Page 105 of I Am Salvation

I know.

I just know that this Tully must’ve done something to deserve what Dragon did to him.

“You have to tell me, Dragon.”

He stops leaving the room but shakes his head without facing me. “I just told you. I took a life. I’m evil. I’m sin. Those things don’t change.”

“No, Dragon.” I get up out of the bed—shit, my ankle still hurts—and walk around to face him. “You need to tell me what Tully did to you.”

He turns his head away from me, dropping his gaze to the floor.

Just as I thought. Tully did something to Dragon. Something bad enough that Dragon wanted to harm him. And he waited until Tully was almost kicked out of the home so that Tully couldn’t retaliate.

That makes Dragon smart.

“Maybe he didn’t do anything,” Dragon says. “Maybe I didn’t like the way he looked at me.”

“I don’t buy it. You wouldn’t knife a seventeen-year-old in the stomach for looking at you the wrong way.”

He returns his gaze to mine, his eyes fiery. “Wouldn’t I?”

With all my heart and soul, I want to yell at him. I’d continue standing to face him, but my ankle is still smarting.

I slink back over to the bed and sit on the edge, sighing. “No, Dragon. You wouldn’t. No matter what you say, you’ll never convince me that that’s what happened. Now you tell me. You tell me what that piece of shit did to you.”

Then he looks at me. His hazel eyes are still full of fire.

But not the kind of fire from when he looks at me in anger or passion.

The kind of fire he must’ve been looking at Tully with that day.

“I’ve never said those words aloud, Diana. I’m sure as hell not going to say them to you.”

And again, his gaze…

That different kind of fire.

Something I’ve never seen before.

Even that first time, when he told me he was sin. That he was pure evil and all he would do was take me to hell…

Even then, his eyes weren’t this ferocious.

I should be frightened.

But instead? I’m squirming. My whole body has become an inferno, and all I want… All I need… Is this man.

Dragon inside me, taking me to the stars as he’s done before.

So that’s what I tell him.

“I need you. I want you. Now.”

He wrinkles his forehead. “You think that’s really what you want, Diana? You, with your sore ankle? With that scratch on your hand?”

“More than I want to live to see another day,” I grit out.

“I told you what I wanted to do to you. I told you I had visions of tying you up, having you lie down for my pleasure. Laying you out like a fucking feast.”