Page 120 of The Sinner's Bargain

“Cyrus, check the store then wait outside,” Thoran said without taking his eyes off me.

I didn’t watch the other man go. My whole world was staring back at me and all I wanted was to have his arms around me so I could assure myself he was okay.

“All right, my Little Blue. It’s just you and me now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THORAN

I hadn’t known what to expect when returning to Elysium Plains. I had a vision of Blue curled up on a sofa, lost in a book the way she was at the office, but the scene I stepped into was something else.

The first thing I’d noticed was the screaming. It had crashed through the door before I even reached it. Then it was the sight I ran in on.

I found Blue before anyone else. It was as if my eyes had built in homing sensors designed to find her in any situation. I found and locked in on her bent over another person, beautiful face a twisted mask of something I had never seen there before. An almost demonic sneer that curled her lips back over her teeth and crinkled lines across the bridge of her nose.

But it was the hate, the inferno of loathing in her eyes that stopped my feet. It was the low, shredding hiss of her words cutting into pandemonium that stilled my heart.

“If you ever mention his name again, even when you think you’re alone, I will find you and make you watch as I gut every person you love in front of you before hanging you by your intestines. Do you understand?”

Had I not seen that sight of her, had I not heard the words with my own ears, I never would have believed my little Blue capable of such rage.

Such violence.

Watching her in that form, that primal state, a fucking goddess unleashing vengeance...

If I hadn’t already been unimaginable in love with this woman, that would have done it.

I washed the blood from her hands and cleaned the thin slices running across already scarred flesh. A few were still bleeding. Tiny bubbles of crimson welling from the deeper ones.

I applied ointment and swaddled each palm in padding and gauze. Then placed band aids on the pad of her thumb and three of her fingers where she’d gripped the shard of glass against Jeannette’s throat.

For me.

My soft, sweet baby threatening to gut another person ... for me.

I’d never been so proud of anyone or more in love in my life.

Her small hands properly swaddled, I brought the knuckles to my lips. The fingers trembled.

I lifted my eyes to her face and started at the tears clinging to her lashes.

“Blue?”

A droplet escaped with the lowering of her chin. It landed on the back of her free hand and soaked into the gauze.

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