Page 127 of Tempest

“You preferred it that way, once upon a time.”

I slide off the bed. “I’m different now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. You’re still afraid of the dark, aren’t you?”

After pulling on my pants and sliding through my shirt, foregoing the underwear I can’t find, I pause at the foot of the bed. “You are the dark, Tempest, and I’m not afraid of you.”

He smiles, in beautiful repose, naked and restful in bed. “Maybe you are progressing.”

Or maybe I’m declining. I shouldn’t love the man you’ve become.

“I came to tell you about Clover, and I have. I’m … gonna go.”

His features war with one another, debating whether or not to stop me. With Rio and Professor Morgan downstairs, it’s unlikely he will. After all, Tempest isn’t supposed to want me any more than I want him.

“Goodbye, Tempest.”

“Princess,” he demures, then strokes a hand up his hardening dick, telling me what I’ll be missing.

I pulse, swell, and ache from his love bites and thrusts, yet I salivate for more. Spinning on my heel, I get out of there before my body gets any more ideas.

The cottage is as quiet as I entered it, my footsteps clomping down the stairs and into the main area. Rio and Morgan have left.

Telling myself this is the final moment I’ll spend in this haunted, violent home, I take my last look, ingraining Tempest’s comfort zone in my mind for later thought.

The hearth, spitting flame. The wingback chairs and extensive library. The coffee table where Clover and I asked the restless spirits to wisp through the cracks. Picture frames adorn the small tables by the chairs. I never took Tempest or Rio for family men. Curious, I move for a closer look.

Tempest said Professor Morgan was from a mafia family. The nephew to a kingpin. The gray-haired man with his arm slung around a young, un-tattooed Hunter doesn’t look anything like the fat, balding men in sweat-soaked suits ordering hits from a city steakhouse.

Squinting, I pick up the frame.

He looks familiar, though. Weirdly so. I don’t recall ever meeting Hunter’s family before. My father kept me mostly sequestered from any business with other powerful men.

But…

The flash of white, a lightning crack of clarity, cuts through the center of my skull and burns the backs of my eyes.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

I know this man.

I know him!

Because I saw him die.

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