Page 90 of The Sinner's Bargain

I had to keep my shit together.

I sucked in a breath and steeled down every drop of courage I had in me and faced the eyes watching me.

I turned to Oliver and Vance. “Stay here. If she returns, call me.”

Without waiting for anyone to say a word, I stalked out the doors. My feet ate up every inch of stone leading around the side of the house. I dug out my phone and flipped the light on, casting a dull glow across wet rocks and mud. Behind me, I could hear Cyrus following on my heels.

Night stirred as the wind picked up and a fresh helping of rain drizzled from the darkened heavens. My clothes were soaked before I even hit the base of the incline. The light bobbed and weaved in my hand as I took the only safe path into the gardens. All the others were blocked off or guarded so I knew she couldn’t have gone into the maze. If she was out there, she would have taken the side of the house to the iron gates which opened to the wide courtyard and fire pit. Part of me hoped that was where she was. Waiting for the rain to stop.

But the domed structure hunched against the elements, empty and still.

I didn’t let it get to me as I sprinted through to the other side and continued. My shoes clapped against the stone path winding amongst the trimmed bushes and moderately well-maintained grounds. I followed it around the shallow fountain with the thick lily pads and across the wooden bridge towards the lake.

“Where are the lights?” I yelled over my shoulder.

I heard Cyrus mutter into his phone and a moment later, strobes of light sliced through with a radiance that lit up the entire house and most of the grounds.

We didn’t use the lights. I couldn’t recall the last time they were ever on, but this was an emergency. I didn’t care if the entire world could see the house’s location.

The dirt path, manmade over years of trudging boots, followed the line around the lake. If Blue made it to the back, she would have had to take that route.

Unless she took the one headed towards the village, the voice in my head pointed out.

That was also a possibility, an equally terrifying one. The stretch of wilderness that separated Lacroix House from the adjoining village of seven hundred souls was full of wolves, bears and any number of other predators that someone like Blue could never defend herself against.

“Send someone towards the Widow’s Back,” I told Cyrus, gesturing in the direction of the village path.

I didn’t wait to see if the order was followed. I’d begun to jog through the heavy canopy of trees to the stones that lines the edges of the lake before a steep plummet over into cold, unforgiving waters.

“This fucking place is too big,” I hissed, mainly to myself.

“We know she’s here. She couldn’t have left without the alarms going off or the guards catching her,” Cyrus tried to assure me.

But her leaving was only a pinprick in the drop of things. There were so many more terrible and horrific things that could have happened. There were so many ways, so many places she could have died, and I may never find her.

Fuck!

I should have let her go.

I should have sent her back to wherever she came from the moment she woke up. I fucking knew what would happen if I kept her. If I fucking hoped. Lacroix men didn’t get happily ever after.

We didn’t get love.

We destroyed.

We ruined.

Still, I knew that when I found her, if she was still alive, I fucking knew with every piece of my dead, shriveled soul that I would still keep her. I would still hold on to her knowing I was going to get her killed because I was a selfish bastard, so desperate to have her in my life that the very idea of losing her in any capacity crippled me.

One thing was clear. Once I found her. Once I had made sure she was all right, I was going to fuck the shit out of her. I was going to tie her to my bed, and I was going to make her scream and beg. I was going to punish her for putting me through this in the only manner that was fitting.

Orgasms.

I was going to destroy her pussy until she couldn’t sit without remembering every sick, perverted thing I did to it. That she would beg me to do to it.

Mind set on my mission, I continued forward with a new purpose. A goal I fisted tight to my chest because come hell or high water, I was going to find her.

We circled the lake.

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