Page 146 of Consume Me

I only want Mia’s touch. I want my woman. I refuse comfort, knowing she’s in the hands of my madman father and his diabolic best friend, Felix.

“Blake,” Abi says softly from behind me, but I can’t look at her. I am not in control of my body anymore. It doesn’t want to function without Mia.

“I don’t know how to get through to him,” Bailey says through a wail.

Abi gets in my face and slaps me, hard enough that my head reels to the side.

“Wake up. This is not you. Stand up, and let’s get her back.”

She grabs my hand, her voice softer now. “Please. I can’t lose you…”

Too, that’s what she doesn’t say, but it hangs in the air between us, heavy with implications. Mia being taken has nothing to do with a fucked up initiation. They tried to kill us once already.

Celine wraps her arms around me. “Mia loves you so damn much, Blake. She deserves the best, and you’re the best for her. So please, let us find the woman you love and get my best friend back.”

“I love her,” I say and choke on the words. Like a fucking coward, I said it to her every night in her hair, on her neck, on her chest, and every inch of her body, yet never to her face. And now I might never get the chance.

“She knows that, Blake. Believe me. And we all do, too,” Abi says, embracing me as well. All three of them hug me tightly, trying to hold me together. No one but Mia can.

The thought of her snaps me out of this debilitating funk. I’m going to fucking annihilate them. And if I don’t find her intime, I will follow her into the afterlife. One way or another, I will spend this life with her or whatever comes after.

With my focus back on what I need to do, determination flows through my veins, pumping me up.

“Let’s find her,” I say, and all three of them breathe a sigh of relief.

As we step into the living room, Kaden searches around and says, “There is no sign of a struggle, so they didn’t take her from the inside.”

Dane picks up her phone from the floor and says, “She wanted to call you, but something else must have caught her attention.”

What could make her leave her sanctuary?Mia would not go out without a reason. She’s too smart to put herself in danger like that.

Hunter yells, and we follow him outside where he stands next to a body-shaped indentation in the snow.

“This one is bigger than my sister’s.”

I can make out three sets of boot prints and a smaller pair resembling sneakers.

“They used someone to lure her out,” I say.

“Of course my good intentioned sister would help others.”

“Let’s split up and follow the leads,” Kaden says.

Hunter and I take the trail through the woods that doesn’t add up, heading down the path that leads to the college.

As we walk, he says, “It’s a student.”

“And a girl.”

I slam my fist into the bark of a tree hard enough it drops a coat of snow on my head.

“She’s my twin, my other half, the better half, but if I can keep my rage under lock, I expect you to do the same,” Hunter says.

“You should hate me. I failed.”

“Blake, I don’t care about anything but finding my sister. Mia is in love with you, and I know you feel something for her. I never had a problem with you or your relationship, but I had to see how serious you were about her.”

“There are no more serious intentions than mine. And what I feel for her is more than love, got it?”

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