Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
“Oh shit,” Eamon says. He chuckles, and I pick up speed, because there’s no way in fuck I want to be anywhere he is. I swear that guy has something fucked up in his brain. And that’s saying something after what I just did with Aiden. After what I saw Aiden do.
“Do you want help now?” Eamon adds in a lifted voice, his accent ricocheting off the empty rooms.
“Fuck off,” Aiden huffs—too close for comfort.
“I’ll see you later then, lad,” Eamon singsongs, and the slamming of a door punctuates his manic laughter. The sound chases me down the hall as surely as Aiden does.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people?
My legs and arms pump. Breath saws out of me.
I make it three-quarters of the way down the hall toward the wing of the house that contains the garage before I let myself experience a starburst of hope.
Almost to freedom. I can do this. I’m going to make it.
The garage door opener is on a panel next to the door.
All I have to do is get there, shut the door behind me, hit the garage door button, and then roll out from underneath it.
As soon as I get a good way down the street, I’ll order a car to meet me several roads over.
Everything will be fine.
I can make it.
Exhilaration threads through my blood, stitching all the broken parts of me back together one by one.
A part of me shattered the night my mother was murdered.
In the months since, the pieces must have healed wrong.
Crooked. Jagged. Because I bite back the impulse to smile.
A psychologist would have a field day with this scenario, let me tell you that.
I’d try to explain the first time I experienced something like joy, since my mother’s violent death was at the hands of a violent psychopath, and they’d lock me up and throw away the key.
I can’t tell anyone about this. Maybe not even Yasmine.
Terror, sweet and biting, swells in my chest. I can’t let him catch me. But at the same time…
Part of me wants him to.
It’s as much fear of that knowledge as fear of him that keeps my legs going.
A knife of pain threads through my ribs, and my lungs seize, but I don’t stop.
Something about this fear electrocutes me out of the half-dead state I’ve been in for the past six months.
Like what we did during the party revives all the stagnant parts of me.
It’s addictive, this feeling. I try to shake this madness away, remind myself that he’s dangerous, but a feral euphoria seeps into my skin, melting into my very soul, my DNA, rewriting everything I thought I knew about myself.
Fear has been such an integral, inescapable part of my life since she died, to the point where I thought I’d drown in it. But having Aiden chase me? It takes that fear, warps it, kinks it, until I crave it. Makes it something vital. Primal.
Twisting, I glance back to find him only a few feet away, almost within grasping distance.
My nerveless feet stumble on the slick tile, and I right myself, losing precious seconds, with Aiden gaining behind me.
He’s so close, I swear I can feel his breath on the back of my neck, his fingers twining in the fabric of my dress.
Frantic laughter bubbles free, or maybe I’m choking on the lack of oxygen reaching my brain.
Despite whatever seductive alchemy of fear and exhilaration he inspires, I have to get away.
In the next second, muscular arms pluck me from the air, and my scream rends the stillness of the night before a big hand clamps over my mouth. “Did you really think you could run from me?” Aiden hisses, pressing his face to my throat, clenching me against his body.
Instinct takes over, and I claw at the arms restraining me, but he’s as immovable as the ancient live oaks in the front yard.
My feet pinwheel in front of me, shoes flying from my hands going God knows where, and then he’s dragging me away from the garage door.
Despite my cries, his hands are unforgiving against my skin, which surrenders to his bruising grip like the skin of a ripe peach.
Luck must take pity on me because our combined weight causes Aiden to stumble backward into the wall, and his grip loosens for the barest second.
Using it to my advantage, I go completely dead in his arms, letting gravity carry me down through his hold, and I land heavy on my ass.
Without pausing, I slap the ground, pushing to my feet, and then I’m running once again.
Only this time, Aiden is much, much closer and exponentially more pissed off.
His anger is almost as thrilling as the fear.
His anger, unlike so much in my life, is something I understand.
“Run as fast as you can because if I catch you, I’ll punish you in ways that’ll make the devil blush,” he calls from behind me.
I don’t answer. I can’t. Any oxygen my greedy lungs suck in is used for more important things than talking. Like panicking. Trying to remain conscious. Or laughing hysterically.
