Page 21 of Tempting Fate

I’m out of control and ready to rip him apart with my bare hands.

I want to hit him, choke him, humiliate him… kill him.

I want him to feel everything he made me feel before I end him.

Always one step ahead of me, Alex ducks my follow-up punch and grasps me by the throat. He subdues me with little effort. Forcing me onto my tiptoes, he shoves me backward. My shoulder blades connect with the wall. The pain snaps me out of my reckless headspace, yet I continue to fight him as he lifts me until my feet are no longer touching the ground.

A sick sense of déjà vu engulfs me, my traumatised mind recognises this position from five years ago. I scratch at the fingers he’s used to encircle my neck. Two of my fingernails snap. After kicking at Alex’s shins, I attempt to headbutt him. I’m fighting for breath, black spots float through my vision, but I don’t give up.

I won’t.

I can’t.

Alex manhandles me, crowding me until I’m trapped between his heavy body and the wall. He licks the blood from his split lip, leaning down to whisper in my ear, “I’ll let you hit me once without punishment because I hurt you in the past. Just this once, though. Every time you step out of line from now on, I’ll punish you or one of your family.” He licks the shell of my ear before he continues with calm menace. “Remind me… how old’s Nate nowadays? He has his driver’s permit now, doesn’t he?”

My body falls still at his mention of my youngest brother.

Alex knows me too well.

I’ll do anything for my siblings. Sacrifice my safety. Destroy my dreams. Walk headfirst into an ambush if I thought it would save them. Last time, Alex used my twin against me, and it almost worked. It makes sense for him to broaden his range to encompass all my brothers.

“What about Zeke?” he asks. I lift my gaze to meet his. A manic gleam glistens in Alex’s dark eyes, lighting his devious expression from within. “I bet you’d drop to your knees and suck me off if I had a gun to his head.”

When I remain stoic in the face of his threats, he squeezes my neck tighter and continues to search for a way to break me. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Lily? You’re mine, and you’re going to stay with me this time. If you fight me on this, the people you love are going to get hurt, one by one, until you have no one left.” Alex leers down, staring at me with feral, glazed eyes. “Do I need to show you how serious I am?”

Straightening my spine as much as I can in this position, I fix unblinking eyes on his, and jut my chin. The strong, defiant, and wilful parts of my personality that I’ve spent the last five years rebuilding won’t let me bow down to this monster again. He can threaten my brothers, Zeke, Slash, Nadia, the entire club, as much as he wants, because I know that they’re safe this time.

Even though he’s managed to take me, he can’t get to them.

My abduction will have the entire club on red alert.

My fiancé. My brothers. My cousin. Slash. Cub. Hunter. My uncles. They’ll unravel his plans, then they’ll help Zeke put this madman in the ground for daring to come after me again. As angry as I may be at his secret keeping, I can feel it in my soul that my wild and unyielding fiancé is going to rescue me.

With this certainty infusing my spine with steel, I continue denying Alex the response he wants. “I don’t care if you’re serious or not, all I care about is never seeing your face again.”

A smile curls across Alex’s lips, delight igniting in his gaze when I make it clear that I’m not going to bend for him. “This is what I love about you, angel. You challenge me like no one else.”

Love?

He doesn’t know the first thing about it.

Nuzzling my ear with his nose, his free hand closes around my breast. Vomit rises in my throat. I swallow it down, refusing to give him the satisfaction of my fear. Alex drops his hand to pull my shirt from my waistband, then he tugs hard. The buttons pop. My shirt falls open, exposing my bra to his gaze. Even as my mind warns me that I’m in a precarious situation, caught in a position that ended badly for me last time, I remain steadfast. I keep my gaze locked on his, unblinking and stoic. The arsehole tweaks my nipple, pinching the sensitive nub until it goes hard, then he twists until I whimper.

“Come on, angel… admit that I’m right. Bend for me.” Alex’s voice is tender, almost loving, a contradiction to his nasty touch and his even nastier words. “Bow down. Show me that you understand that you’ll lose everyone if you refuse to submit to me.”

I shake my head, not only at his threat, but also to clear the pain.

After licking the shell of my ear, he sinks his teeth into my lobe with enough force to cause maximum pain without breaking the skin. I try to stay silent, to absorb his savagery without reacting, until he bites down again and blood trails along my jaw. It drips down my throat. Alex saws his teeth over the wound, and I scream. The noise is caught in my throat by Alex’s choke hold, a harsh, suffocating sound that makes him smile. He laps at the blood, tracing the strained cords of my neck with his tongue before he encourages my acquiescence. “You can do it, angel… make this end. Drop to your knees for me.”

As the initial flare of pain in my ear recedes, I regain my will to fight. I pull against the hand around my throat and stomp on his foot with as much force as I can manage. Alex barely acknowledges my attack, except to slam me back against the wall when I try to knee him in the groin. My bare foot has little effect against his loafer as I stomp his toes a second time, but when I manage to jam my knee into his inner thigh, his leg buckles, and his temper snaps.

Shaking with rage, Alex slams me against the wall twice more, not with his full strength, but enough to hurt, enough to make me rethink my bravado for a heartbeat. Black spots dance across my eyesight when he squeezes my throat to the point of blackout and shoves me against the wall for the fourth time. The back of my head bounces off the plaster and my legs turn to jelly. Unable to breathe, energy wilting, consciousness hanging on by a thread, I sag in his grip.

Alex uses my weakness to his advantage. He pushes up my skirt, wedging his thigh between mine. I squirm, trying to keep my legs shut, but he’s incessant, and manages to get his knee not only between my legs but against my core. I hoarsely scream at him to let me go, headbutting him as hard as I can when he doesn’t.

All I achieve is another bout of dizziness because he doesn’t stop.

Not even for a second.

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