Chapter 43
CHAPTER 43
Ivy
I chuck the knife at the board in the back of the room but miss, and the knife clatters to the floor.
Silas picks it up with a smug smile. “Again.”
“How many more?” I ask.
His brow rises. “Until you hit the center.”
“Why? I already know how to hit a fucker with a knife. I’m not afraid to hurt people,” I reply.
“Hurt, yes. Kill?” He makes a face as he hands it back to me. “Doubt it. Now try again.”
Sighing, I accept the knife from him, but the moment our fingers touch sends electrical currents up and down my spine. I brush them off and focus on the board in the back, the center feeling more like an eye staring right back at me.
He comes to stand behind me and suddenly grips my arm, lifting it. “Higher.”
I try to focus, but it’s hard with him breathing down my neck.
“Center yourself.” He kicks my legs open. “Spread them.”
Jesus.
Why did that make my stomach flutter?
“Even if I aim correctly and make the hit, it’s just one knife,” I say.
“Just that one knife could make the difference …” he murmurs, standing so closely to my side I can barely even breathe. He pushes my hand up to exactly where he wants it to be, as his other hand slowly snakes up my body, pulling me closer to him until I’m turned sideways.
“Between life …”
I throw.
“And death.”
And hit.
My God.
Is it the room that’s hot, or is it me?
“Knew you could do it,” he murmurs, grinning against my skin. “Well done, thief.”
I swallow down the lump in my throat as his hand slowly lowers from my waist, and he steps away to pull the knife out of the board.
“Why are you doing this?”
The words roll off my tongue before I realize it.
His brows draw together. “What? Teaching you how to throw a knife?” He casually tosses it in the air like it’s a plaything to him. “Because I can teach you a whole lot more if you’re into it.”
I don’t doubt he could, but that’s not what I want to know. “Why are you trying to help me?”
He pauses, his green eyes flickering with interest as if he hadn’t considered my question's answer before I said it out loud.
Slowly, he walks toward me, and with each step, I take one back, afraid of what might happen if I let a guy like him get close.
Because he’s no longer just that unhinged bully, that crazed killer.
Not since he saved me.
But the wall and I meet at an untimely moment, and I hold my breath as he plants a hand beside my head.
“Am I not allowed to help the girl who gave her body to me?”
He leans in, hovering dangerously close to my face.
“Am I not allowed to protect what’s mine?”
A shiver runs up and down my spine from the way he breathes close to my skin.
“You call me a monster, but far worse monsters are beyond those walls, and I think you know that.”
My teeth begin to clatter as he reaches for my arm and tucks the knife into the palm of my hand, curling my fingers around it.
“Take the knife. Wield it. Own it. So that when I’m not around …” He breathes out a sigh. “This body will still be safe.” He taps my chest, then turns around and nonchalantly walks to the middle of the room … right in front of the board.
“Now show me what you can do, twig.”
I grind my teeth. “Stop calling me that.”
“Or what?” He tilts his head, a mischievous smile forming on his face. “You gonna hit me, twig?”
My nostrils flare as I tighten my grip around the knife.
“Stop,” I grit.
“Just like you stopped depriving yourself of food when I told you to eat, twig?”
He doesn’t even have the slightest clue why, and it pisses me off.
“Go on, then. Throw it. Hit me. I know you want to.”
He’s just taunting me. The annoying part is that it’s seriously working.
“Aim here.” He points at his own heart. “If you can actually find it, you can keep it.”
I raise the knife and chuck it right at him. No hesitation. But the moment it leaves my fingertips, a pang of regret instantly hits me sharper than the tip of that knife as it flies toward him.
He catches the knife midair, inches away from his chest, not by the handle, but by the blade.
Droplets of blood slowly roll down the palm of his hand.
“A twig that breaks easily under pressure …” The deadly smirk on his face could make any girl’s heart stop. “Turns into the sharpest weapon.”
Including mine.
“Beginner’s luck,” I retort.
“No. That’s what determination looks like,” he says, squashing the knife even farther in his hand, speeding the bleeding. “You actually thought for a moment you could kill me.” The killer smile on his face only widens. “You wanted to kill me.”
After everything he’s done … maybe I did.
For a moment.
But that moment passed as quickly as the knife flew through the air.
“I’m not a murderer any more than you’re a savior,” I murmur.
We are who we were born to be.
And he … he’s just what he said, a monster.
He deserves it.
But then why didn’t I actually want him dead?
Is it pity?