Taking the next left, I reach a short hallway that includes the kitchen to my right and the pantry and garage access on the opposite wall.
Relief pours into me, and I repeat my plan in cadence with each slap of my feet against the floor.
Get to the garage. Brace the door behind me. Open the garage. Escape.
Behind me, Aiden gains ground, feet pounding a relentless rhythm, and I’m flooded with the exhilaration not unlike the kind I used to feel when playing hide-and-seek with Elizabeth or being chased on the playground at school when I was a kid.
Except this isn’t a game. I know he’ll make good on his threats.
I slam into the garage door and spin to shut it behind me, but it’s too late.
He’s too close. A panicked cry tears from my throat as Aiden collides with me before I can close it in his face.
We grapple, his weight pressing in as I throw my body against the surface of the door, and it groans under the assault.
Despite my efforts, he’s so much stronger that I may as well not be resisting at all.
In a stroke of bad luck, the door flies open from the strain, and we stumble.
Momentum carries me around until I land on top of Aiden, who grunts at the impact.
Before he can trap or pin me, I’m up and sprinting.
I slap at the garage door control and find a set of golf clubs on the rack nearest to me, and before I can think too much about it, I grab one and swing wildly.
To my surprise, it connects with Aiden’s face, and his head whips to the side.
Frozen in shock, I can only stare as Aiden slowly shifts until I can see a dark trail of blood streaming from his nose. He swipes at it with the back of his hand, staring at the smudge with an expression of curiosity.
A laugh bubbles up my throat, and I clap a hand over my mouth as it spills over. He smiles, blood on his teeth, like he’s… enjoying himself?
Fuck me.
The garage door rattles mechanically, pulling me from my stupefaction, and I escape through the small opening before Aiden comes to his senses.
Concrete scratches my knees raw, but I’m on my feet and racing down the dimly lit residential street, my soles protesting as sticks and tiny rocks assault them.
A crowd bustles at the edge of the street, salvation so close I can practically feel the calming weight of relief washing through my chest.
Then I’m flying, and Aiden’s arm is back around my waist, holding me tight to his body.
Waves of heat slam into me, and I wrench this way and that, but it’s futile.
No amount of kicking, slapping, or even biting seems to deter him.
He drags me kicking and screaming back down the road, his other hand has a bruising grip over my face once more.
“A valiant effort, pet. But you’ll never be able to outrun me.
” But he doesn’t sound very much like he wants me to stop.
No, I’d bet he’s enjoying the struggle as much as he did playing with me in the middle of the party.
The evidence is undeniable. His thick, hot length presses like an iron brand into my back, sending liquid bolts of pleasure in a wet spill between my thighs.
When I don’t do as he says and instead try to rip free again, he merely throws me over one broad shoulder and plants a hand on my ass, the other arm going around my thighs as I tip precariously.
“I can walk,” I snarl at his back, my hands fisted in the material of his white shirt so I don’t fall.
My purse dangles from where it hangs on my elbow, slapping against his side, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
His muscles ripple with each step as he strides quickly back to the estate. “Let me down.”
“Not a feckin’ chance, sweetheart. I’m going to put you somewhere you can’t run from me,” he says, as we reach the garage and he hauls me through.
A sense of foreboding, more terrifying than having him chase me, knots up inside my stomach. Fuck. Fuck. This is bad. Whatever punishment he’s going to give me for trying to run away will be a million times worse than the one I got for drawing attention to myself in front of two of his guests.
We reach the stairs, and he takes them two at a time, heedless of my fists beating a wild tattoo on the rippling muscles of his back.
With each step up, I fight harder, but I may as well be a gnat for all it affects him.
I’m not unaffected, however. The desire he’d brought to life in me hadn’t diminished with my frantic dash through the house.
No, running had only stoked it into a blaze.
I want to tear into him. Want to rub myself all over him. Want him to fill all the aching, empty parts of me.
“Let me go,” I pant at his back, but my words are so breathless they have no substance. It doesn’t even matter. He wouldn’t have chased me down if he had planned to let me go before this night was over.
