CHAPTER SEVEN
AINSLEY
B lurs of green and brown whiz beneath me as my feet slosh through the wet earth—puddles and swampy soil already forming, slinking between my toes. Prickly droplets sting my skin. And the air is salt and berries, magnolia and cypress.
Running barefoot. In the rain. Wearing a bikini.
Not the brightest idea. But I feel more alive than I have in years.
Maybe it’s the challenge, the burn in my muscles, the downpour drenching me. The men— man —chasing me.
Or maybe I’m simply relishing the culmination of years of training being put to practical use. Training when the world was asleep, when they thought I was at yoga. When they believed I was taking a class or hanging out with friends. I had to be careful. Think through every lie. Secure every alibi—or fool every alibi. Reserve the empty training room behind the housewife-yoga class and hire a martial arts instructor for private lessons. Take up trap shooting, claiming I needed to master something more exciting that my guards were willing to partake in. I’d been taught to shoot as a kid, and I’d always been a damn good shot. But trap shooting helped me with moving targets. Every time a clay pigeon flew before me, I imagined one of their faces and never missed.
My days were one strategy after another. One calculated step up the harrowing mountain of survival. The car I bought, the storage space, the go bag, full of money and weapons and survival necessities—all of it was so that one day, when they least expected it, I could vanish. I could run.
You’re either the hunter or the hunted. The lion or the lamb.
Waiting was my big mistake. And hoping. Believing. Apparently, seeing through lies is not my strength, especially when my heart is involved.
But stamina? That I have in droves. I can outrun these motherfuckers. I might not have anywhere to go, but I can prove a damn point. Bored and docile, kept in the dark, is not my thing.
I veer around the tennis court, knowing that having me out of sight behind the border fence will make them antsy. They’ll assume I’m going to cut over toward the obstacle course or maybe to those blueberry fields. I’m not. There’s nowhere to hide in either of those. I’m headed to the barn to snag myself a horse, although, actually, they might suspect that. So, maybe to the treed area near the pond. Don’t know for sure yet.
Without looking back, I catch a glimpse of both Gage and Dante in my peripheral vision when I turn. Rex might be after me too. They played right into my scheme.
I’d noticed Gage watching me through the window. It’s doubtful he could tell I was keeping my eye on him because I had my dark sunglasses on. I like that he watches me. It reminds me of when he watched me … before .
It’s dangerous to dwell on that time, but the brief heated exchange we had in his room assured me that he does still feel something. I’m praying it’s enough to be my ally when the Morelli and/or Vittori foot soldiers come for me. They will. I can sense it.
The impending slaughter.
This grand French chateau is nothing more than an illusion—like the sanctity the woods provide a wounded animal, but all the while, predators are sniffing them out. There’s no hiding. Not on this continent. They’ll pick up my scent soon enough.
And these people are … nice and fun, a little strange, unhinged in the best sort of ways. In other circumstances, I may have liked them, which only intensifies my resentment for Gage. I might be guilty as charged, but he’s not innocent—not back then and certainly not now. His newfound family’s kindness toward me is duplicitous. They want me for something. And while they are currently choosing to shield me, there’s no guarantee the tides won’t change if their ship comes in.
I need Gage to yearn for me beyond whatever that is. And the shutting-each-other-out existence we’ve been doing isn’t going to produce that. I’d probably get further stabbing him again. But I think this lust route will be fruitful. And enjoyable—not that the stabbing was unenjoyable.
It doesn’t hurt that Dante was surveying my bikini and every curve it flaunted. That’s not happening. I only flirt with him because I’m in survival mode and he holds the gate keys. But his interest enhances Gage’s possessiveness. I can use it.
And that’s who I’ve become.
A schemer. A liar. A fugitive.
Friendless. On the run. Always alone.
The hunted.
But I’ll be damned if I let them sacrifice me like a lamb.
This property is vast, especially on foot. My lack of clothing is giving me an edge though. No wet denim weighing me down.
Veering toward the wooded area near the pond, I swipe the water from my face, pick up my speed, and bolt for the coverage, weaving in and out of the broad, leafy curtains the shade trees provide.
I spot Dante before he discerns my precise whereabouts. He’s headed to the far side of the pond, probably anticipating me sprinting out that way. It looks like Rex is racing toward the stables, which covers the catercorner side. And Gage is hot on my trail. They’ve got me surrounded. No matter which way I go, someone will catch me. Rex. Dante. Gage.
