Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
“Yes.” Searing tears filled my eyes. “Great idea.”
He tapped his foot impatiently.
“And thank you for torturing my rapist and saving my life.”
“Better, six thirty-two, better.” He nodded and then pulled out a cell phone. “Yeah, I’ll need everything. For a female.” He walked back to me and without blinking, cupped a breast. “D cup,” His hand slid around my side, I was too stunned, too angry to move. He had no right to touch me! I hated my response to it almost as much as I hated the fact that he had no physical or emotional reaction other than a blank stare. “Thirty-six,” That same hand slid down my ass. “Medium, some small,” I squeezed my eyes shut, praying his clinical inspection would be over soon. He looked down. “Seven and a half.”
He dropped his hand and slid his cell back into his pocket like nothing had happened when I was shaking like a leaf.
“I’m not a rapist, six thirty-two, I was just trying to get you clothes, so if you’d stop standing there looking like I wronged you, I’d appreciate it. I’ve been surrounded by beautiful women my entire life. Believe me when I say, nothing about you tempts me to finally act on it.”
He jerked away.
Something crashed in the other room.
Loud cursing ensued for a few minutes.
And that’s when I realized he’d said finally.
As if he’d never once acted on it in his entire life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Andrei
I slammed the bedroom door closed and leaned against it, my body still shaking from the touch.
I stared down at my gloved hands. My fingers were trembling, I watched in fascination as they refused to still.
So that’s what it felt like.
To feel human.
To touch someone and have no choice but to respond.
I willed them to stop shaking.
I pulled the glove from my right hand then slipped the other from my left. Every time I stared at my bare hands, I saw blood on them.
A therapist would have a fucking field day with me. Rationally, I knew blood wasn’t there, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to wash my hands a dozen times a day.
Or from wearing gloves so people didn’t see the stains.
So they didn’t see the death.
Hands were tools.
Mine were covered in blood.
And I’d been tempted.
To take off one glove, to see if her skin was really as warm as it felt beneath the leather, if she would respond. If she would take that lip between her teeth and bite, would her eyes dilate the way grown women’s did when I walked past them?
I’d had my fair share of encounters.
But when a man feels nothing.
He stops trying.
Did it even matter?
I laughed to myself. It sounded wrong coming from my lips. Men like me didn’t laugh, and if we did it was usually out of cruelty.
I stood in front of the mirror, blood splattered all over my chest, my neck, what possible reason did I have to think that this girl, born in the wrong family, at the wrong time, would be the one person capable of breaking the curse?
The one person able to touch me.
To make me feel anything other than the slippery tendrils of death as it choked me on a daily basis.
I was an idiot to think that she would be different.
Just like she was an idiot to think that this was anything other than me keeping her safe from those who wanted her blood for no other reason than it was De Lange.
I shoved my hands back into the gloves and stared at my reflection in disgust as I reared back and punched the mirror with my right hand sending glass crashing to the floor.
Glass crunched beneath my boots as I did a slow semi-circle. I ripped off my gloves again and hurled them against the bed, kicked off my boots hitting the wall and then jerked off my pants and threw them against the ground, leaning over the dresser completely nude, wondering what the hell I was going to do with six thirty-two.
Alice.
No.
She had no name.
No names.
No names.
I felt the name in my head, though, like a drum beat, Alice, Alice, Alice De Lange.
Chase wouldn’t understand. He would kill her.
Tex already wanted her blood.
I would need to find a replacement.
And in the meantime, I would figure out a way to keep her safe and keep myself sane.
This was probably one of the most suicidal things I’d done in my entire life, keeping an enemy under my own roof, feeding her, clothing her… like a fucking pet.
Yeah, a therapist would just love to get in my head, wouldn’t he?
A knock sounded on my bedroom door. “I heard a crash, are you okay?”
I jerked my head toward the door. Was she serious?
I stomped over to the door and jerked it open. “Unless you hear gunshots, I’m fine, and you really only need to worry about that on August third.”