Page 74 of Forbidden Obsession

“Of course, I haven’t told them I found you, or brought you home. That’sourlittle secret.”

The malevolent gleam in his eyes made my stomach twist.

Though millions of questions still crowded my mind, he’d answered the one most pressing. I was back in New York, though I had no memory of how I’d gotten here.

“Why haven’t you told my parents?”

“Are you questioning my decision?” Wesley yelled, tossing the photo to the floor.

“No, of course not,” I replied as contritely as possible. “I was just…curious.”

“Be careful. You know what curiosity did to the cat, right?”

It wasn’t a question. It was a threat.

Masking the wrecking ball of panic plowing through me, I kept my expression neutral and nodded.

“I didn’t tell them, because it’s not time, yet,” Wesley bit out cryptically.

Dozens more questions I was too afraid to ask spooled through my brain.

As he eased onto the mattress beside me, my pulse rate tripled and every muscle in my body turned to stone.

“I can’t play the role of hero and tell them I found you, yet. They’d ask a million questions if I showed up with you on my arm looking like we’d been through a war zone. The scab on my head where that cocksucker’s bullet grazed me, and the pretty little gash on yours has to heal before I can carry out the rest of my plan.” He grinned.

As Wesley stroked a finger over the throbbing, tender spot where he’d knocked me out, I forced myself not to flinch and stayed statue still.

“Not gonna lie. The sound of my gun when it thudded against your skull and the sight of you blacking out got my dick hard.”

His sadistic smile, and the perverse gleam in his eyes, made my stomach churn, and bile burn the back of my throat. But when he slid his finger down my cheek and to my chest before inching closer and closer to my nipple, I nearly threw up.

Clenching my jaw, I lurched as far away from him as the ropes would allow and growled, “Get your fucking hands off me.”

Fury crawled across his face as he jerked his hand back and balled up a fist.

As he drew back his arm, time slowed again.

Though I knew I couldn’t escape his wrath, I thrashed and tugged against the biting rope before whipping my face away from him and pressing my cheek into the pillow. Then I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to steel myself for the impact.

As his brutal punch connected with my mouth, fireworks exploded behind my eyes. Blades of white-hot agony sliced through my flesh, blood, and bone. My futile fight had been for nothing.

The taste of blood stained my tongue as an inhuman wail of pain tore from my throat.

Tears spilled from my lashes. The blistering sparks of pain were still ricocheting through me when I felt Wesley launch from the bed.

Terrified he was off to find something more vicious than his fist, I ignored the pain still hammering through me, and the blood spilling down my chin and pooling at my neck. Blinking at the tears blurring my vision, I watched him pace back and forth across the room, muttering to himself, and dragging a hand through his hair.

While Wesley conversed with the gremlins in his mind, I gingerly swiped the tip of my tongue over my burning lip. When I discovered a Grand Canyon sized gash in my flesh, I nearly retched. Using my teeth, I scraped the blood off my tongue and let it flow down my chin with a shudder.

Wesley suddenly paused. Nostrils flaring, he held me with a hateful glare before storming to the ensuite. Then, clutching a towel, he returned to the side of the bed.

“Great. This is just great,” he bit out. “Look what you made me do. You’re bleeding again. Now I have to keep you here longer, you stupid cunt.”

WhatImade you do? I didn’t make you do shit, you demented fuck.

The words seared the tip of my tongue, along with the urge to spit a wad of blood in his face.

When he tossed the towel on my chest and pulled a knife from his pocket, raw terror slammed through me. Total insanity had finally swallowed him whole.

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