Page 117 of Wicked Sins

“Hey, darling. Speak to me.” I cup her face and turn her to look at me. “Are you okay?”

I know I didn’t imagine her coming. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so violent. There wasn’t blood, but I must have hurt her—

“He raped me,” she says quietly, woodenly.

In that mixed up, fucked up moment, I think she’s talking about me. I sit up in a rush. “Candy, I didn’t mean—”

“He gave me pills.”

I shake my head, my eyes sticking closed for a moment as I fight through the lingering throes of lust clinging to my mind. “Who did? What are you—?”

She rolls her head to the side, and watches me for a moment with an unreadable expression. Then she turns her back on me and curls into a ball. “Hold me,” she says.

I immediately scoop her up into my arms. “Candy, talk to me.”

“Not now,” she says. “Just hold me.”

My mind reels, but my body just wants reprieve.

Rain patters incessantly on the window pane. This close, I can feel her heart beating. Her lungs expanding.

As she relaxes and lets go, so do I.

My mind wanders back to the magazine. To that locked drawer. To the bottle of pills.

Pills.

She doesn’t know what’s she’s saying.

It’s not true.

Can’t be.

But…

Why would she lie?

Chapter Forty-Seven

Candy

Agrumble of lightning brings me to the surface. Joah’s room is briefly illuminated by a far-off bolt of lightning. We’re under his quilt, his large frame curled around mine, our naked bodies flush.

No one can find us like this.

I have to move, but the last thing I want to do is to leave Joah’s side.

Paralyzed, terrified, there’s nothing I can do but soak in the moment.

Joah’s smell.

His strength.

The flutter of his breath against the back of my neck.

You’re perfect.

I’ve never felt this safe around anyone before. This…comfortable. And I know I shouldn’t because this is wrong. What we have, what we did…

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