Page 92 of Love Bites Extra Hard

Avery clearly wanted a big lie. One that would’ve changed things if I shared the truth, the way it had when I hid what we were to each other.

There was an obvious one. I was reluctant to share it, but she didn’t trust me at the moment. If I ever wanted that back, I had to trust her first.

“You can’t tell her this,” I warned.

Suddenly, I had her full attention.

We turned a corner, and I saw a door that I knew led into a storage room. I towed her toward it, and she made a sound of surprise when I pulled it open and revealed a room stocked full of toiletries. There were some cleaning supplies too, but it was mostly an empty room we’d filled with things we may need in case of an emergency.

It was only one of many.

And there was a department for that too.

I pulled her inside with me, closing the door behind us. “You take this secret to the grave,” I warned.

She nodded, her eyes wide and slightly worried.

“When we caught Sylvester, he had a few journals full of pictures and descriptions of what he’d done to his victims. All of them had clearly been read frequently. It was something out of a fucking nightmare. Between those entries, the books were full of fantasies he had about what he wanted to do to Stella. The ways he’d hurt her, and more. I kept them until everything was figured out, and burned them afterward. I never told anyone else about them.”

Her eyes widened. “How bad were they?”

“Worse than you can ever imagine.” My chest rumbled dangerously. “She thinks he just used her to protect his identity, but it’s a fucking lie. She was his main target. The one he wanted to kill the most. The reason he started in the first place. If she knew…” I shook my head.

“She’d blame herself even more than she already does,” Avery whispered.

“Exactly.”

“She can’t know. We can never tell her.”

I shook my head. “We take it to the grave.”

She met my eyes. There was uncertainty in her gaze, but iron, too. “I didn’t tell my sisters about Wendell,” she said softly. “They would’ve blamed themselves for not realizing what was going on, and I couldn’t let them do that.”

“What happened with him?” I asked the question carefully. I didn’t want to scare her away. Especially not while emotions were running high because I had hidden the truth from her.

Her gaze fixed on my shoulder.

She bit her lip.

“You don’t have to tell me.” I put a hand on her waist, unable to resist touching her in some way. “But you know it won’t change the way I feel about you.”

“What if it might?”

The uncertainty in her eyes made me want to find a way to kill the bastard again.

And kiss the hell out of her.

“Then you’d better tell me while you’re still trying to get rid of me, huh?”

She gave me the tiniest of smiles before the expression vanished. “Wendell was… dominant. And charming. Very charming. We met at a bar, when my sisters and I went out to feed. Blair stayed home, and Izzy stayed with her. We never left her alone, and Blair only fed a fraction as often as the rest of us. Clem and Zora were off with other guys when I met him. He was a werewolf, but he had connections. He borrowed a room from a vampire friend. We slipped inside together, and fucked. It was the first time I really, truly enjoyed sex, and I wanted more. So we made a plan to meet up again.”

I forced myself to remain calm. I knew my possessiveness was ridiculous at the moment. Avery was mine. The fucker from her past was dead, and he was less than nothing to her.

“It went on for months,” she admitted. “Just once a week. I told myself and my sisters that it was just to feed, but they called him my boyfriend. And they weren’t wrong. The first time he invited me to his place, I was excited to go. I thought it was the next step, you know? But when I got there the first night, his personality had changed. I blamed myself for it. I was nineteen, and I didn’t know better. If he was cruel, it was my fault for being ridiculous, or not thinking hard enough about something. The first time he hit me, I tried to leave—but he had learned about my sisters. He threatened to hurt them. So I stayed.”

I stepped closer, and she put her arms around my waist, pulling my body to hers. She wanted support, and I would never deny it.

“How long did it last?” I asked.

---