Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
I’m not sure how we’re supposed to go out there and not have people notice something is wrong. Not have them notice his threat of a body and intimidating muscles that make him look like a criminal, a cowboy criminal with his weathered black Stetson; and in my torn dress, it looks like I’m the crime he committed. But the reality is, he’s my self-appointed bodyguard.
“We make four stops. That’s it. In and out, thirty minutes tops,” he continues when all I do is stare at him. “You’ll stick close to me and let me do the talkin’.”
“You hate talking,” I say in the most asinine way.
He runs his eyes over my face, and by the way his own features tighten up, he’s noticing the bruise on the side of my head. He doesn’t like the sight of it. I know. He also doesn’t like that I’ve got worse scrapes on my arms and my legs. Not because he told me but because he didn’t have to. When I flinched and reached for the pain meds he gave me last night, a tic started up in his jaw and his green eyes turned pitch-black. I knew it was because he was picturing annihilating the people who did this to me.
“Hate havin’ you out in the open like this more than talkin’. Where people can see you, talk to you,” he rumbles.
I swallow. “Why, because you’re afraid I’m going to tell them… something I shouldn’t?”
He shakes his head, his eyes penetrating. “No, ’cause I don’t want ’em hearin’ your angel voice.”
My breath snags in my throat and I have to swallow again. “Is that why you, uh, gagged me yesterday? Because you didn’t want them hearing my voice.”
After everything he’s done, both to hurt me and then to protect me, I’m still stuck on a few things. Like him gagging me and freaking me out even more. I didn’t like it the very first time he did it, that first morning I woke up in the woods, and I hated it even more when he did it yesterday. It felt like he took every inch of my power away without my say-so. And maybe it’s apparent on my face because he replies, “Didn’t like doin’ that. I know it scared you, but I didn’t want ’em to think they were worthy to talk to you or to have you talk back.” He clenches his jaw for a few moments as if he’s imagining it, me talking to those men. “Or beg ’em for mercy, for ’em to let you go. ’Cause you didn’t need to. Not when I was there. When it should’ve been ’em, beggin’ me to spare their lives before I killed ’em anyway.”
And they did, didn’t they? The one who had the chance. The other two never knew what hit them.
This is crazy. I know that. Objectively. I also know if someone likes something crazy like this, they’re probably crazy too. And I might be because I’m glad those men are dead. I’m glad he killed them for me. But more than that, I’m glad he gagged me. No, not glad. I’m ecstatic that he stopped me from begging because that’s what I was going to do.
“That’s…” I lick my dried lips and trail off.
He glances down at my mouth before finishing, “Psychotic.”
I keep looking into his eyes. “Yes.”
He keeps looking back. “So be it.”
“Why did you do it the first time then?”
He glances down at my mouth again but doesn’t make me wait long for an answer. “’Cause I ain’t worthy of hearin’ your angel voice either, never been. Addicted to it, yes; deservin’ of it, no.” He lifts his eyes again, all dark. “Back then, you wouldn’t shut up, and the only other way I had to make you was somethin’ you woulda liked even less. So I picked the lesser of two evils.”
I frown, wondering what he means. When I figure it out, my belly clenches and so do my thighs, and I press myself into the door. My eyes skitter down to his lap like I can actually see the thing he was going to use to shut me up and not just his burly jean-covered thighs. My retreat, as always, doesn’t escape him, and his nostrils flare. Then, “You ready?”
“You were right,” I blurt out, and he frowns. “What you… said last night. A-about wanting to use me, the Turner Princess, to get your sister back.” His lips tighten, but I keep going, “So I don’t… I don’t understand why you’re trying to protect me. I know we had a connection before you knew who I was, but I’m… me. I’m still a Turner, and—”
He cuts me off, his jaw pulsing. “Yeah, you’re still you. You’ve always been you. A princess. My Princess.”
“I’m not yours,” I tell him, quickly and emphatically.