This isn’t the day I escape. I never expected to.
I could climb a tree and hide out for a while to piss them off. That could be entertaining.
Being chased is what I want though—to believe there’s something about me worth pursuing, protecting. Gage, as my warden, has made being held captive a hell of a lot more enticing than my last prison.
In a split second, I make the one-eighty decision, dodging the guards to collide with my past. Gage’s head snaps toward my blur as I zoom on by, and the next beats fall like dominoes. Who knew a guy with two tons of muscle could travel at the speed of light?
His breath fans over me before his hands reach me. Maybe that’s my imagination. Like my cells recognize him. My very marrow clinging to the remembrance of his touch. A chill skitters up my spine that has nothing to do with the pelting rain and everything to do with the man about to snatch me.
A beefy arm snakes around my bare midriff, pressing into my ribs as it lifts me off the ground. I resist the urge to melt into him. He wants a fight. Maybe we both do. A physical reckoning. There’s an odd safety found in the conflicts with him. A duel that offers deliverance because there are unspoken rules in this confrontation. Rules others never adhered to.
So, I kick and thrash and battle against his hold. And a dark chuckle rips from his lungs, sinister and yet still reminiscent of the man I adored once upon a time. It’s wild and invigorating. A glimpse of salvation for the lamb who fights.
Somehow, I twist myself in his embrace, prepared to bite and knee and worm my way out of his grip. His jaw is set, a lethal growl leaping from his lips, his eyes cold and irate. The sight shatters me. I’m not sure why. I know the disdain he carries for me. It’s just … my mind still can’t transition from memorialized lover to loathed enemy. I half expect him to spit in my face, but his breath staggers out as he gapes at me. Speechless.
I’m not sure what he finds in my expression, whether it be defiance, loneliness, terror, or heartbreak. I’m hollow. Anything else is the ghost of a life buried ages ago—the brokenness and flimsy, temporary balms molding into an apparition. I haven’t been me for more than a decade. Any remnants of that girl were tied up with the man scorning me. It was heartbreaking enough to lose a piece of him, to say goodbye, but his hostility for me is devastating on another level.
The luxury of mourning what could have been isn’t mine though. I’m never more than a commodity. Even now, in the aftermath of mowing down my captors, I’ve been reduced to a bargaining chip at the hands of my deceitful saviors.
Regardless of what he detects in me, there’s no hiding that he’s aroused. When my lips hike up into a coy smirk and my hips buck against his steel-hard length, his ire only escalates.
He fists my hair, wrenching my head back so the stinging rain hammers my cheeks and closed lids like tiny nails. “Did you really think you could escape me?”
Deciding not to answer, I afford him a beat to internally applaud himself, keeping my eyes glued shut in feigned defeat so he never sees my next move coming. In one fluid motion, I yank on his earlobe to jerk his neck to the side, kick his shin, and swing my head forward to bite his shoulder through his drenched shirt. Pain lances my skull from the tight fist he still has on my hair, but I feel victorious.
He vibrates with fury. “What the hell, Wicked? You’ve lost your goddamn mind.”
The sight of him so furious no longer wrecks me though. Not with his erection spearing my lower abs. Even as his wrath envelops me, I’m enlivened. I want him. To remember what it felt like when he consumed me. Would it be the same? We were practically kids then, barely of age. Naive and relegated to stolen kisses and secret rendezvous.
Maybe for a spontaneous encounter, we could forget that we hate and we hurt. Would it eclipse the pain that ushers my every heartbeat? To stop being a Morelli or a Vittori and just be Ains . Would he see me again? The way he once saw me? The way no one else ever has?
It’s with those unspoken queries skulking around us that he presses me against a tree and asks one of his own.
“You want me to fuck you right here, don’t you?” His fingers inch along the seam of my bikini bottom, teasing the skin. “Hoping Dante finds us, Ains? Sees your cunt strangling my cock? Watches you fall apart while I thrust into you so hard that you feel me in your throat, my cum leaking out of you, coating your thighs—a sticky, aching reminder of where I fucking belong?”
Good God. That. Mouth.
He didn’t have that back in our sneaking-around days. He was experienced but still boyish. And I do want everything he said. A manic fucking out here in the trees with his animalistic rage and his guard peeping through the branches. It feels like a claiming. And because I’m on the brink of insanity—or at the very least instability—I want to be claimed in whatever way he offers me.