We reach a door, and he shoulders through it, then kicks it shut, locking it with a key he stows in his pocket.
Trapped. He releases me, and I stumble to my knees, my hands slapping on the parquet floor to keep from face-planting on the wood.
Without looking up, I know we’re in my parents’ room, which only heightens my conflicting emotions.
This is absolutely the last place I want to be.
I pause there at his feet, nostrils flaring and fantasizing about all the ways I could hurt him.
It’s that or try to run again, but my whole body aches something fierce.
Ass and skull from where I landed the first time, lungs from my mad dash, and various places where Aiden’s fingers have branded and bruised me.
But I’ve never felt so fucking alive. All I should feel is disgust and fear. Desperation. Disappointment.
Since I feel none of those things, I reach for the nearest hefty object—a coffee-table book on a side table—and throw it at Aiden’s retreating back.
It collides with him, and he stops. The way he turns, a slow revolution with the golden light coming in behind him, is menacing.
Fraught. Yet I’m not scared. Or if I am, I enjoy it.
My blood thumps.
My heart sings.
But he doesn’t come closer with the promised punishment.
Instead, he backs away, and I ignore the swoop of my stomach.
Back, back, back, until his legs hit the bed, and he lowers himself onto the foot.
I push up to my knees, waiting where I fell by the door.
The dark hides my eager expression. This back-and-forth game we’re playing scares me almost as much as it excites me.
“Come here,” he beckons.
I lift my chin, conscious of the way my dress gapes between my breasts and rides up my thighs. “No chance in hell,” I say from my place on the floor. It may be across the room, but it still feels like I’m kneeling for him. “You’ll have to make me.”
His chuckle wraps around me like dark silk. “Make you? Oh, I don’t think I’ll have to make you do anything. That’s why you’re being such a brat, right? Because a part of you likes what I’m doing to you? Likes when I scare you. Isn’t that right?”
“Fuck you.”
Instead of angering him more, my hissed words only make his lips curve at one corner. “You’re only digging yourself a bigger grave. Because every time you piss me off, you owe me another orgasm.” His finger swipes at his nose. Is he still bleeding? “I think we’re up to four now. Five?”
“Is that really supposed to scare me?” I’m glad the words come out steady, because the thought actually scares me.
How many orgasms would it take for him to break me apart?
See all the twisted, fucked-up things inside me?
Like how many licks to the center of a lollipop.
Only whatever’s hiding inside me will not be something sweet.
“Does it?”
“What?”
“Does it scare you?”
“It’ll take a lot more than these silly games to scare me, O’Connor,” I say.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah,” I punch out.
But it doesn’t piss him off like I expect. His smile widens, a flash of white in the shadows. Glinting in the moonlight.
He pushes to his feet, and all my muscles tense, hands fisting at my thighs.
Heart rattling in my chest. He strolls to where I’m kneeling.
At his height—Jesus, is he, what, 6’4, 6’5?
—he towers over me. For a moment, he considers me with glittering chips of diamond for eyes, and then in a flash, he fists a hand in my hair.
One quick movement later, there’s a gun pressed against my temple.
The only warning is a flash of metal in a sliver of light.
I don’t get a good look, but I know without inspection that it’s the same one he used to kill Dufresne.
Blood smears over his lips from where I hit him. It makes him look like a pagan deity. Untamable. Wild. The gun twitches, the icy edge a wicked threat that slices straight to my core. A needy sound stings my throat, spilling over my lips.
His eyes widen, then glint with satisfaction. When he speaks, his voice is low and entrancing. “Are you ready to do as you’re told, like a good little pet, or do I need to scare you a bit to keep you in line?”
I could speak. Could do what I’m told. But if I’m going to spend the night with the devil, I won’t make it easy on either of us. And maybe this man, this insane, ruthless man, is exactly who I need to rip me out of my brain.
Even if it’s only for one night.
Amused, accepting, somehow reading my mind, he jerks my head back, eyes roving over my face. Then he’s leading me across the bedroom floor, guided by his hand in my hair like it’s a leash.
And I crawl for him, just like he wanted.