Page 146 of Hunting Pretty

I’d never stop paying for that.

Ava set aside her tea and hugged herself.

“So you… you killed your father because he was…” her voice trailed off, as if she couldn’t stand to say the words out loud.

I let out a sigh and rubbed my face. God, I suddenly felt so tired. Like I’d been carrying around this secret for years and it was so heavy.

I hadn’t wanted to share this with Ava.

Hadn’t wanted to burden her with it.

But now that she knew, there was a part of me that felt relieved that I would no longer have to carry this alone.

“Yes,” I admitted, my voice sticky with self-hatred. “Ikilled him.”

But the other piece of the story, the thing she couldn’t know, I slid that back into the recesses of my memory, guilt tasting bitter on my tongue.

“To protect me,” she injected, setting her mug aside and sliding her hands around my cheeks.

I nodded, leaning into her soft palms.

I’d doanythingto protect her. Keep secrets from her. Kill for her.

Kill my own father.

“I only wish I had done it sooner,” I admitted, my viciouswords juxtaposed against the tenderness at which I leaned my forehead against hers. “I wish he’d suffered more when he died.”

Perhaps I’d wanted to scare her. Perhaps if I showed her the darkness inside of me, she’d finally turn away from me. She’d run and never stop running. She’d be safe.

But she didn’t.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and drew in closer. “I don’t care. You did it to protect me. You killed him to protect me.”

I closed my mouth on hers, swallowing her protests, tasting her gasps. Need raced through me in an almost blinding surge.

But I stopped myself from losing control.

I promised myself I’d never lose control around Ava.

I deepened the kiss, grinding against her soft core as I pushed up her skirt to her hips. The moans she fed me could have sustained me for life.

I slipped a hand between us, finding her panties wet. I wasted no time, pushing them aside and spreading her wetness before slipping two fingers into her hot, wet pussy.

She moaned into my ear, her muscles tightening around me.

Fuck. I needed to be inside her. Now.

I unzipped myself, my fingers shaking from impatience and I lined up with her pussy entrance, the urge to just thrust almost overwhelming.

I pushed in, inch by inch, splitting her open.

I let out a groan. “My sweet girl.”

She tensed, her fingers gripping hard into my back.

Then I realized what I’d said. Hateful poisoned words. I hadn’t meant to.

Sweet girl. Sweet, sweet girl.That’s whathecalled her.

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