Chapter 16
C onnor
The second my apartment door was closed, Everly whirled around, her features tight. “You have a deal with my father. I want to know about it.”
“Where the fuck did ye hear that?”
“Don’t lie to me, please.”
Frustration rocked me. “I didn’t. It’s none of your business.”
If she knew, she’d despise me even more.
At the heart of me was a monster. In contrast, Everly was gentle, soft, and sweet. I never wanted to see her again, but worse than that was the thought she’d exist in her perfectly curated world with an even shittier view of me than when we’d started.
Everly glared then stomped closer, her hands on her hips. “It’s been a really terrible evening. I feel like I’m being crushed by a hundred different emotions, and the one thing I’m sure about is I need this answered before I leave. For your gang work, you knock people out with drugs, I know that, but do you do it for other people, too? Are you for hire? Does my father employ you after everything that happened for you to get away from him?”
Her voice broke either in pain or anger.
I flared my nostrils, trying to keep my cool. She had no right to ask this after she’d been right there at the heart of that arrangement.
Yet it was something else driving me on to argue with her. A need to get closer and to touch her again while the clock ticked against us.
Time slowed.
Everly was toe-to-toe with me, breathing hard. Beseeching me with her gaze. Then her damn focus dropped to my lips. My resistance dissolved. I grasped the back of her neck and kissed her with a clash of my lips on hers.
Savage anger met perfect upset.
But, oh fuck, the touch broke a fever through me.
She gasped against my mouth, and her sound of desire nearly buckled my knees. She tasted so fucking sweet.
This was no flashback of a tentative first teenage kiss, where I’d sat on the end of her bed and let her press her lips to mine. Stroked her curls and told her how deeply in love with her I’d fallen.
No, I dug my fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck. Angled my head to take a deep pull. Stole life from her I had no right to claim.
Tearing my lips away, I kissed her cheek, bit her earlobe, sucked hard on her neck with my fingers around her throat.
“Yes,” she said.
I pulled back, panting.
She clutched my wrist with both hands, holding me to her. “If you want me, you can have me. Make me forget everything.”
My spill of laughter came out hard. “You’d use me, even now.”
Hurt filled her eyes. “No, God. I’m going home tomorrow, and this is over. Knock me out with your drugs again. Use me . All I know is you were once my home and my everything, and I just want to disappear into darkness and know one good thing will come out of it. Then tomorrow, we can talk.”
For a godforsaken moment, I got caught in the intrigue.
Time stood still. I wanted to fuck her like nothing else I’d ever needed or cared about. My dick had been hard from the second I’d touched her, but to give her what she’d asked for, lose yet another piece of me…
“Ye don’t want me,” I found myself saying. “Ye don’t want to know me. Ye never did.”
“What if that’s a lie?”
“Then stay.”
She tilted her head in beautiful question.
My heart swelled. “Don’t go back to your da. Stay here.”
Her lips parted then formed into a soft smile. It shattered something in me. This wasn’t the same as her last rejection. That, she’d obviously rehearsed, so little emotion was revealed. This time, her surprise and sorrow couldn’t be hidden.
“You know I can’t.”
With a wrench, I reversed the hold she had on me so now I gripped her arm, then pulled her to the locked door of my spare room. Not the room I’d imprisoned her fucking secret brother in, but the one next door.
Windowless. Secret.
“Then meet the real me.”
Unlocking the door, I revealed the space. Wide-eyed, Everly took in my store. The room opened into a small version of a lab. I had needles, bottles, and printed charts alongside a computer with its own uplink internet access not connected to the warehouse.
Here, I did my research. I tested the shite my dealer gave me. I’d learned doses, times, and all I needed for my craft. She took it in, lingering on the stone I used to sharpen my knives, then on the tattoo kit stashed on a shelf.
Against the wall was a fridge, and I snapped it open to remove a vial. Drew a dose from it into a syringe. Held it up for Everly to see.
“Sure ye want this?”
“Yes.” Her throat bobbed with her swallow.
My blood rushed in my ears so I couldn’t have heard her if I tried. Like I’d done outside her house, I embraced her and stabbed her at the same time.
“What happened to your dreams, Everly?” I whispered into her hair. “Ye wanted to become an events planner and run your own business. Ye wanted to be a mother. Yet you’re wasting away in servitude for your da.”
She hugged me back then sagged onto me, and I gazed at her face, watching the life ebb.
“Ye once wanted me.”
When she’d lost all but her breath and the thud of her heartbeat, I draped her onto my office chair. Kneeling, and ignoring how she’d felt in my damn arms, I took another needle to the crook of her elbow.
Drew her blood.
I pressed the wound with cotton wool until the tiny spot of blood stopped welling, put her to bed, then went to find the man claiming to be her brother.
Except in taking Riordan’s blood, I wouldn’t be anywhere near so gentle.