Page 14 of Cruel Devil

Still not sure if it’s foreplay or a death threat. Feels a little like both. Either way, my underwear is getting damp. Savage has always had that effect on me.

“Promise me one thing before you kill me, okay?” The words practically fall out of my mouth, quick and desperate.

His eyes narrow. Which just makes him hotter. God, what the hell’s wrong with me? If he ends me here, now, my sisters will never be found. Yet here I am, fawning over him.

“Anything, Angel.”

“You’ll keep looking for them when I’m gone.”

I don’t know what he was expecting me to ask, but he frowns like I just told him I want a Viking funeral at Loch Ness.

“Your sisters?”

“Yes, my fucking sisters.” I calm myself, give him a tremulous smile. “Dear.”

He rips the gun away, steps back, and runs both hands through his hair in a quick, frustrated swipe.

“Jesus, Nyx. This? Again?”

“Yeah, this. Kinda always.”

“That’s why you ran?”

He glares at me as I slowly turn around, keeping my hands flat against the wall, primed to push away and bolt if he turns psycho again.

“I had a good reason. You got a message.”

He drops his hands, stares at me. “What?”

I hold up my hands, slowly easing down so I can pick up his jacket. “On your phone. You got a?—”

The gun is instantly in my face. “Toss it over.”

I do as he says. He picks it up, biting down on the collar so he can rummage in his pockets without taking his eyes—or gun—off of me.

Fuck it, he doesn’t even blink. The gun never wavers. And that tanned finger with its faded tattoos stays curled around the trigger.

He finds his phone, drops his jacket back to the ground as he unlocks it, and glances down at the screen.

I have a chance, and I fucking take it. Who knows, it might be the last I ever get. I lunge away, hands clawing against the wall to speed up.

There’s a quiet crack, like someone setting off a firecracker in the distance.

Plaster hits my face.

I drop into a half-crouch as I wait for pain to flood out from a bullet wound somewhere on my body. But when I feel nothing, my eyes flutter open again.

There’s a hole in the wall five inches from where my head had been.

I let out a jagged breath, stirring a strand of dirty-blond hair hanging in my face.

“J-Je-sus,” I stammer, turning to gape at Savage.

“Stay where you are,” he says calmly, his eyes still glued to his phone. God, had he even been looking when he fired that shot?

I slowly straighten, swallowing down bile when I realize I nearly died.

He’s still busy with his phone.

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