Page 100 of Quinlan

Water drips from my body to the marble floor while Damien walks off to the vanity.

Not a word comes out of him when he’s back. He dries my body with the softest towel. Damien doesn’t stop there. He stands behind me, going through the knots in my hair. Carefully. With a brush.

That they bought for me.

Who is this man? Who arethey?

“Damien?”

He isn’t gentle anymore when he puts the brush on the vanity.

He’s tense, the air in the room crackling. Damien spins me to him, and his eyes are cagey. The dangerous smirk is plastered in place.

My own defenses rise. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re catching on, darling. You didn’t do a thing. But I’m hurting him through you. Because he and his dead wife were monsters instead of foster parents. For me and two other kids. Laurel and Jagger.” Damien’s gaze hardens the moment he saystheir names. He’s not just dangerous anymore, he’s mean. The man who bit me. The man who took pleasure in kidnapping me. “Story time over. You’re going to eat, and that’s an order.”

An order.

“No.” I narrow my eyes. “Story time isnotover.”

“Actually, it is.” He gestures to the door. “Go. Get dressed before Rome and Liam are home. Get ready for dinner.”

The pain in my chest doesn’t hurt that bad. It doesn’t. The verbal slap doesn’t sting. The thought of what Damien and his foster siblings had gone through doesn’t bother me.

I don’t feel anything at all.

I try my best to have my tone reflect how much I don’t care. “I don’t respond well to assholes.”

“Wonderful, darling.” In one elegant swoop, he throws me over his shoulder. We’re headed back to my room. My prison. “Since I don’t respond well to brats.”

My thigh, where he bit me, hurts whenever it touches Damien’s body. My breasts are sore. My heart, God, fuck, it does hurt. I don’t want him to shut me out. To stop talking to me.

I thought we were getting somewhere. I thought I could help him. I could help him fix whatever Rex did to him. I would’ve told him that I don’t condone it, any of it.

Rex hurting kids.

I shiver at that. I… Fuck.

Damien places me down at the doorway to my bedroom. His thumb brushes my tattoo. His eyes are as harsh as ever, but his touch is soft. I don’t think he even notices that he’s doing that.

“Good.” My mind is a mess. I’m exhausted. Wrung out. The tightness in my chest becomes insufferable. “So, this brat and this asshole will go their separate ways and won’t meet at dinner.”

“Quinlan.” His eyes focus on me. “There’ll be consequences if you don’t show up.”

“You keep forgetting something.” One, two, three, and I’m inside the bedroom. My fingers curl around the door handle. “I’m here of my own free will. I’m not your captive.”

“Oh, but you are,” he says as I close the door in his beautiful face. “The sooner you realize it, the better.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Quinlan

My stomach grumbles. Hasgrumbled over the last hour.

I roll on my back, staring at the fabric draped over my beautiful four-poster bed in my beautiful room.

Room. Ha.

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