Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
She glanced over my shoulder. I had heard the others leave. Levi would get Destiny out of this house and away from here.
“Is this what Levi meant?”
I brushed the tears from her face with my thumbs, hating to see her cry. Fuck, I hated it. “About what, baby?”
She blinked several times. “About you … being crazy.”
I nodded. Fear had my throat in a choke hold now. We’d been down this road. It hadn’t ended happily for me. It’d crushed me in ways I never recovered from. Not without her.
“You can’t …” she said, dropping her eyes to my chest. “You can’t just kill someone because they hurt me. That’s not … normal.”
I tightened my hold on her. “I’m not normal. You’ve been told this.”
She sighed. “I didn’t realize this is what that meant.”
My heart was slamming against my chest so hard that it hurt. Fuck, she couldn’t do this to me. I couldn’t lose her.
“You’re all I care about. Just you. I have to protect you, and in doing that, I might not always stay sane. She pushed me. She said shit to hurt you after I warned her to stop.”
Shiloh shook her head. “She said things though. She’s right. I-I … don’t want to be shared. I don’t want that.”
I grabbed her face and forced her to look at me. “Shiloh, if another man were to see you naked, see you come, touch you, I’d be put in prison. There would be no way to save my ass from the destruction I’d leave in my path. I don’t want to share you.”
She still looked so fucking lost. Her eyes were full of pain. It was ripping at my soul.
“Do you want to … do … the beating thing? Is that something you need?”
I ran my thumb over her bottom lip. “What we did upstairs earlier, that wasn’t new. You used to love it when I spanked your ass. You begged for it. Not with a fucking belt, but my hand. You wanted it hard, and you got off on it. When Levi brought Destiny here the first time, she wanted to be beat with the damn belt. I—” I clenched my teeth, hating I had to tell her this shit. “I did it because, inside me, this fucking monster that couldn’t have you needed to hurt someone. She willingly offered for me to hurt her. It helped with my rage. You’re the only person who, just holding you, can take that rage from me. Without you, I have no other fucking outlet.”
I watched as she let my words sink in. She was quiet, and I wanted to beg her to talk to me, but I was afraid of what she would say. I couldn’t push her.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“Of me?”
“I’m scared that I’ll be the cause of you killing someone. I don’t think I could live with that.”
I brushed hair back from her face. “I shouldn’t have lost it tonight. Not in front of you. That’s on me. Not you.”
She shook her head. “That’s not the point. If that was enough to send you into a murderous rage, what if—what if someone hit me?”
My eyes narrowed. “Then, they’d die.”
She shoved at my chest. “No! That is not the answer, Gage. That’s not something you kill over.”
“We disagree on that.”
She let out a long sigh and covered her face with both hands. “I want to go home.”
“You’re not leaving me.” I would tie her to my fucking bed if I had to.
She dropped her hands and looked at me. “No, I’m not. I just mean, I want to go back to the apartment. With you.”
Relief felt like a fucking wave crashing over me.
I nodded my head and pulled her to my chest. “I’ll get your things, and we can go.”
She nodded her head against my chest, and the invisible grip on my throat eased away.
Thirty-Six
Shiloh
When I opened my eyes, I was surprised that I’d been able to sleep. I hadn’t expected to after last night’s events. Gage’s warm chest was pressed against my back. In the light of day, was I that surprised by his reaction to Destiny last night? No.
That didn’t make it okay. He crossed lines and didn’t care. He didn’t have boundaries or morals. I wasn’t sure if he had a conscience. But knowing all of that, I couldn’t imagine going back to a life without him in it. Which made me question everything I knew about myself.
I turned on my back to look at him. Through hooded eyes and those thick lashes, he stared back at me. My heart fluttered, and I felt that thrill I got when I was with him. All the things I’d read about and thought didn’t exist, I’d found it. In a psychotic killer.
“We need to talk,” I told him with my voice still husky from sleep.