CHAPTER TEN #3
“Didn’t leave,” he tells me. “I followed you home. Saw you get in, go to your room. You stopped by your friend’s room for a bit.
I thought you’d tell her, let her be there for you.
But you…” His jaw pulses, as if in annoyance.
“You just laughed with her like nothin’ happened, like it was just a normal night.
” Another pulse in his jaw before he continues, “Then, I doubled back to the alley. Loaded those motherfuckers in the back of my truck. Drove them out to the mountains; not here, though, someplace else. Left them for the coyotes to find.”
“You fed them to the…”
“Thought about bringin’ them to my wolves, but”—he shakes his head—“my boys deserve better.”
My mind is reeling. I have so many things to say, so many things I want to focus on.
When I left my room tonight, I never could’ve imagined being here.
Never could’ve imagined stumbling upon so many secrets, discovering so many truths.
There’s no denying, though, they’re more precious to me than any leverage against the Graysons.
But there’s still one more truth, one more secret I need to know, and I’m not taking no for an answer.
So I keep looking into his eyes as I state, “You killed for me.”
He keeps looking back.
“For the Turner Princess.”
His mouth tightens.
“Why?”
His chest moves with a long breath, dragging against mine.
And I push my body into his. I press against his torso, bloody and wounded, and ask, “Tell me why.”
He grits his jaw.
But I don’t let it go. “Tell me why you remember, down to the very minute, how long you’ve been watching me.
Tell me why you kept saving me from all those men.
And don’t give me that hunter bullshit again because I know that’s not the whole truth.
Tell me why you notice things about me that no one else has.
Why does it matter to you if I’m scared, if I’m in danger?
Why do you care if I put myself through those awful dates?
Why did you put me in a blue room? Why did you care to cook my breakfast just the way I like?
Why didn’t you let your wolves just eat me?
When we both know there’s a reason you’re a bigger threat to me, the biggest, anywhere.
And it has nothing to do with land or your best friend’s revenge.
Tell me why, Radisson. You’ve hurt me, yes, but why don’t you just”—I pull at his shirt and swallow—“hurt me?”
He’s breathing hard, his chest digging into mine. His jaw is pulsing, and there’s something lurking in his eyes that looks like a thousand things at once. Anger, irritation, intensity. Possessiveness. So much of it that it causes a burn in my belly.
“Because,” he begins slowly, his voice low and gruff, “six months, four weeks, one day, ten hours, and fifteen minutes ago, before you were the Turner Princess, you were just a girl I was sent to watch. Just a princess I saw through the window one night. With the longest hair I’d ever seen, yellow and thick.
So soft-lookin’, like a cloud, and you were sittin’ at the edge of your bed, slowly braidin’ it, gettin’ ready for the night, your small hands workin’, your smooth brow furrowed with concentration.
And when you stood up, that braid fell down to the small of your back and I”—he looks away, his eyes glazed over as if he’s seeing it right now—“had to fist my hands, grit my fuckin’ teeth, tighten my entire body, all so I could stay put in my spot.
Right where I was, hidin’ in the shadows.
Instead of bustin’ through your window and grabbin’ you; instead of wrappin’ your pretty braid around my wrist like a rope and takin’ you for myself.
Like those same assholes who came at you in that alley, the ones I fed to the coyotes in the mountains. ”
I blink and my mouth parts once again. But no words come out, not even a sound.
But just like before, he doesn’t hold back.
“’Cause before you were the Turner Princess, you were just a princess, sittin’ in her blue room, wearin’ her blue dresses, with the smoothest skin I’d ever seen.
It shined under the moonlight, sparkled under the sun, just like your pretty blue eyes.
Made me think of silk. Of roses. Made me think of things I’d forgotten about, soft things instead of things as coarse and rough as my ropes that make my head hurt.
“’Cause before I found out you’re the daughter of the man who killed my family, you were just a girl who I watched goin’ out with men she didn’t like, men she couldn’t stand, but she still did it.
I don’t know why.” His eyes narrow as he continues, “She won’t tell me.
But I saw enough that every time she left them, I made sure those motherfuckers knew pain.
They knew punishment for puttin’ her through that.
For makin’ her do things she didn’t wanna do. ”
“Radisson,” I whisper, my heart beating, bruising my insides.
“’Cause before you were a princess named Peyton Turner, you were my Princess.
