39. Kai
Chapter 39
Kai
Haven only struggles when we get to the first floor landing. By then, there’s a fire burning inside me, and only one way to extinguish it. If she’d bolted out the front door, I’d have chased her down, anyway.
I need to hurt something.
Haven tugs at her bags one more time, and then obviously realizes it’s a futile effort and yanks her arm free. I love how her eyes go round in surprise, like she didn’t think she had the strength.
She doesn’t.
I want her free.
That way, she’ll lead me right where I want to go.
She turns and sprints down the hall, and I follow, duffel bags and all. By the time she reaches the door at the end of the hallway, I’m on her heels.
Haven grabs the door jamb and swings around, crashing into the wall. As I rush past her into the room, I glimpse her grabbing the door handle and slamming the door closed to trap me inside the room.
Bitch tricked me.
But I’m too fast and too strong and too determined to make her suffer.
I drop her bags, grab the door, and haul it open, dragging her back inside the room before she can let go of the handle.
She whirls around, trying to run out. Her breath hitches in her throat in sheer panic, and I can sense the scream building inside her as I latch onto her hair.
I tug her down so hard she falls on her back with a grunt of pain.
She rolls onto her side and throws me a pleading look as I slowly reach behind me and push the door shut with my fingertips.
Her mouth opens for a scream.
I’m beside her in an instant, hands locked around her throat to stifle the sound.
Haven grips my wrists, clawing desperately, leaving furrows in my skin. Then she goes for my eyes, but I lean back far enough so she can’t reach me.
The muscles under my fingers tense. Her pulse bumps against my palms, fast as a hummingbird’s wings.
“If you’re quiet, I’ll let you breathe,” I murmur.
She’s back to clawing at my wrists, then trying to peel my fingers away from her throat.
“Or I could just keep holding on, Haven. I’m ready this time. Ready to go all the fucking way.” I squeeze harder, and a convulsion jerks through her body.
“Blink twice if you want to breathe,” I tell her.
She goes still, eyes squeezing shut like she doesn’t even want to accidentally blink. I give her a hard shake, forcing her to snap her eyes open.
Her gaze darts frantically around the room like she’s looking for help, for a weapon, for an escape route.
“Do you want to breathe again?” I murmur.
With obvious reluctance, Haven blinks twice. There’s a flash of panic on her face when I don’t release her immediately, then she’s hauling in a huge lungful of air as my hands drop away from her throat.
I hold my hands up, twisting them in the lamp’s light. No wonder I couldn’t see the marks on her skin anymore. Makeup is streaked all over my hands.
When I settle my full weight on her hips, she groans like I’m crushing her internal organs to jelly.
But she goes quiet when I pull out the steak knife I’d stolen from the kitchen downstairs, and deathly still as I lay it against her throat. I saw it back and forth over her skin, drawing a thin line of blood, my eyes glued to hers as the sting makes her flinch.
“Yeah, it’s nothing like that blunt thing I used to carry around the woods, is it?” I twist the knife, dragging the sharp tip to her jaw, then her chin. Lightly enough that I don’t cut her, but from the way she shudders, I might as well have been flaying her.
“Melissa’ll be back any second,” she croaks, and then coughs. “If she finds you here—” Her teeth click shut as I press the tip of the knife against the plush, pink pillow of her bottom lip.
“But you’re going to be quiet, aren’t you?” I press the knife harder, harder, until a tiny spot of blood wells up from the tip where it pierces her lip.
“No,” she blubbers. “Touch me and I’ll fucking scream.”
“Oh,” I chuckle. “But I’m already touching you, Heavenly. I’m touching you in all sorts of places.”
I rock my hips forward, grinding her lower body against the carpet. My cock hardens, thinking this is all foreplay.
Fuck, maybe it is.
Her lips tremble, and I use my thumb to smear that drop of blood over her mouth like lipstick.
Scarlet lips for my scarlet whore.
“I bet you want her to find us,” I say, flicking out my tongue to lick the blood from my thumb. “You love an audience, don’t you? Someone watching you get railed.”
I grind her against the floor again, and she groans in pain, one hand shooting to my stomach, the other clawing into my thigh to relieve the heavy weight on her guts.
“No—” My backhand cuts her off.
The knife blade pressed to the curve of her cheekbone, just below her eye, makes her entire body stiffen.
But not as much as my cock.
I’m already considering pulling down my zip and letting it out, because there’s no space left in my Guccis.
“No more lies.” I seize her throat again, use my fingers to guide her face back toward me. “Tell the truth for a change. You just might like it.”
She gives her head a violent shake. “I don’t like being watched,” she hisses, tears suddenly glittering in her eyes. “I’m not a slut, Kai. You’re the only guy I?—“
Haven cuts off with a strangled cry as I snatch the front of her dress and stab the knife through the fabric. Shocked blue eyes follow my hand as I shear through her black dress, exposing her breasts and belly to the cool air of her new bedroom.
She watches, so morbidly fascinated with the fact that I’ve just stripped her half-naked that she’s forgotten to struggle, to resist, to scream.
Jesus, she looks good. The only flaw on her creamy skin, the odd beauty mark or freckle. And the scars, of course.
Fuck, we’ve given each other a lot of scars over the years.
There’s no denying that this is a woman’s body. That the heart beating so frantically behind her ribcage is that of a woman’s. But when my eyes climb up and meet hers, all I see is the girl that drove a stake through my heart.
There’s a long scar from her collarbone to her sternum, so faint you’d have to know it was there to see it. I drag the tip of the knife down it, and then flick her nipple.
“Where’s your bra, Haven?”
She’s staring at me like I’m the Ghost of Childhood Past, and fuck, I guess I am. But when I say those words, I see how they trigger her. From the flinch on her face to the way her mouth slackens and grows wide.
Her hands slap over her breasts, trying to cover them.
That’s when the sobbing begins. Deep, mournful, wrenching sobs that shake her whole body. I clap a hand over her mouth, expecting her to stop me, but her hands just flop onto the carpet, fingers curling up like she’s already dead.
I drop down on top of her, urging her legs open with my knees, sinking between them. When I drag the knife down the curve of her breast, she lets me.
Because I’ve broken her again.
“Hey, shh, shh,” I croon, our faces less than an inch apart. “It’s okay, Heavenly. You didn’t need it, anyway.”
I didn’t think her sobs could be any more wretched, but I guess I underestimated the power of my words. But it’s not the words she’s reacting to. It’s the memory.
And here I thought Haven had forgotten all about me. About us.
But the woman lying under me is grieving for the dead.
Little Haven.
Little Kai.
Fuck, I miss them.