Page 107 of Bound to a Killer
My hand instinctively flies out to capture her chin, propping it higher between my thumb and index until her gaze is level with mine. “You did right by calling me.”
Her chin quivers as she nods, the tears that had collected there now dripping onto my fingers, like acid burning into my skin, branding me with her essence, her pain. My chest constricts, equal parts aching for her anguish and revering thebeauty and strength she always makes space for beneath the suffering.
The way her cheeks flush, the slope of her nose tinged the same crimson, skin luminous under the glassy sheen of tears always mesmerizes me. There’s something fragile in her sorrow. A softness I am bound to ruin eventually.
If I’m not too careful, one wrong move could snuff out her flame for good.
She needs someone better than me to guide her through this moment. Someone conventionally good. Someone who won’t smother her light with the weight of my history or the violence I’ve grown fluent in. The same brutal language her mother’s ex would most certainly understand.
But there’s nobody else here besides me.
“I’ll kill him,” I conclude, severing the beat of silence between us.
Her eyes widen, her breath hitching as she retracts from my touch, but I tighten my grip on her chin, keeping her there, my jaw flexing tight. “I’ll do it for you. If that’s what you want.”
It’s what I want.
My teeth gnash together as I picture the swine capable of harming a young girl, someone who should’ve seen her like a daughter, treated her with care.
Violent rage flickers behind my eyes, dragging me back to my younger self, to the helpless way I reacted to my sister’s confession. The day our lives fell apart. Frankie’s sobs scorched into my memory like a branding iron, searing the truth somewhere permanent, never to be forgotten.
The crash that killed our parents. The police reports painting them as victims. All of it, still circling back to haunt me.
For months, I wrestled with our father’s premature death, choked by the lack of justice. The lack of accountability. The only revenge left to seek was in the form of pitiful strangers,men and women who hid their ugliness behind a veneer of charm, just like he had.
But no amount of death was ever enough to quell the pain of the past. It will never be enough.
Because it isn’t him.
It’s too late for me and Frankie, but not for Aria. Not yet. I can make Steven suffer. If she wants.
All she has to do is ask.
She heaves in a jerky breath, her whole body stiffening, but I can hear the frantic beat of her heart, matching my own. We’re that close. Her eyes dip to my lips, lingering. Her throat works in a swallow, the memory of our last kiss resurfacing, hanging in the air between us. “Ledger…”
Husky and breathless, the sinful, soft sound of her voice pours straight into the ache straining my pants as a sharp breath sucks in through gritted teeth.
“Aria,” I warn, my tone clipped and ragged, helpless to the intoxicating scent of florals that’s always clung to her since the season’s turned. Her heat radiates into my hand as she leans closer, her tongue slipping out to wet her lips. My eyes follow the motion. My cock pulses, my body aching to lean in and take her mouth with mine.
Her eyes glaze over as they lift back to mine, a deep, warm brown thawing the iciness in my steely grays, the way only she can.
I swore I’d stay away, but each time, her voice scrapes through me, digging into the deep crevices of my heart like talons. A siren call I keep chasing.
“I can’t go back home,” she says.
Catching my breath, I break our eye contact, clearing the roughness from my throat as I shift gears and fix my eyes on the road. “Don’t worry. I’m not taking you back.”
32
ARIA
“Where are we going?” I ask, the panic uncoiling in my chest the moment I climbed into his car. I’m relieved he came, but still thrown by how fast the cop let us go. A part of me still lingers back there, watching the officer’s mouth move, wondering what Ledger told him.
It might’ve been irrational, but I was half-expecting him to pull out the handcuffs, somehow nailing his identity through thumbprints, secret photos, or whatever covert tech they use to catch people like him. As if that’s part of their job, standard protocol for every broken-down car and routine stop.
He pulls into a vast, empty parking lot, the wheels coasting over pebbled ground, gravel cracking beneath us as headlights skim over a rough-hewn wooden sign nailed to a crooked branch, flanked by boulders. “I’ll handle your car later,” he says. “Don’t worry about it tonight.”
Then parks in a handicap space in the front and cuts the engine. The lock clicks open as he unbuckles. “Follow me.”
