Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Heat licked up his neck when he thought of that guy stroking her hair tonight in the alley. Presuming to touch her. That hour in the alley was what had him awake even now. He couldn’t shake the conversation he’d had with Deuce. Hell, just seeing Deuce after all these years. It had been good, but it had only reinforced the sense that the past and the present were working together to drive him out of his mind. Where did memory end and nightmare begin when it was all the same?
Jo sighed in her sleep, a small frown drawing her neat brows together. Cam leaned over, pushing the hair back from her face, rubbing the soft strands between his fingers. Even in her sleep Jo might be trying to solve the world’s problems, one child at a time. What he wouldn’t have given to have someone like her in his corner when he was a kid. To protect him from scum that preyed on the weak and the young.
“She sure is pretty.”
The room temperature plunged, turning the room into a morgue, and icicles trickled into Cam’s blood, sharp and frozen. He looked at the foot of the bed, drawing a deep breath and scooting back to the headboard. Not frantically, but calmly as if he faced the cleaning lady who came once a week, not a demon on leave from hell. Cam refused the fear that wanted out. Wanted to leak into his voice, into a whimper, into a moan.
“You’re not real.”
“Oh, I’m very real.” Mac leaned one arm against the bedpost, spreading his full lips wide into his alligator smile. “You and me have a rendezvous every night. I’m more real to you than she is.”
“You can’t hurt me.”
A chuckle billowed from Mac’s lips like black smoke.
“I’m not here to hurt you.” Mac’s eyes slid like a reptile’s over to Jo, sprawled beside Cam, bare shoulders visible above the covers. “I’m here for her.”
“The hell you are.” Fear was a tundra covering his heart, but Cam sat up, forced his back from the headboard. “I’ll kill you.”
“Like that works.” Mac walked around to Jo’s side of the bed, his hand hovering over her hair. “That mouth. Gor-geous! Just think how those lips will look wrapped around my dick. You remember that, right?”
“No.” Cam shook his head even as the fear infiltrated his fingertips and laid siege to his lungs. “I won’t let you.”
“Oh, same way you didn’t let me hurt your mama? Or you?” Mac curled his lips around the poisoned words, sucking at them like venom. “You’re pathetic. Still. You ain’t gon’ do nothing.”
He was so wrong. Cam could do something. This time he’d get it right and deal with this regenerating evil once and for all. Somehow he had messed it up, but he wouldn’t this time. Not with so much at stake. Keeping his eyes fixed on Mac, he leaned toward the floor and ran his hand under the bed until he found the gun. Tonight, it wasn’t cold. It burned his hand, spreading fire through his body and melting the fear away. He pulled himself up on his knees, reached across the bed, and grabbed the back of Mac’s head, pressing the barrel to his forehead.
“I’ll kill you this time. You’re going back to hell.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.” Jo was afraid to even swallow, but she couldn’t keep that prayer from slipping past her lips. “Baby, wake up.”
Cam’s eyes, frozen over with sleep and hate looked right through her. One hand tightened around her skull and the other around the gun. He pressed the barrel deeper into her forehead. He had wrenched her from sleep, pulling her to her knees in the middle of the bed and told her she was going to hell.
The man she loved holding a gun to her head in the middle of the night—she was already in hell. One false move and he might pull that trigger.
“Cam, wake up.”
“You’re not real, but I’ll kill you anyway.”
“I am real.” Salty tears flooded the sides of her mouth. Tiny droplets of sweat crawled down her naked spine. Fear was a wet blanket covering her from head to toe. “I love you.”
“No.” He shook his head, and Jo saw a crack in the ice. “No.”
“I love you.” Jo steeled her voice, and for the first time she realized that he might hold the gun, but she held the power. “I do. I love you more than anything in this world. I always have. You know that. Cam, I need you to wake up for me, baby.”
Deeper, deeper, harder, harder—the barrel pressed into her until she knew the skin would bruise or break.
“You’re not real.” His voice cracked but didn’t break. “I won’t let you hurt her.”
Her? In his dream, was Cam protecting her? From who?