Page 69 of Hate Me

But I also knew that it wasn’t just gonna go away right away. It needed time.

Just like a lot of things did at the moment.

Most immediately, the situation with Skylar that I was about to dip my toe into now.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait any longer than the twenty minutes that had already elapsed since I’d walked in here to her room and heard the shower running.

The bathroom door opened and my breath hitched as she stepped out wrapped in one of King Manor’s fancy black towels, her hair wild and towel-dried, still considerably damp.

She sensed me right away and jolted. “Shit. Announce yourself, will you?”

“I actually did twenty minutes ago. I knocked several times on the bedroom door, then I got worried when there wasn’t any answer, so I came in and that was when I realized you were taking a shower.”

“I can’t escape through that bathroom window, it has steel bars on it like the one in here adjacent to the bed. Brand-new it looks like, so Caspian obviously had them installed as soon as he got that lock on my whereabouts.”

“Well, you know he’s always prepared.”

“He considers me a threat. The chains made that clear.” She frowned at me for a moment. “Was it you or Sebastian who convinced him to remove them?”

“Me.”

“So, you’re the nice cop in this fucked-up situation of forced captivity?”

“This isn’t just about Cas not wanting you to take out Jett because it’ll interfere with his complex and long-time strategy against Elijah. It’s because he’s concerned about you, darling. The dark path you’re headed down, what it’s doing to you. Not to mention, it took two years for him to find you, he doesn’t want to lose you again. None of us do. It’s a big deal that you’re finally back here with us, especially when it felt like it could never actually be a possibility. This is a gift.” I grimaced. “Unfortunately, in your current state, you can’t recognize that. You won’t allow yourself to for fear that it will compromise your mission.”

“Being here has already compromised it. I missed my window to continue tracking Jett. Before you interfered the other night, I’d managed to get intel out of his new recruits, but it was time-sensitive. The window has closed. Now, to find him again, to get back on his trail, it’s gonna take time—days or even weeks, maybe—when I could’ve already been right there and ended this fucking thing.”

She growled as she strode to the bed where her clothes were neatly laid out—a pair of black bootcut pants, a vibrant-blue off-the-shoulder-top, and a silky bra and panties, along with a pair of studded ankle boots on the floor at the foot of the bed. They were all part of the closet full of clothes that Cas had bought for her when she’d stayed over that weekend and several days here and there afterward. It had been him hoping that she’d spend more and more of her time here with our foursome.

It was painful how badly that had gone the other way.

She opened her towel, baring her naked body all in one shot.

Off my noticeable reaction, my eyes bulging and my cock reacting for me too, her lip curled and she asked in a seductive tone, “Come here for a hate-fuck too, did you?” She rolled her eyes, switching it off in the very next second in a really jarring way, as she slid her panties on, then snatched up her pants. “You know, it would’ve been a timesaver to just take all of you at once, instead of you each paying me these one-on-one visits.”

“No hate-fuck for me, I’m afraid.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “No?”

“I don’t like the emptiness. There’s nothing to feed off. Everything is just dialed to that one bitter emotion and there’s nothing else there to work with.” I pushed off the wall. “But, just so you know, what happened between you and Bastian wasn’t just a hate-fuck to him.”

“Well, it needs to be.”

“For his sake, right? More than yours?”

“For both of us. All of us. But, yeah, he can’t handle it. He couldn’t handle it back then and he certainly won’t be able to handle it now with all this other complicated shit between all four of us. He’s doing well now, it needs to stay that way for him.”

“You really can’t conceive of a life where he can do well with you being here with us? Come on, Skylar, you know it’s a possibility. It just needs to be done differently this time.”

She put her bra on, securing it and concealing her lovely breasts from my view.

I pushed past my desire for her, knowing even though she was clearly pushing for that from me, likely to throw me off-kilter so we wouldn’t have to get into what really mattered here, that I didn’t want it like this. I wasn’t Bastian. He’d take whatever he could get from her, his obsession obviously having reignited the moment he’d laid eyes on her again. But, for me, I needed to connect with something beyond just the physical. Especially when it came to her and what she’d come to mean to the three of us.

“I’m not back here for that,” she grunted as she pulled her shirt on, then sat on the edge of the bed to put on her socks beside her boots. “In fact, I’m just back here against my will. It’s just temporary.”

“So, your goal is to kill Jett, then what? Go back to that safehouse and live out your life alone and bored doing nothing, retired from everything and the world by extension?”

She put on her boots, finishing getting dressed, then walked to me as she fluffed out her hair. Getting right up in my space, her eyes burned into mine as she told me, “Taking out Jett will lead Elijah to me. He’ll come for me.”

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