Not just for his protection. For his possessiveness. To be his, if only for a fleeting tussle in the foliage. Maybe that’s pathetic, but I’m drowning, and this downpour has nothing to do with it.
So, I nod with a breathless, “Yeah.” Soaked and eager to act on a whim, to feel, to be ravaged.
Without hesitation, he bypasses my swimsuit and plunges two fingers inside me, his eyes blazing when I shriek.
Jesus. Those ambers are deadly. Enough to set me aflame all on their own.
“So fucking wet,” he rasps, and it’s laced with something, an unidentified emotion.
That confusing glimpse offers clarity in another area though. He waited for my consent. Hates me. Will never forgive me. Wants to ruin me. But still won’t take advantage of me. A lump balls at the base of my throat. Even masquerading as a monster, he’s a better man than I’ve ever known.
My gaze drops to his mouth, lingering there as I desperately try to recall his taste. It was spearmint and coffee, pipe dreams and promises. My Roman Empire.
That was apparently the wrong response. He snarls, jostling me so I’m turned away from him and dangling over his forearm while he whips his sopping shirt half off. Then he flips me up to hug the tree and yanks down my bikini bottoms. It happens so fast that he gives me whiplash.
“No. Fucking. Kissing,” he grits out before hauling me away from the trunk to place his shirt on the tree and pressing me against it.
No kissing?
He used to tell me that my talons were stuck in him the second he laid eyes on me, but that he knew I was the love of his life when his lips finally touched mine. So sweet. In ways no one had ever been. In ways I didn’t deserve. Is he afraid that will happen again? God, I despise how that notion sparks something deep inside my soul—dreams I laid to rest, ground up with the grains of soil and sprinkled on the coffin. Unearthing them now will surely be my demise.
His husky tenor rockets through me. “You want me to split you in two? That I’ll do.” His jeans fall to his ankles, and his hard length pokes my ass cheek before he angles my hips and notches himself at my entrance. “But don’t go catching fucking feelings.”
With that, he thrusts inside me, rough enough that the T-shirt barrier makes sense. An odd act of caretaking that is futile. As is the all-encompassing way he’s filling me—his ample size reaching crevices far and wide that have remained vacant in his absence. All irrelevant. Because despite the cool rain and my lack of clothing, I am red-hot. Venom surges through my veins. Who the hell does he think he is?
Don’t go catching feelings? Fuck. Him.
I clamp my inner walls down on him with all my might, doing my damnedest to strangle his cock, like he suggested. To my delight, I hear the very breath vacate his lungs.
“Christ Almighty,” he stammers. “The fuck? So goddamn tight … you …”
Dumbfounded for the win. Jackass.
“Kegels, motherfucker,” I holler over the din of the monsoon, digging my nails into his arms to mark his skin with crimson crescent moons. “Don’t be such a wimp. You’re not gonna split me in two with those weak thrusts. That all you got, Big Guy ?”
A humorless roar bellows from him. “What I’ve got is you on my leash, pet , and I will wreck this pussy so the only cock it ever weeps for is mine.”
The rest of his response is wordless, diminishing that enraging—and slightly alluring—declaration. His hips piston ferociously. His grip on me tightens. His heartbeat hammers into my spine so that mine syncs to the rhythm. And all of it is far better than I remember, which is a bold statement because he was … everything.
“We’ve got company,” he trills in my ear, sending my whole body into shivers.
I angle my head to find Dante riding toward us in a golf cart. He must’ve gone back for that when he lost me. Visibility is low due to the rain, and we’re partially obscured by the tree trunk. So, although he sees us, maybe he doesn’t know what we’re doing.
Yeah, that’s doubtful.
Gage’s fingers slink to my clit, circling in the most decadent tempo. “You like that. Don’t you, Wicked? Him watching us?”
“Yeah,” I pant because I do. Some sick, twisted part of me is getting off on it. That and the expertise Gage seems to be spinning between my thighs.
He holds a flat palm up toward Dante, like a sign to heel. And Dante does, parking about fifty feet from us.
“You wanted to be chased,” Gage says, pumping in and out and rousing my clit until I’m heady. “By him?”
He’s looking at Dante, but I don’t think that’s who he means. Either way, the answer would be the same.
Reaching behind me, I wrap my fingers around the nape of his neck, holding his cheek to mine for a whisper of raw honesty. “He’s not the one I wanted to chase me.”
