Page 32 of The Hand that Frays

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. It’s deafening in here.” I tap my temple as his hand cloaks my throat, his darkness almost palpable through the thrumming pulse inside.

He squeezes, and the edges of my vision blur as I smile.

“Were you given evidence I was not?”

I shake my head. “No, sir,” I whisper.

He growls.

He loves it when I submit to him, even the slightest bit.

“Then what makes you say this case isn’t cut and dry?”

“The fact that my gut is twinged with a feeling I can’t shake,” I get out as he gives me the space to do so, his hand opening to allow me to breathe.

His brows furrow. “And you trust this gut of yours?”

A wicked simper curls my lip upward. “It led me toyou, madman. It told me to bend over that couch and open myself to you like a flower. To let you fuck that beautiful cock into me as deep as you could get it. To crawl to you until my knees were bloody.”

His face dips toward mine, his forehead pressing into my own. “You know how to reel me back, don’t you? You see the deranged, dark side of me, and your pretty fucking words are the lure you pull me back in with.”

I lean forward as much as I can against his hold on my neck, trying my damnedest to kiss him. “Please,” I beg.

My core is aching, and my knees are warbling. A spine-curling shiver makes its way through me as he acts as if he’s going to kiss me, and then he pulls back.

“Bad girls don’t get what they want,” he teases, licking the seam of my lips, only to tighten his hand on my throat.

My body answers with panic flooding it as I thrash against him.

He stays steady, the need to kill floating on the surface of his eyes as he stares at me while I struggle.

There he is.

My Butcher.

“When I let you go, I want you to kneel at my feet. I want that pretty mouth of yours open and ready to take my cock inside it. No more words. No more bullshit. You suck your husband’s cock like a good little whore, or I’ll leave you in these woods to fucking rot.”

His words liven something in me. Lunacy swirls in my mind, and my body only drums harder at the idea that he’d kill me and leave me for the scavengers.

This sick part of me is his creation, and I can’t bring myself to hate it.

Even when I should.

He lets go of my throat, and I fight to breathe.

My knees quiver as I drop to them.

The forest floor is wet and cold, but I ignore the feeling against my flushed body as the wetness seeps into the knees of my jeans.

Opening my mouth as I grapple for air through my nose, I look up at my husband.

He steps into me, his hand coming down and grazing my face.

“You’ll always be my stupid girl, headstrong. But when you submit to me…” He inhales a shaky breath that wavers even more on his exhale. “When you fall to your knees at my feet like a whore, my whore, it’s fucking enchanting; mind-boggling.”

His praise and pretty words rake my flesh as if they have sharp nails on the ends of their fingers, and I shake against them.

Letting my face go, he pulls his cock out of his jeans and strokes it in front of my face a few times. With one hand, he leans against the tree at my back; with the other, he strokes his beautiful length as it drips pre-cum from the head.

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