Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
I study Horatio, and although I’m still not sure I believe it, he very clearly does.
“I worry if Phee goes to Texas with him, given his state, well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing but I’d prefer she wasn’t alone with him.”
“I don’t think he’d hurt her.”
“No, but I just don’t like it, Silas. Don’t let her go, at least not alone.”
“She’s not going anywhere alone just yet.” I check my watch and stand. “I need to get back.”
He nods and gets to his feet.
“I will go to the funeral, by the way,” he says.
“Why?”
“I’m owed it, don’t you think?”
“To see him dead?”
“Yeah, actually. Sullivan Fox destroyed our lives. And I think I’m owed it.”
I look at Horatio Hart, seeing him in this light, this very different side of himself and think about what Ophelia said once. About heroes breaking and becoming the villains of their own stories. There is no hero, though, not truly, no matter how noble. But villains, they come pure and dark as night. I think Horatio is a hero who broke, who has straddled the line between good and evil for a long time. Same as Gordon, really. Same as me.
Sullivan Fox, he was pure villain. Whoever broke him did a thorough job. Ethan? When I consider him, I see his eyes again, when he was that ten-year-old boy cowering, sobbing as his father beat him. Broke him.
Is he now as pure a villain as his father was?
“Good night, Horatio,” I say and head back to the brownstone.
30
OPHELIA
I’m nursing a glass of red wine at the kitchen counter when I hear a key in the door and, a moment later, hear Silas talking to Hamish. I slip off the stool and turn to face him as he comes around the corner, and I gasp when I see him.
“What happened to you?”
His jaw is bruised, and there’s what my brain first processes as splatters of paint on his shirt and face. I rush to him. His hands come to my arms as I touch his slightly swollen jaw and realize that those blotches are not paint but blood. It doesn’t seem to be his blood, though. I lift his hands and turn them over to look at the backs. He doesn’t hide the bloodied, bruised knuckles from me.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he says and walks around me to the freezer, which is pretty much empty, so he tries the fridge, takes out a cold beer and holds it against his jaw.
“And Ethan?” I chance to ask.
“He’ll have a black eye. Got off easy, the little prick.”
“Jesus, Silas.”
He looks over at the counter where I left my phone. “You didn’t tell me you had your phone back.”
I pick it up because I’m not giving it up. “I forgot I did. Ethan gave it to me the other day and you’re not taking it.”
“No. I’m not taking it,” he says, sounding tired. He draws a deep breath in and exhales.
I sigh, too. “Let’s go upstairs, get the blood off you.”
He nods and looks almost like a younger boy when he lets me take his hand and we walk up the stairs together. He’s quieter than normal but I guess that’s his meeting with Ethan.
“You know, Ethan and I, that’s long over,” I say, turning to face him once we reach the bedroom.
“I know that,” he says as I begin to strip off his clothes.
“What he and I had, it was never what you and I have. Don’t let him get to you.”
He only exhales, expression serious. Once he’s naked, I reach up to touch that bruise on his jaw before looking into his eyes. When I stand back and begin to strip off my own clothes, he watches me, the turquoise of his eyes growing darker. Only when I’m naked does he let his gaze sweep up and down over me. He draws me in to kiss me again, one hand sliding down between us to cup my pussy. He draws back to watch me as he plays with my clit, and when I hear my own breath come ragged, he slips his fingers inside me, making me moan.
“Kneel, O,” he says after a few moments. He stands back to watch me as I kneel at his feet, his cock at eye level. He rubs my arousal over his length, watching me watch him while pumping his cock in his fist and I remember that first night I was here years ago, when I watched him jerk himself off in the shower. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.
He steps closer, forcing me to lean backward, the back of my head coming to the edge of the bed.
“Open your mouth,” he tells me, and I do, greedy for him as he takes a fistful of my hair and tips my head back to slide his cock in.