Page 23 of Trust Me

Lucifer touched my neck with a gentle hand, his thumb tracing the tender area that was guaranteed to be marbled with bruises.

A breath hissed through his lips before he pulled away like I’d burst into flames. But it was too late. His protectiveness had already engulfed me in a comforting cocoon.

I bit my bottom lip to keep it steady while Lucifer bent down to pick up my knife from the floor. He swiped the flat side of the blade across his thigh, removing the visual confirmation of my deadly crime. With a flick of his wrist, he flipped his grip and offered me the handle.

I didn’t know if he’d seen me kill the first Russian, but I was certain he knew my blade never touched the second. Still, he didn’t inquire about the blood on my weapon when he returned it.

Did he trust me? Or was this a test?

He raised his head and arrested me with eyes that had turned so dark, they appeared black.

An encouraging warmth snaked its way through my body, and I inhaled my first solid breath in what felt like forever.

Maybe there was hope for Lucifer and me. Maybe we could be friends. The serial-killing monster had saved my life. That had to count for something.

Probably because he needed me to marry his brother so they could expand their evil empire, but for the moment, the seven-year-old girl in me wanted to believe that the weird teenager who’d given her an apple had protected her simply because he’d wanted to and for no other self-serving reason.

“Can you walk?”

“I—I think so ...” I said in a voice I didn’t recognize.

Lucifer’s face began to blur.

Images of the last several minutes floated through my mind. The pungent, metallic odor of blood permeated my nostrils.

And then a steel arm wrapped around me before I fell into the darkness.

Willa

I bolted upright, gasping for air.

A vision of Tiernan thrusting into my fourteen-year-old body while the cold metal of his gun jammed under my jaw cleared with each breath that I forced into my lungs. I swear I could smell the putrid scent of his cologne mixed with sweat and hear his sickening grunts as his slick body moved over mine.

It’s not real. It’s only a nightmare.

Damp hair clung to my face. I brushed it back as my eyes adjusted to the warm lighting. Gradually, the gray and dusty-rose furnishings of my bedroom in the Flynn mansion came into focus.

“I’ll tell Raph you’re awake,” a soft female voice said, cutting through the garbled mess.

Hearing that name was like snorting smelling salts. I gripped the duvet and dragged it to my chest, noticing how my hands shook when I did. I searched for the body attached to that really bad idea.

A woman dressed in scrubs stood at the foot of the bed, her expression a chaos that I didn’t have the energy to translate.

“I’d like a moment to myself before my fiancé sees me,” I said.

Her swallow reflex worked overtime.

“Please,” I tagged on.

Call it women’s intuition, or maybe it was that she’d said Raph and not Mr. Flynn or even Raphael that alerted me that the scarlet-haired beauty was sleeping with my future husband.

I knew the type.

Tiernan had kept a line of women ready and waiting. Every one of them had vied to replace the current Mrs. Brennan should she have found herself prematurely six feet under like the one before her. I wasn’t one to slut shame, and I wasn’t crazy. History had made me vigilant, not paranoid.

Raphael’s mistress wouldn’t hesitate to sell me out in a heartbeat if given the opportunity.

Her cheeks reddened, matching her shiny bob of crimson waves. She nodded and moved to my bedside. “Let me examine you first, and then you can use the bathroom. You fainted from all the ... stress.”

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