Page 35 of Into the Woods

“Tru!” Her name bursts from me full of panic.

She doesn’t spare me a glance until she’s locked within the prison of her captor’s arms. He lowers his lips to murmur something soft and lilting, a poem and a promise, against the shell of her ear. The soft smile she has for him battles with the pleading eyes she turns in my direction.

A battle rages inside me. Do I stay and try to drag her away from the man whose arms she willingly fell into? Or do I run, try to get myself to safety and then figure out how to come back for her?

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter.

Any decision is snatched away as Teague turns them and spirits her away from the growing tension.

A strong hand wraps around my wrist, holding me in place. In a burst of something I can’t even begin to name, I wrench my pitiful weapon from my pocket and slash it through the air toward Christophe, catching on his chest.

Bright red blooms, staining the front of his crisp white shirt. The blood spreads creating a work of abstract art on the pristine white canvas of fine linen. It would be beautiful if not for the fact that I likely just sealed my fate—or made it a whole lot worse.

Short, sharp breaths punctuate my wasted efforts to get free.

Christophe pulls me close, banding his arm around my lower back while maintaining hold of my wrist. I wriggle and strain,trying to put enough space between us to drive my knee into his crotch, but I can’t.

I lash out with my free hand, but he stops me again, grabbing that hand mid-strike and locking it behind my back with the other. There’s no way I can escape the hold he has on me.

Christophe wrenches the socket from my grip and tosses it away. “Didn’t know honeybees could sting,” he growls, swiping his hand through the crimson stain over the spot his heart should be because it’s obvious he no longer has one. He captures my jaw in his palm, smearing the blood down my neck until he finds my racing pulse. Then he squeezes.

Panic rips through me as I imagine him crushing the life out of me.

“Be careful, honeybee. You may have drawn blood first, but I promise you don’t want me to do the same to you. The blood I want to see, is blood you can’t afford.”

The words tumble from his lips in a haze as the edges of my vision pull in and the world goes dark.

Consciousness seeps back in as I’m laid gently on my bed. Christophe looms over me, fists planted firmly on the mattress to either side of my head.

“There she is,” he says as my eyes pop open. “What were you thinking,chéré? Did you really think you could get away? That I wouldn’t see you? There are cameras?—”

“Everywhere, Garrick told me,” I croak. As soon as his name passes my lips I try to sit up only to fall back into the plush pillows when the cage of Christophe’s arms keep me from moving. “Garrick…is he okay?”

“Pissed off like a bear who got his paw stuck in the beehive, but he’ll be fine.” He stands to his full height putting space between us.

In a really weird turn of events, I find I don’t like it. How crazy is it that I felt safe, almost protected, with Christophe’s heat swirling around me?

Chapter 16

Disappointment

Winnie

eighteen years old

And just like that,my high school graduation was added to that long list of life experiences blown off by my parents in the name of business.

More like drugs, sex, and money. But those were the tenets of their business, so…

The thing that made this one so hard to swallow was the absence of my best friend, my ride or die. Though seeing as how she had, in fact, almost died, I struggled with that particular phrase now.

Tru and I had been all set, our plans were solid and ready to be set in motion, until she disappeared without a trace.

Guilt nipped at my heels because I should have known something was off, that things weren’t right.

If I had been paying closer attention, I would’ve noticed the changes in her, in everything around us, really. But most of the changes were so small, too subtle.

Big changes happened when my father stopped having me meet hisfriendsin the alley behind his club. That was the first and last time I argued with my father in public. For the most part, I didn’t bother arguing with him in private after that either.

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