Page 89 of Crave Me

As everyone rose from their seats and went to get to their respective tasks, I caught Asher studying me curiously.

When he saw me notice, he merely smiled, then headed on out of the room to get down to business. Weird.

Pain.

Punishment.

Vengeance.

It was wrath and ruin.

It was unchecked brutality.

Merciless.

Depraved.

It was beyond lethal justice.

It was a fucking reckoning.

I squeezed my eyes shut and stared at the targets in the distance, my knives buried deep in the hard wood.

My grip on the final throwing knife that I’d yet to toss was verging on painful, my hand shaking with the furor coursing through me.

More than furor, actually. So much.

I could feel that blackness infecting me, trying to crawl beneath my skin and poison me with its toxicity.

It promised the power that I craved.

It promised an end to this war.

A means to bring Caleb back to us.

A means to destroy our enemies with a brutal finality.

We’d finally be safe.

But the price… the price was too steep.

The part of me that was still in control and fighting against that dark creeping up on me knew that.

And I had to hold onto it, now more than ever.

The guys had worked so hard to help me through the bad state I’d been in before. I couldn’t fall victim to it again. No matter how hard things were.

“Skylar.”

I reacted on instinct and spun around wielding my knife.

I realized too late that the fucked-up part of me had taken the lead with the intent to inflict damage.

Fortunately, the potential victim of that damage reacted lightning-fast and blocked my blade from making contact.

Two rapid-fire moves followed that dislodged it from my grip.

“Sorry,” I choked, staggering back a step as I looked to see Asher Monroe standing there spinning my blade in his hand. “I didn’t mean—I wasn’t… I was in—”

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