away from me. I don’t let her go.
The idea of someone touching her, hurting her, of anyone besides me having her, fucking eats at me. I let her go for too long. Long enough for him to knock her up. Marry her. Hurt. Her.
I can’t let that happen again.
The past two decades have proven over and over again how she belongs to me. And I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone else. When I’m with her, my nightmares are quieter. I have a reason to breathe.
Someone taking that from me?
I’d do more than rip out a fucking piercing.
I bite my lip, my cheek still against hers, my mouth over her ear as I try to tamp down on the warmth coursing through me with her nearness. With hurting someone, for her. I’d do it again and again. All of her nightmares, I’d fucking silence them.
“We’re going to go enjoy Nicolas’s birthday, sis. But if you let someone that close to you again…” I trail off, pressing her closer to me, hand still in her hair, fingers wrapped around her wrist, hoping to Satan the tremor doesn’t start. “I’ll rip their fucking eyes out.”
The lights from the club are overwhelming, flashes of blue and green that make my head spin, my anxiety spike. The music is loud, ROCKSTAR pounding a rhythm in my temples.
But I’m not so sure it’s any of that shit that’s making me feel so edgy.
Instead, I think it’s the fact that despite what he did to poor Roman in the back room of the club, Jeremiah seems perfectly content right now. In the worst way. I see a woman perched on his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck as she laughs at something he says, nuzzling her face against his chest in the giant circular booth we’re in, at the end of it, lots of space thankfully between us.
My throat feels like it’s closing up as I watch them, and I bring the bottle of water to my lips, wishing I could drink something stronger. Wishing, not for the first time, I wasn’t pregnant.
I’d had an appointment. An abortion scheduled. I was going to be done with it, after I ran from Noctem. Straight into the arms of another man who wants to eat me alive.
But the day of the appointment, I woke up in a cold sweat, imagining how my husband would feel. Thinking of his heart breaking.
No matter what he did to me…I can’t do that to him.
Jeremiah’s eyes are locked on mine as he tips his beer up to his lips, the woman’s hands pawing at his gray dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up, showing off his corded muscle.
The scars on his wrist.
Scars for me.
But it’s not me in his lap. It’s a dancer at the club, a very pretty woman with tan skin, a lithe body, and long black hair. She’s wearing a silver dress, her tits nearly spilling out of it, the hem of it hiked up to just under her round ass, where Jeremiah’s hand is resting against her.