Page 46 of Unhinged Cravings
She laughed and reclined back with me. “No clue, but I’m glad I don’t have to clean that thing.”
We laid there on the floor of the foyer, staring at the chandelier and talking until a shadow passed over us.
“What the fuck are you two doing?”
Jill hopped up. “Sorry, Cade. I was keeping her company.”
“Doing what? Staring at the ceiling? And her I expect to be sprawled out on a floor, but you?”
“Hey,” I complained, not moving from my spot.
“Sometimes it’s fun to just let go. You should try it sometime. Might do that grumpy demeanor some good,” she told him.
“My grumpy demeanor is necessary.” He turned his eyes to me before saying, “Pack is loose in the kitchen, Jill. You may want to stop him before he leaves a mess.”
“Damn it,” she mumbled. “I’ll kill him if he so much as drops a crumb. I just cleaned in there.”
She was off, running to the kitchen, leaving me alone with Emerson. His eyes flicked to the door, then back to me.
“I debated it.” Guilt tainted the admission, and I wondered why I had guilt about escaping captivity.
“So you sat in front of the door?”
“Eh, I couldn’t rationalize why I wouldn’t just leave, so I sat down to contemplate my sanity until Jill came.”
His cornfield blue eyes studied me. “And what conclusion did you come to?”
Grinning, I said, “That chandeliers are overrated.”
His serious expression broke, and his laugh filled the space. I thought it might be the most perfect sound, and I didn't want him to stop laughing.
“Agreed, and I told the decorator that when I had the house built.”
Frowning, I said, “And the decorator lived to walk away?”
He gave me a crooked smile. “I never said that. But the damn thing was up, and I wasn’t about to waste money taking it down. I had fun shoving the leftover crystals into his eye sockets, though.”
My stomach lurched and his smile grew.
“That’s disgusting. Did you really do that?”
A shrug and a glint in his eyes told me I would get no confirmation. Shit, maybe I should have run. Morally gray was easier in books. This was real life, and this man just admitted that torturing someone was fun. That should have been a sign I was losing my mind. Maybe once my uncle and Greyson freed me, these confusing emotions would fade.
He stooped over me, his face coming into better view, and the thoughts quieted. My stomach settled, and my doubts stilled. No, I didn’t think anything would fade once I was free. In fact, I suspected it would worsen.
“I’m not a nice guy, Ava. I’m the monster under your bed, the stalker in your closet, the beast in the woods.”
Out of instinct, I reached my hands up and draped my fingers down his stubbled jaw. “No, you’re not my monster. I’ve seen monsters and you’re not one. Not to me, anyway.”
It was difficult to read his eyes as emotion shifted through them, landing on something close to adoring surprise.
“Why didn’t you run, Ava?”
The truth was too hard to admit. That I was falling for him against every screaming voice in my head. “I don’t know what’s happening here, Emerson, but it’s too hard to run from. If that door had been wide open, I don’t know if I would have run through it.”
A crinkle formed between his eyes. “Why?”
“Because I think we’ve both been searching for too long.”
