Page 89 of Pretty Pink Poison
“It still fuckinghurts,” I screamed. “And I want to be so close to death that my adrenaline has me shaking and crying and feeling like I’m not going to make it out so I forget that hurt. Drowned me in my goddamn fear of losing everything.” The words poured out of me like gasoline, every syllable daring him and him alone to strike a match.
“But you know you can’t lose a damn thing… Not when you’re with me, Pink,” he murmured, his thumb moving from my neck just to brush away a lone tear that escaped down my cheek before he leaned in and kissed me slow.
“So let me have it without the mask, Bane. Just once.”
But Bane didn’t move. He instead stood there, the storm of his own emotions filling the room. Then he shoved me back, letting go of me and paced away. His shirtsleeves were rolled up showing those tattoos I loved, and his veins stood out like rivers leading up, up, up where I wanted to go. I wanted to touch every part of him and see all of him if he’d let me.
When he turned back to me finally, I let my gaze travel back to that beautiful face of his. He had that look in his eyes, the one where a predator sees that their prey has finally stopped running. I’d succumbed to what we both knew I wanted. He let the silence stretch between us, now so comfortable in it. I knew he was mulling over our time together, considering what could be done now that we were in this deep. And then his voice carried quietly through the room, “I’d kill a man for you.Me. Gut him without thinking twice about it. And I considered doing the same to my own brother tonight, Bianca.”
He turned to walk over to me. When his chest met mine, I gasped, but he didn’t look like it had any sort of effect on him. “Bane—”
“This between us… It’s something I can’t control anymore. It’s something that consumes me and shifts my focus fromprotecting those around me. It’s a liability and a damn weakness.” His jaw worked up and down. “I don’t want to love.”
“But do you?”
He shook his head back and forth slowly. “No. Iwon’tlove you, baby girl. I refuse to.”
And those words hit me like a tsunami stealing away the imaginary life and dreams I’d built.
He dragged a hand over his face and when he opened his eyes, his blue stare was dead with apathy. He pulled his gun from where it was tucked at his back waistband, and I lurched back. “What are you doing?”
“What I should have done ages ago, Bianca.” He said my name like it was acid on his mouth. “You’ve been a poison that festers and rots me from the inside. You’ve turned me into what I shouldn’t be.”
“Bane—”
“Sit down and shut up,” he growled and pointed the gun toward the velvet chair in the middle of the dark room.
If I begged, I wondered if he would let me go. But his stare was suddenly full of a resentment I knew he wouldn’t let lie, and so I sat as he pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed a button. “Rafe, Bianca’s created a precarious situation that affects not only herself but our resort and name too.” He waited a moment. And then he met my eyes. “I intend to do what I should have a long time ago.”
And then he admitted what I thought he wouldn’t. “I’ve slept with her of course, but I’ve slept with enough women to know she’s not irreplaceable.” He hummed as his brother talked, and I glanced at the door to which he then walked over to block.
Fuck, I might die in the dark room tonight. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst way to go. I’d always wanted time in here with him alone. Time he never wanted to give me, and now he was offeringa way out, one I wanted if I had to endure him being with someone else.
“I don’t need our father’s or her father’s permission if you don’t.”
He nodded and then clicked off the phone.
“Bianca, I’ve tortured men for much less than what you did today.”
“What?” I whispered.
“You disrespected our family at that table.”
“That’s what you’re concerned about, after what I said to you?” My mouth almost dropped and then I couldn’t stop the words that shot out right after. “Every single one of you at that table deserved to be disrespected.” I lifted my chin and narrowed my eyes at him. “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
He came for me with the precision of a man who had murdered and who would murder again. He was going to take my damn life. I’d be the next freaking skull on his shelf, and I didn’t care.
Bane Black was a psychopath and proud of it. I loved it about him. Loved him even if he didn’t love me back.
He yanked me up by my neck and threw me against the wall. My back hit it with a thud, and his other hand brought the gun up under my chin—hard enough to make me remember how small and fragile my life was.
His stare was ice cold, his voice a blade slicing over my skin. “You’ve caused us enough disrespect and me enough pain that even my brother wants nothing to do with you,” he said, low and lethal.
My pulse ricocheted. He’d just called his brother. He’d confirmed it. Permission.
Maybe he truly did care that little about me. Maybe I was just a pawn, and they’d finally moved me around enough. Hell, I was a huge liability at this point, and they seemed to be over thepartnership with my father. They didn’t need it. They didn’t need me.
I was useless.
