Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 108988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
He had paused, his chest heaving up and down, but he never stopped glaring at me. There was a white line around his mouth. “I will kill you—”
“Yes!” I got back in his face, some of that uncomfortable feeling began to dissipate. Thank goodness. I smiled again. “I am testing your team to see how you react, and I am not impressed. Sending my own cousin to kidnap Blake, that was a move that I respected. I was furious, but I respected it. You are the brains. You see the big picture.” I moved even closer until my chest was grazing his. “The planner. This was not a planned move. Your loved ones will recover from what I did to them. Come back with a better move.”
I was done with this. It was a glitch. That’s what this was.
I had hoped, but no. Both of these men, West and Walden, were not like me. They loved. They felt.
They were normal.
I’d been mistaken.
I turned and began to walk away.
“It was me or him.”
I looked back.
West was still glaring, but there was some defeat in how his shoulders slumped down. He was rubbing at his throat, where Levi had been holding him. “Ashton was going to come after you. I came so he couldn’t.”
Understanding dawned. That made more sense.
I dipped my head to him. “I respect that. Perhaps you won this one.” I still wasn’t going to kill him. Not yet. It was too soon. I wasn’t ready to move onto the next stage in our fight. So far none of the main players had been killed. There was a sense of teasing still in this stage. A kind of foreplay in the air. I liked this phase. I wanted to prolong it as long as possible.
“You are psychotic.” Tristian West’s voice was dumbfounded.
I kept going. That wasn’t anything new to me, just to him. He’d learn.
My men inspected our own vehicles for bombs because maybe I underestimated Tristian West after all. That would’ve been a gamble, but a good move.
It turns out, I had.
There were no bombs, but they found a tracking device.
Chapter Fourteen
Blake
Someone was in my room.
I woke up with a gasp because someone was in my room. They shifted. I could see their silhouette, sitting in the chair that was in the corner of my room and then, Jesus Christ. I automatically relaxed because I knew that silhouette.
But wait.
I jerked upright.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, my hands fisted in my blanket because I had half a mind to jump out and lunge for him and the other half was remembering I was only in my sleeping top and underwear. My very skimpy top. My lacy underwear. Underwear that was sexy and I didn’t think anyone would see because I hadn’t bought these for someone else to see, not yet anyways. These were just for me. Now I was dying a little of embarrassment because Creighton was in my room at four in the morning. And I was dying from something else, squirming in bed, but I grabbed tight to my blanket and ignored how I suddenly felt flushed.
He didn’t respond, but I knew it was him.
“Creighton?”
He still didn’t respond. I grew concerned. My voice dropped to a whisper, and I pushed my blanket aside, only focused on him. “Eight?”
He jerked alive at the nickname, but he didn’t move. “They aren’t like me.”
I frowned. “What? Who’s not like you?”
“I thought they’d be like me. That’s what the rumors say. How cruel they are, but they aren’t like me. They’re like you.”
I still didn’t know who he was talking about. “Eight?” I was going to regret this. “Come here.”
He only lifted his head up.
I patted the bed. “Come here.”
He stared at me, and I felt that stare. It was long, intense, but somehow I didn’t feel he was even seeing me.
Creighton was lost, and that was never a good thing on any day, but Eight being lost just hurt my heart. He always knew what to do, where to go, who to maim. I didn’t like this version being in my room, more so because it was confusing in uncomfortable ways too. “Please.”
The please did it.
He got up from the chair, and the bed depressed under his weight. He kneeled, but waited because I knew the routine. And I was heating up for those same other reasons because us being in bed together used to not be so uncommon, but that’d been when I was a kid. When I was sick and he stayed to watch animal shows with me. Or if I had a nightmare and he was just there, even when he wasn’t in the house anymore, but somehow he always knew when I woke up silently screaming with tears soaking my face. He was there, and he would sleep next to me, and it worked. I calmed. His presence and the weight of his body beside me, touching my shoulder, and I fell back asleep.