Page 58 of Behind the Shadows
Same.”
To my surprise, he walked to the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and then gave me a blanket.
“Cover up. You’re clearly cold.”
I grabbed the blanket and wrapped myself in it, shivering from the chill in the room. Humanity is a strange thing. We will do anything to survive, even kill, but the secrets behind those actions make us who we are. I’d seen it over and over in my profession. I knew what Kip was. The things he’d done. The way he watched me from the shadows like I already belonged to him.
“I’m going to go shower,” he mumbled before he disappeared from the room. Once I made sure that he was gone, I reached into my hair and located the four sharp bobby pins I’d tucked in. After being locked up by Draco, I swore I would never be a prisoner again. It was one of the skills I’d learned. Not only to survive but to pick any lock.
Over the next five minutes, I worked on the lock on my collar. The soft click told me I’d finally been successful. Quietly and without moving the chain much, I set the collar on the bed. Next, I had to locate my clothes. I hurried off the cot and then searched the kitchen cabinets, but I didn’t find anything.
I rushed down the hall, hearing the shower still running, and poked my head into one of the rooms. There was a queen-size bed, but nothing else. In the next room, I found my duffel bag on the bed. I ran to it and opened it. He’d certainly packed enough for me to be gone a long time. I just wasn’t sure if he intended on letting me live or not.
Within seconds, I was dressed and had slid my feet into my tennis shoes. At least now I had a better chance of outrunning him if he realized I was gone.
His confession of killing a girl echoed through my mind, my chest tightening. From the moment I’d met him I knew there was something different. Something that pulled me to him. When he’d pinned me against the wall at my house, all I wanted to do was kiss him. Feel his mouth on mine, but I’d wanted him to make the first move.
I tiptoed down the hall and stopped at the bathroom. The door was cracked open, and I peeked inside. I covered my mouth before I gasped as I saw him through the shower glass. Jesus, he was gorgeous. The water ran down his broad shoulders and streamed down his chest and abs all the way to his glorious, hard cock. He fisted it and slid his hand up and down, stroking his length. My pussy clenched, weeping at the idea of him inside me again. I should leave while I had a chance to escape, but I stood rooted in place, watching as he pleasured himself. He turned his back to me, and a small cry escaped me. Scars covered his entire back. I stepped closer to make sure I wasn’t imagining what I saw. They weren’t. Some scars were still thick even though it was clear they were older. What the fuck had happened to him?
My heart shattered in a million pieces, and I was pretty sure he’d taken it and would never give it back. There was so much more to this man than what he’d shown me. I should run from him. But I needed him like air. Even if he was poison.
If I was smart, I would slip out, into the night, and never look back.
But I was frozen, breath caught in my throat as I watched him through the small opening.
Water streamed down his scarred back, each line carved into his skin like a road map of pain. His head hung low under the spray, one of his palms braced against the tile, muscles taut—and when a shudder racked his body, I realized it wasn’t just from the water.
I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth. My stomach squeezed so hard it hurt.
I wanted to run.
But God help me, I wanted him more.
My fingers hovered at the hem of my shirt, torn between escape and surrender.
I backed away—one step, two—throat constricting with panic. I could still do it. I could still get out.
But then.
His head lifted. Slowly. Deliberately.
His eyes—twin shards of something wild and broken—locked on mine through the glass. Stripped of his contacts, they were unnaturally pale, the color bleached out like old photographs left in the sun. There was something unsettling about their lightness, almost ghostly, as if I was staring into the eyes of a predator who’d learned to wear human skin.
And he smiled.
“Going somewhere, little ghost?”
24
KIP
The water slammed down on my back, scalding, but it was nothing compared to the fists pounding inside my skull.
Her words echoed like a gunshot through bone.You didn’t kill me.
For years, I saw her face in every nightmare—her body limp, her throat crushed under my hands. I carried her death like a brand burned into my skin, letting it shape me into the thing the Horizon Society wanted: a cleaner, a weapon, a man who only killed the monsters worse than himself.
But now, she was here. Alive. Breathing.