He coils around me so he can study my face while maintaining his fervid tempo, and his eyes gleam—a hint of curiosity, indignation, and maybe even hope lighting them. “No?”
If I could freeze a solitary snippet of time, this would be it. The boy with amber eyes before me—all man, unshielded and drinking me in.
Everywhere his gaze touches me, like every brush of this union, is a mix of departed yesterdays and expired tomorrows. Seeds that never got to grow. A flourishing my heart still longs for while my brain insists on leaving it in the dirt. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had any sort of win, so I water that withering dream for another beat.
“No,” I answer, the heightened sensations and nostalgic emotions dizzying me into an erotic fog. “I’ve only ever wanted to be chased by one man.”
That’s as much truth as I’ll extend today. A transient peace offering. There’s a web of lies around us. I wish I could unveil everything, trust that he’d believe how sorry I am. But whoever this man is, holding me, he’s not as forgiving as the one I once knew. Not that I blame him. I can’t forgive myself either.
And the thing with each piece of that web of deceit is that it’s so tangled. Pulling one string means knotting another, and I don’t know how we’ll manage to ever break free.
“Right,” he balks with a delicious smack on my pussy. “Must’ve been the getting caught that you didn’t want.”
There’s the wrath that knots us. I’m not sure why my heart skipped a beat, as if he’d want to see past the pain. As if him being buried inside me could erase the ways we abandoned one another.
I’m such a fool. How many times do I have to be the burnt offering before I get it?
But there’s still this part of me that needs him to know. No matter the cost. Because I didn’t get the chance to say it after he went away or when I heard his fireteam had been blown up or when I stood in front of that casket—the one that has haunted me for years. I would have sold my soul to tell him that he was always my only.
My only dream.
My only hope.
My only love.
Here we are, on the other side of a heap of carnage, and he’s my only refuge.
So, before I volley his rage, I share a piece of vulnerability. “Getting caught is exactly what I wanted. By you .”
He plows into me between each of my words so that the rest of my confession is forced out in a breathless quaver.
“Then.”
Harder.
“Today.”
Deeper.
“Always.”
His chest shudders against my back, his necklace imprinting my flesh, showering me with chills as he thrusts more and more vigorously. His hands are wild and frantic. Sharp in their tweaks and pinches. Punishing and fierce. His mouth issues nips and licks on my skin, like he’s undecided. Pain or soothe? But it’s the eerie silence in response to my unfiltered honesty that has me breaking.
The thundering sky and gray haze, the droopy leaves and gawking guard—it’s all a blanket of the goodbye I wish I’d never gotten the chance to say.
This hurts too much.
The one more day I prayed for came at an excruciating cost.
“And yet you still hate me,” I conclude as his rough fingers romp over my clit in a cadence that eclipses the dreadful finality and beckons me to bask in this heady sensation.
I finally melt into his embrace, his coffee-and-caramel scent mixing with the floral rain and his warmth and his divine rhythm to become a petition, urging me to let go. To release my white-knuckled clutching and surrender, if only for a swift blink.
Not the hunter or the hunted.
The harbored.
And with that liberating thought, my orgasm rips through me.
Lungs empty. Limbs quaking. Heart pounding.
Tense and loose. Weak and strong. Held and free.
An oblivion I never want to float down from.
“Jesus, Gage,” I wheeze out in my satiated haze, a barely recognizable shell of my voice mixing with the roar of the downpour and the crackling branches and the wispy purrs of the windswept leaves.
“Gage?” he hisses, clasping me so firmly that it steals my breath. “That’s right. You come for me like that. My name the prayer on your damn lips.” He soars through his own climax with that exasperation, emptying into me with a beastly growl that trumps it all. “Fucking hell, Ainsley.”
His ragged breaths crash over me, and a full minute passes, where he simply melds me to his formidable frame. His pulsing muscles engulfing me. His nose buried in my wet, matted hair. His skin searing mine at every point of contact.
His cock still nestled inside me.
The sky floods us with the anguish we can’t adequately express. A blustery collision of then and now. Pain and pleasure.
And though I don’t peek over my shoulder to verify, he sounds fraught with emotion, which squeezes my chest, when he says, “Why the fuck did you have to come back? I was happy. I was …”
A tear trickles down my cheek, one I can’t catch, one I hope he doesn’t notice. All these years, I would have given my life to restore his. And he was across the country, on top of his game and wishing I were dead. Whether I’m in his arms or not, it sounds like that’s still his wish.
