Page 224 of Hate Mates

“She can wear mine.”

“Are you serious?” she asks me. I nod. Dead serious. If she’s to be mine, she needs nothing more than what I have for her. And that includes the fucking clothes she’s going to wear.

“Very.”

“Luc, come on. She needs clothes,” she tells me once more. I shake my head and shut the door in her face, listening to her mouth on the way back to her room. When I turn around, I see she’s looking at me now.

“Do you not sleep?”

“Not much.”

“Why?”

“Do you care?” she asks me. I shrug, wondering why I actually give a shit what she has to say. “When you live with a man like my father, you don’t rest much.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I ask, not wanting to play head games with her.

“I would assume he’s much like your father. With men of his own,” she says. Is she saying his men touched her? They put their hands on her? Not that I care, I shouldn’t care, but something is gnawing at my insides about what she’s saying.

“They hurt you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Does it matter?”

“It does if you want them dead,” I tell her.

“You’d kill them?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I ask.

“You don’t even like me,” she adds, which is true. I don’t like her much, but that doesn’t mean I would let men touch her. This arrangement has apparently been in the works for some time, which means when they did whatever they did to her, they knew about me.

“Doesn’t change the facts.”

“Which are?”

“We’re to be married and I won’t have the woman I’m to marry being touched by other men,” I nearly growl at her. She looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind, and maybe I have.

“Why can’t I have clothes?” she asks, no doubt hearing what Patty had said.

“You don’t need them.”

“Why?”

“You ask a lot of questions, you know that? Is this your way of tormenting me?” I ask her. She shakes her head slowly as she looks at me. “You don’t need them. In this room, you don’t need clothes. If I want to see you, I want to see all of you. If I want to fuck you, I want access to your body at all times. Is that so hard to understand?”

“You’re crazy,” she whispers.

“Am I? I don’t think you’ve begun to see crazy yet.”

“What do you plan on doing to me?” Now, a sick smirk crosses my face as I look at her. I walk closer to her, reach out, and run my fingers along her shoulder.

“I’m going to ruin you, Kitten.”

Chapter Four

Marriage. What a load of shit. I don’t want to be married. I don’t want her. I don’t want anything to do with this fucked up plan my father has, either. That man’s words ring in the back of my mind over and over again. My father has other plans. Other plans to do what? Other plans for her? For me? It wouldn’t surprise me if he wanted to marry the girl himself, the selfish, sick bastard.

I rub the back of my neck as my new little Kitten walks through the room after leaving the bathroom. She has no clothes on, just like I told her. I take her in, and I can see the bruises, the marks on her flesh, the scars.

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