“I thought the same thing, twig …” He brings his hand up to his mouth and actually licks the blood off his skin. “So then tell me why I need to kill everyone who even thinks of putting their hands on you?”
I can’t stop staring at those lips caked with blood as he steps closer and closer while my heart beats faster and faster.
“Why I want to give you the skills to defend yourself, even against someone like me?” He points the knife at my belly, right where he created the scar.
“Why I can’t stop thinking about having you, over and over again, until I’m so sick of it that I don’t even want to kill anymore?”
My heart skips a beat.
The tip of the blade pushes aside the slit in my dress until my skin is exposed, along with the word he carved into me.
“You’re a thief …” he mutters, bringing the knife up to my heart. “Through and through.”
My downturned lips curl. “A thief … who needed it more than you did.”
His eyes narrow as the knife slides up toward my lips, but I stay put, unafraid.
Even as the knife pushes my lip down and slowly slips inside my mouth until it’s sideways between my teeth.
I can taste the tinge of blood on my tongue, but it’s the hungered look in those piercing green eyes of his that haunts me the most.
“Do you, now?” He bites his lip. “All you had to do was ask.”
Suddenly, he grabs my throat, drags me toward him, and smashes his lips onto mine, kissing the knife as harshly as he kisses me. The blade cuts into both our lips the deeper his kiss becomes, mingling our blood together, but the sharp pain doesn’t even compare to the throbbing heart in my chest as he licks each droplet of blood right off my lips, groaning into my mouth.
His tongue wraps around the blade, stealing it from my lips, before he chucks it aside and growls, “Fuck it,” slamming his lips back onto mine.
I’m stunned. Too dazed to even think straight as his all-consuming kisses devour any meaningful thoughts I had left, replacing them with debauchery and a kind of greed I’ve never felt before, but my God is it a rush.
So much so that I actually start kissing him back.
And fuck me, his grin I can feel forming against my lips is nothing short of infuriatingly hot.
“My needy little thief … take it then if you want it so much.”
His tongue drives into my mouth, claiming every inch of space, every sliver of blood as he nearly kisses the soul of my body.
If he wanted it so badly … all he had to do was ask.
I pull away in abjection at the thought that just flashed through my mind. My fingers instinctively reach up to touch the blood on my lips while simultaneously staring at those darkened eyes filled with lust, desire … betrayal.
I knock his arm away from my throat as I backtrack to the door, eyes flashing to the knife while I consider if I’m going to stab him for making me want to kiss him back … or myself.
But my brain finally kicks into gear, and I knock open the door and exit swiftly.
Max
Ten minutes ago
The door to the game room opens, and I can feel a dark cloud literally swoop in from the accompanying wind.
“So this is it?”
At the sound of Heath’s voice, I close my eyes while he shuts the door behind him.
“This is how it’s going to be from now on?” he grits.
I clench the glass in the palm of my hand, wishing I knew what to do, but he’s made it impossible to even think straight.
“You’re going to ignore me.”
“No, I …” I mutter, swirling the scotch around.
“You can’t even look at me while you’re standing there thinking about her. You don’t even drink scotch. Ever. And now you’re just going to chug it down instead of talking to me?”
He’s right, but I don’t know how to handle this situation.
“LOOK AT ME!”
His pained voice instantly makes me look up like a beacon in the dark of my mind. And my God, the contortion on his face is too much to bear.
“Please, Heath …”
“Tell me you fucking love her,” he says. “Say it. Say it out loud.”
“I love her,” I reply.
His lip quivers. “Did it hurt when I took her with me? When you learned I fucked her under your goddamn nose?”
Grinding my teeth, I nod.
“Good,” he snarls, stabbing me right in the heart.
“I’m …”
“Say what you need to say, Max,” he grits. “Or I swear to God, I will fucking ruin her right in front of you.”
I put the glass down. “I did exactly what you told me to do.”
“I told you to fucking seduce her, not fall for her!”
I don’t even know how to respond.
“Is that why you’re doing this?”
He grinds his teeth. “Maybe.”
“Why are you so obsessed with making me jealous? Isn’t it enough already?” I stare him down, clenching my jaw. “You had Mavis, and you cast her aside so you could go after Ivy instead, just to hurt me.”
“Don’t you understand? I used Mavis as a distraction, just like I fucking used Ivy as a distraction.”
My eyes widen.
He averts his eyes. “But along the way I started feeling things I didn’t expect.”
“You … you’re in love with Ivy too?” I ask, confused.
He balls his hand into a fist. “I want her. Badly. But I fucking wanted you first.”