With a mole on the side of your waist,” he whispers, and I gasp.
I gasp harder when he takes his hand off the tree and grabs my waist, his thumb somehow digging into the very spot where my mole is without even looking, as if he has it memorized. “Right here.”
“It’s not a mole,” I blurt out, as if that’s the most important thing right now.
“No?”
“It’s a birthmark.”
“A birthmark.”
I blush at his almost indulgent tone. “I, uh, don’t really like it very much.”
He hums, pressing his fingers in. “And I really do.”
“Oh.”
“Very fuckin’ much.”
“It’s strange-looking,” I insist, ducking my head because it does looks like a dark blotch I wish I could erase.
“Don’t know about strange, but it does look like somethin’.”
I jerk my eyes up. “What?”
“Somethin’ I wanna put my mouth on.” He pauses to lick his lips, catching his tongue on his scar. “And suck.”
“You want…”
He moves his hand then, slides it over to my back, just above my ass. “And these.”
I arch into his touch. “Th-these?”
“Two pretty dimples above your pert little ass.”
I swallow, unable to say anything at all.
“Thought about puttin’ my mouth on those too.
” My eyes flare while his glitter. And his hand moves again to press on another spot on my belly.
“And this”—to emphasize, he pushes his thumb in, making me almost moan—“your swipe of a belly button, all tight and tiny. Somethin’ else to put my mouth on, to taste.
Somethin’ else to lick with my tongue, bite with my teeth. ”
“B-bite?”
His mouth tips in that lopsided smile of his and my belly melts. “Bite.”
I swallow thickly. “Not like… not like how I bit you, though. Right?”
His smile only widens and a light flashes in his eyes. “No, darlin’. Not like that.”
I blush again, or maybe I’ve been blushing all this time, and at his tone, which makes me feel so much younger than I am, I blush harder. Either way, my cheeks burn as he continues, “That was war. When I put my mouth on you, I’ll make magic with my tongue and make you see stars with my teeth.”
“Radisson—”
“And the list of places on your tight little body I wanna taste and bite and suck on is pretty fuckin’ long. So let’s just say you’ll be seein’ galaxies by the time I’m done with you.”
“You have a list?”
“Fuck, yeah, I’ve got a list.”
“What’s on it?”
“What do you think’s on it?”
I bite my lip as I study him. Then, for some insane reason I say, “I don’t like them.”
His brows furrow.
And I explain, “They’re too small.”
His brows furrow even more.
“They’re, like, my least favorite feature. Even worse than my birthmark. So I don’t know if you’ll like… sucking on them.”
His response is to lift me up. He puts both his hands around my waist and sweeps me off the ground. He makes me wind my thighs around his waist as he settles between my legs. Shocked, I grab his shirt at his shoulders. “Radisson, what are you doing? You’re hurt.”
His hands go under my blood-soaked dress, all rough and authoritative, gripping my thighs. Like he has every right to do that. “Are you talkin’ about your juicy little tits?”
I clutch his shirt harder. “I—”
He squeezes my thighs, kneads them almost as he says, “’Cause if you are, then I’m gonna have to tell you to shut the fuck up.”
“Excuse me? What the—”
At this, he gropes my thighs so hard that I gasp. “That’s not shuttin’ up.”
“You’re such an—”
He pushes against me again and whispers in a rough tone, “You don’t listen, do you? You talk way too much with that pretty mouth of yours—”
“Fucking asshole,” I snap, glaring and pulling at his shirt.
A second later, though, I flinch and squeak, because he does something so totally unexpected, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it happened. But the burn is real and so was the crack that sounded when he smacked me. He smacked me. On my ass—and my mouth falls open with a long moan.
As if I liked it.
Holy shit. I liked that. Didn’t I?
“So maybe I should talk with my hands,” he says, calm as ever.
“I—”
He smacks me again, this time on the other side of my ass, his palm all rough and rugged against my tender skin. “Told you not to sully your princess mouth because of me, yeah?”
I squirm in his hold. “I… That was…”
He digs his fingers into my butt, groping the burning flesh, worrying it. “I did. But you didn’t listen. So now”—another smack—“I’ll talk like this.”
My chest is heaving, my breaths broken. “What?”
“Rule number one: No cussin’,” he declares, his breaths warm and intoxicating. “Your mouth’s too beautiful, too precious, too fuckin’ innocent for that.”
“I—”