Page 49 of Echo
That was a sick promise that didn’t deserve the value I was already mentally absorbing. The truth was that I missed that attitude. Echo was just a lot more transparent than even my father was about it.
There would always be pain. The only difference would be where it came from.
He set me slowly on my feet. I used him to stay steady when I stumbled. He went to his knees before me and hugged my waist. “You understand me.”
I dropped my head between his antlers to rest against his forehead.
He must have been so lonely. The monster of the woods. The outcast of his clan. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the reason I could see how broken he was because I’d made a career out of making excuses for broken, lonely men.
And I clearly still hadn’t learned my lesson.
All I could think about was how maybe with the right company, I could soothe the monster and make him better.
A concept that had hurt me more times than I could count.
Chapter 18:
Icookeddinner,asthe monster standing in my kitchen watched me like some kind of bodyguard.
“Do you eat your meat cooked?”
“Don’t worry about me, Little Rabbit.”
“Will you answer my question?” I snapped at him.
“No.” He smirked.
“Was that so hard?”
“I feed off fear. Taking a slab of meat from an already dead creature won’t do it for me.”
He stepped to stand directly behind me, his lips grazing my shoulder. “I will feed myself. I want you to take care of yourself.”
I huffed. “Fine.”
He took that as permission to hold me against him and stay glued to me as I went around the kitchen.
“You need more meat,” he murmured over my shoulder as I chopped the salad.
He was right. One chicken breast wasn’t that much, at least not compared to the steroid juiced commercial chickens I wasaccustomed to seeing in the grocery store. But Mark’s words about how I needed to cut back the calories rang in my ears.
“I can stand to lose some weight.” The words came out without thinking, but the sudden swat to my already raw ass, rippling through my body, had me rethinking. The spot where he’d carved something into my hip burned and throbbed.
“Ow!” I yelled with anger and surprise.
“Don’t talk about what’s mine like that again.” The seriousness in his tone didn’t match his previous antics. The anger radiating through him reminded me of why he’d scared me at first.
I put my hands up in surrender. “Okay!”
His tense body slowly relaxed back into me. “More meat.”
“Don’t ever put your hands on me like that again.” I added one of the chicken breasts I’d intended for him in the pan to make him happy, then whirled on my heel.
“I’ve done way worse, and you didn’t even flinch.” His serious gaze bore into me, and I could swear he was studying my thoughts. “Why is this a line for you?”
I stuttered, caught off guard by his serious inquiry. I expected him to laugh at me or grin in amusement. “I don’t know.”
“Think about it.”
