Chapter 29
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
LUKE
I was the first to break our connection. I could no longer bear to see the woman staring back at me.
My heart.
My mind.
My sanity couldn’t take it anymore.
My thoughts swung back and forth along with my emotions—I was suffocating in them. It didn’t help that she gripped my soul like a fucking vise.
My safe house was eerie and silent, her scent masking the air all around me. Fueling the uncertainty for what was to come.
It was thriving.
Living.
Breathing inside me.
This was the only way—it was my only choice.
Even though I intently stared at her, I didn’t say a word. I just sat in my office chair in the room's shadow, with my elbow leaning against the armrest as I rubbed my fingers back and forth across my lips with the drink I made earlier in my hand.
I thought I could drink her away.
Once again, I was lost in my own purgatory in a way I’d never been before. Her unruly hair draped over her gorgeous face, regardless of the shiner on her cheek and the cut on her lip. I could see her through the slits of the strands in her hair.
I’d taken off her cloak and mask. Now she was just sitting there with her tied arms behind her back and in nothing but lingerie. In a normal setting, this would probably turn me the fuck on…
Who the hell am I kidding?
I was turned on.
She was still so damn sexy, and it didn’t help that I was into bondage play. Despite the darkness in the room, she could still see my dark, cold, beady eyes penetrating deep into hers, only burning a deep reaction within my core. The bourbon I started drinking only added to the way I watched her.
It was only then I realized she wasn’t looking at me.
She was looking through me.
I didn’t know why, but I wanted to stay lost in her eyes. I couldn’t look away because there was so much beauty in my catastrophic pain.She lured me in with her gaze, pulling every sentiment from my body as if it belonged to her.
Like we were the only two people in the world.
Like time stood still.
Like our relationship wasn’t based on anything but lies.
It felt like every passing second between us was another thought, another emotion, another memory of her for me. I was physically there with her, but my head was entirely elsewhere.
“Sloan Duchess Del Toro,” I whispered through my index and middle fingers, which continued to rub my lips. I needed something else to focus on besides her and what I was struggling with.
I wanted to move, but I couldn’t get my feet to stand.
My heart screamed for me to go to her although my body declared war, determined to ultimately win the internal battle erupting inside me when it came to her.
It awakened every last demon on my back.
Every demon living inside me.
Every soul I collected.
Except I surrendered to my hesitation for as long as I could, seeking refuge within myself, or else I feared I’d end up killing her, and I couldn’t bring myself to do that yet.
I remained a willing captive in her haunted composure, and she knew it, too.
The effect she always had on me.
I imagined she had the same effect on all the men she conned. Which was probably something her husband taught her to be—the perfect little whore for him.
Son of a bitch.
“You scared of me, baby?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Do you want me to be, baby? ”
“You will be if you don’t start answering my questions.”
A hint of remorse passed through her eyes, but she blinked it away. Making me think I possibly imagined it, needing to cling to some sort of connection with her.
Well, to hell with reason.
With doubt.
With the unknown.
To hell with it all.
Including us.
My chest was rising and falling, my heart lying out in front of us as I started to walk toward her again. I felt as though I was making my way over to a stranger I could not run away from.
I waited, holding my breath with every last fiber of my being.
I couldn’t breathe the entire ten steps it took to get to her.
I knew because I counted.
It was the only way to keep myself from hurting her for playing me.
There wasn’t one nook of her body I hadn’t already explored with my hands, tongue, lips, or dick, triggering a nostalgic state of mind as I made my way to her.
My eyes never wavered from hers as I began skimming my fingers along her collarbone to the sides of her breasts and over to her beating heart. They lingered there for a moment before continuing to slidethem down the center of her rib cage.
“Do you have any idea how bad I can hurt you?”
Without wavering, she spewed, “Do your worst.”
“So did I mean anything to you, or was I part of his plan all along?” I asked, grabbing the gun that was in my back waistband to fist it in my palm. “Did I ever really know you?”
Her gaze shifted from my eyes to the piece in my grasp and back up to my eyes again. “What do you want me to say? Nothing I say is going to make things right between us.”
“That’s it?” I shrugged. “You don’t even put up a fight?”
“What am I fighting for?”
“Me.”
Her eyes glazed over again before she confessed, “You know me more than anyone else does.”
“Liar!” I grabbed the vase on my desk and chucked it across the room before placing my gun on her thigh and slowly moving it up her leg toward her chest.
Inch by inch, wanting her to feel the cool metal against her heated skin.
Her eyes widened, and her nostrils flared, causing her face to pale as I spoke with conviction…“I want to hear it come from your pouty, lyin’, cock-suckin’ lips.”