Page 27 of Poison Vows

Without me even voicing it, he accurately pinpointed my pain is also from what almost happened to me last night.

It was horrific, yes, but why is he ignoring the more prominent agony in me?

My backside is on fire but in this position, I can feel Emmett’s hardness against my stomach.

Slowly, hesitantly, I pull back to look at him with my tear-glazed eyes.

His high cheekbones are tinged with color, but in his dark-forest green orbs, there’s concern, curiosity, and something completely disquieting that makes my breath catch.

I don’t know what he’s thinking, but it’s as if he’s waiting for something as he looks at me.

He’s stroking my still painful and exposed ass slowly, letting me study him.

He doesn’t move or say anything when I reach for his face with trembling fingers.

Gently, tentatively, I run my fingers over his well-maintained eyebrows, then his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, and then his lips.

I stare into his eyes, the euphoria making me a fool, and a very brave one at that.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice sounding like gentle waves crushing softly on the beach.

It breaks me.

“Do you really hate me this much?” I whisper brokenly. “You really don’t feel anything for me, huh?”

“Angel…” he says gruffly, hugging me tighter, pulling me closer. It’s addictive and treacherous.

“You want me to marry him?”

“I want you totellthem that you’re marrying him.”

“Because I’m nothing to you,” I whisper.

Brokenly, I twine my arms around the neck of my torturer, sinking my fingers into his hair and cling to him, desperate for something my body instinctively knows only he can give.

Without thinking, I lean in even closer until our foreheads are pressed together.

“Our unbreakable contract,” I whisper past my dry throat. “I know what I want.”

Emmett is silent for a while before he speaks in a husky tone that pours over my skin like honey.

“What do you want?”

I hold his gaze, our foreheads still pressed together.

When I don’t say anything, he says, “Anything you want, I’ll give it to you. If you want revenge on them, you don’t even need to say it. It’s going to happen. Do you want someone’s head delivered to you on a silver platter? Do you want answers? I’ll get them for you. If it’s my head you want, please be patient. I’ll have it delivered to you soon.”

He says that last part so solemnly, unaffected, and cold that I freeze.

“Anything you want, or need, or desire, I’ll fulfill it for you.”

I’m not shocked by his words. Emmett has always been absolute when it comes to everything he does.

He never gives his word lightly and he has never dishonored a commitment.

Because to him, everything is nothing. The world is like dust to the unattached.

Nothing matters.

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