Gage pulls out of me, leaving me bare behind a tree and fifty feet from a guard ogling us due to his command.
“This”—he seethes as he tugs up his jeans and I scour for my dignity—“is why I hate you more than I ever have.” There’s something worse than anger lacing his voice. Brokenness—a far harder feat to overcome. “Because all these years later, you still feel like fucking home.”
And that’s it. That’s the sentence that buries us—the remnants of what was and the seeds of what never can be. If that final sentiment had been crooned as a sweet nothing or whispered in the ache of longing, those words would be gems to keep—a beginning. But the way he spit them was gutting.
He despises me, even while he wants me. And I guess I understand that. Although even that first night—when I stabbed him with my fork—I could separate his wrongdoings. Am I outraged that he moved on and left me to endure the depths of Hades? Absolutely. But I can see his side. Sympathize. Understand that we were both ensnared and beaten down. And regret my part in his downfall.
All he does is hate. Even in the moments we’re bridging things.
While he’s putting his wet T-shirt back on and I’m shimmying into my bikini bottoms, traitorous streams of grief cascade over my cheeks. I loathe crying, but everyone has their breaking point, and I’m a decade past mine. I fix my warped ponytail into a messy bun, sifting a leaf out of the strands, and avert my gaze from his.
He does the opposite. His lasered eyes burn into my skin. He tracks my tears despite the rain pelting us. And a brief veil of compassion descends upon him. Oh, how I want to get lost inside it, to let those dewy drops of understanding balloon into a humid cloud of comfort. I’m so fucking desperate to be cradled, seen, healed.
To forget and start fresh.
I have to get out of here.
Without ceremony, I start toward the house, which is also the direction of Dante and his golf cart.
Gage grabs my wrist and whips me back to him. “Tell me I’ve got it all wrong.”
A plea. God, I want to, but I’m trying to take the high road. I wasn’t given a do-over at life, like him. But I was afforded this second chance to right my wrong. I can let him hang on to the happiness he’s found with his family.
My father’s twisted philosophy, brought about by biblical rhetoric, flies through me. “The only atonement for sin is through blood, Ainsley.”
I thought the penance for my crimes was enduring Josh’s death— their deaths . My real punishment was finding his blood pumping for a life that didn’t include me.
Gage’s penance may have been burying Joshua Ricci too. But he won a second chance, escaped, built a family. And I’m fucking with it. If I ever manage to flee the nightmare I’ve been trapped in and build something beautiful, I’d hate anybody who messed with it too.
Which means sharing my hellfire stories would be selfish and only threaten to decimate the peace he’s found. I’m hurt by him and livid that he forgot who I was—am—so easily. But regardless of what he thinks of me and how wounded I feel, I don’t hate him enough to char his castle.
That doesn’t mean I’m not shattered though.
My eyes meander all over his bronze skin. God, he’s beautiful. He always was. But this is the masterpiece of a man—rugged and burly. Someone who’s fought a good fight and refused to fall. It’s who he always was, but it’s gratifying to see that he got the chance to live that triumph.
With a shake of my head, I obliterate the path he’s considering—setting it ablaze in the midst of another storm. “I can’t tell you you’ve got it wrong. I answered your questions the first time I saw you, so you know that.” I blow out an exasperated breath to share a little more truth. “In fact, the reality is worse. Is that what you want to hear? Will that give you the peace of mind you need to keep hating me?”
He releases my wrist with a grunt, but crowds my every step toward the cart. “How could it be fucking worse?”
My lower lip quivers. I want to curl into a ball and die. I will not fall apart now. I have to keep moving.
“Just forget it,” I snap, breaking into another barefoot run.
Every thorny jab of the journey digs into the balls of my feet, agony I dismissed on the way. Mud is splattered all up and down my legs, blades of grass plastered on them too. My skin is littered with bumps because, despite the oppressive humidity, I’m chilled to the bone. My fingernails are caked with dried blood from the branding scratches I left on him, like a rabid animal. Still, I forgo the quick route back via Dante’s ride, nod at him, and bolt on past.
“No,” Gage barks, keeping pace. “I won’t fucking forget it. What are the goddamn tears about? You don’t cry like this, Wicked.”
I’m not sure why that spears me. I was trying to extend an altruistic white flag, grant him the freedom to live in his naive, happy bubble. But … how dare he?
