The Vows We Break - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,38

of me was locked down until my mind was the jail cell?

No.

Just... no.

The words spill from me. “Eve didn’t threaten Adam.”

“She tempted him with knowledge,” she whispers, and God help me, she sounds so... authentic.

Like she really believes what she’s saying.

Did she suffer brain damage or something?

Would the hospital she was in really have let her discharge herself if she was still ill?

I have to believe that she’s okay. That she’s well-adjusted, but somehow, the stuff she’s spouting sounds like it should be coming from a crazy person, yet she says it in such a way that it sounds like fact.

“What kind of knowledge do you tempt me with?” I whisper.

“The oldest knowledge in the book,” she teases, her eyes sparkling when she pulls back to look at me.

Disgust flares inside me. “I won’t break my vows.”

“You’ve broken every other,” she counters easily, like she knows there’s little use in arguing.

Only, I get the feeling it has nothing to do with how staunch I sound, but because she knows that all men fall into temptation eventually.

Like she knows it’s only a matter of time.

Damn her.

I start to pull away, but her hands flatten on my back, except this time her fingers touch my wounds, and I tense up, pain spearing me.

It’s messed up, but my cock hardens as the agony fucks with my nerve endings, and I know she feels my erection. She can’t not. We’re standing close together, our bodies brushing, my dick nestling against her stomach.

My response, however, doesn’t trigger satisfaction or smugness. No, it triggers pity. And that messes me up, fucks with my head some more, especially as she sadly whispers, “Oh, sweetheart, they really did mess you up, didn’t they?”

I can’t answer that, can’t say a word, because there’s nothing to say. They did mess with my head. They did shatter my sanity.

I’ve known that for years.

Have been hanging on by a thread for years.

Her forehead pushes into my chest. “I can guide you, Savio.”

“Guide me where?” I whisper thickly, suddenly feeling like I truly am lost. Like I truly do need someone to guide me.

“Back toward the light. To where you need to be.”

Pain, of a spiritual variety, tangles with the physical. For a second, I’m speechless with the agony of knowing she’s wrong—of knowing that I want her to be right. “Only God can guide me there, only He can bring me home,” I murmur brokenly.

“You don’t listen, do you?” she replies, peering up at me again. “He gave me wings. We’ll go there together, but not before we follow His plan first.”

Her fingers tighten about my waist, pulling at my wounds. I clench my eyes closed, wincing even as the glorious pain fucks with my head in the best imaginable way.

“I need to clean your back,” she muses, her tone gentle. “I shouldn’t have touched you, but I couldn’t help myself.” She tuts, clearly mad at herself. “Where’s your first aid kit?”

Like I’m a lamb being led to the slaughter, she untangles her hands from my waist, then guides me over to the stool she’d been sitting on after she’d fallen over.

I had proof, right there, that she wasn’t one-hundred percent fit. And yet, aside from all these ramblings of wings and God’s plan, she seems lucid. But then, so do I, don’t I?

I blink at her when she repeats, “Where’s your first aid kit?” Then, when I point to a cupboard below the sink, she sighs.

I know why too.

And even though she’s messed with my head to the point where I don’t know what’s up and what’s down, I watch her carefully as she opens the cupboard, and takes a step back so she can look inside without bending down first.

I wonder how many other variations she’s having to make in her regular life to transition into this new phase, one where she’s a little less mobile than I sense she’s used to.

It’s more proof that she’s not as stable as, at first glance, she might appear.

That golden hair just looks like it’s styled into an edgy cut. Her face is a little thinner than the last time I saw her on TV, but that could be down to some fad diet.

She looks normal.

But inside that beautiful head?

I fear she’s anything but, and that makes her dangerous.

For whatever reason, she’s come here, and for whatever reason, she seems to believe she can help me.

There’d been plenty of weirdos who’d taken to me in the aftermath of Oran. Some approached me with