My head whips toward him. “How the hell would you know that? I might not have a new name like you, but I am not the same girl you knew.”
“You sure as fuck aren’t,” he snarls, right as I see his band of brothers coming out to watch the show. “That girl didn’t hide from shit.”
“Yeah,” I snipe, “well, that girl is dead. She was a fool who had no idea what the world was really like.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” he shouts, cutting me off to block my path.
We’re nearly to the entertainment area, where his groupies are gathered beneath the covering to watch us. Fitting.
Good Lord, we’re a sight. The rain has slowed to a drizzle, but it’s still washing over us—two muddy, drowned rats, donning scrapes and bite marks and blotchy skin. Like lunatics.
He widens his stance and crosses his arms. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Trying to persuade me with an intimidation pose? I’m not buying it. And I’ve made up my mind, so it’s just annoying at this point.
“If I was interested in pillow talk,” I retort, waving him off, “I wouldn’t have let you rail me in a storm. I would have made you wine and dine me. Don’t go catching fucking feelings.”
The use of his own words thrown back at him seems to detonate a nuclear implosion.
“Jesus. Fucking. Christ!” he hollers, arms flying to the sky, cursing the heavens. Or summoning the thunder, like Thor. “You’re so goddamn infuriating. I’m trying to fucking figure this out, Ains.”
And that’s my undoing. Ains.
A choppy exhale falls from my lips as I drop my hands onto my hips. “Go be with your family, Gage.”
I know he hears everything unspoken between my words.
Carry on with the people you chose to show up for.
Live in the place I don’t belong.
Love the women who made you trust, who didn’t betray you, who gave you a tiny princess to dote on. The family I couldn’t.
This hurts. Let me go.
“Yeah,” he huffs, shaking his head. But his face is Josh’s face, Josh’s sweetness, Josh’s tender soul and vulnerability.
The women in the house are the ones who bring that out, not me.
He throws his hand toward them. “That’s where I belong.”
Family means sacrifice.
Since we’re finally on the same page, I start toward the chateau again, eager to wash this day away, but he hooks his arm around my waist, pressing all his hard edges into my soft curves.
He splays his hand across my throat, thumb and index piercing the sides of my neck, and his eyes narrow. “We’ll keep this simple. I’ll prevent you from getting murdered, and you’ll be my fucktoy.”
“I forgot how innovative and generous you were.” An incredulous cackle falls out of me, which he must read as a concession because he lets me go. Once I start trudging through the downpour, I continue, “As much as I’d love to fulfill your roid-enhanced teenage libido, I’ve got places to be. You’ve had your fun, spewed your hate, fucked me in front of your guard. You win.” I turn to look at him as I step on the slick flagstone patio. “Now convince Wells to erase me, like he was assigned to do by Vargas.”
“I’m not sure where the miscommunication is,” he says, snatching my hip to halt my steps. Again. “God knows we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. But this much is clear. You are mine, Wicked. Until my dying breath. Mine to hate. Mine to shelter. Mine to fuck. On my goddamn leash. You left me once, but history will not repeat itself.”
I howl a sardonic laugh because as much as I hate myself, I never left him. If he had come for me instead of killing himself off and building a life without me, everything would be different. It wouldn’t have fixed what I had done, but we could have faced it together.
Before I can say anything, he leans into me.
“Don’t flirt with one of the guards unless you want to watch me murder them before I fuck you on their corpse.”
Motherfucker. On his leash and threatening me? I’ve had enough.
He strides toward the house, and I keep up, yanking on the collar of his T-shirt right as we near his family.
“Not friendly!” I scream, as though he were a ferocious dog and I’m warning them not to come close.
Liam doesn’t miss a beat. He claps his hands and breaks into hysteria as Wells and Ty smirk and chuckle.
But I can’t absorb that because I need to drive my point home with the Big Guy .
Still clasping his shirt, I set my anger free. “You can cage me here and pat yourself on the back for it, like all the other fucking cowards. But if after all this time, you can’t let me go, then that leash you’re keeping me on is your fucking noose.”
His eyebrows waggle with a cocky smirk. “Now you’re getting it, baby. Choking is right up my alley.”
Flicking my fingers under my chin, I spit out my curse, utterly disgusted by who he’s become. “ Va fangool .”
And as I burst inside, I hear Gage translate my tantrum to Liam. “She told me to go fuck myself.”