Page 75 of Taking

“This is for Addilyn,” I growled, “you disloyal cunt.”

I squeezed Devon’s hands around Jenny’s neck, cutting off her oxygen.

Jenny tried to thrash beneath our combined weight, tried to jerk her head from his grasp I forced without his knowledge.

Muffled shrieks tightened my groin. Gasps and gurgles fed the bloodlust raging in my gut.

Revenge at its sickest, its sweetest.

She stilled far sooner than I expected, but I didn’t remove Devon’s hands, counting my heartbeats thumping in ears for a full two minutes.

Realizing I heaved for breath, I released my hold on Devon.

His hands slid to the side of Jenny’s neck. Limp.

The pulse in his neck beat at a steady pace, but Jenny’s didn’t.

Adrenaline coursed through me as I climbed off the bed and took in my work.

One dead, the other ruined for life.

Three in the morning—the clock on the bedstand blinked.

I retrieved the blindfold from Devon and did one last sweep of the hotel room to make sure I hadn’t left anything that would bring attention to a third party having been involved in their tryst.

After a good thirty seconds’ worth of peering across the empty parking lot, I took the final evidence—the ear plugs from Devon’s ears.

Quiet as a goddamn mouse, I slipped out of the room and escaped into the night, my adrenaline still pumping.

Still far from satisfied.

29

Addilyn

My body weighed into the mattress, heavy and exhausted. Warmth surrounded me, and I stretched like a leisurely cat, wincing at the soreness riddling my body.

Gideon had held me face down on the bed, arms wrapped behind my back while he’d fucked first my pussy then my ass, using only my own arousal as lubricant.

My backside ached like he’d ripped me a new hole back there, but the tea he’d made had helped me rest regardless of the stinging that refused to relent.

Blinking, I brought the dim bedroom into focus. Light filtered through the open doorway and the windows beyond. While comfortable beneath the quilt, coolness kissed over my face.

I sat, wrapped the blanket around my nakedness, and got up to patter across the cold floorboards, wondering at the strangeness hazing my head that I couldn’t blink away. Felt a little bit too familiar, but Gideon wouldn’t have a reason to drug me again.

He wasn’t in the living area, and the opened bathroom door revealed he wasn’t in there either.

“Gideon?” I croaked and cleared my throat, glancing around the room. Why did I still feel half dead if I’d slept the night away? Mere embers lay in the fireplace, and alongside, the wood stack overflowed its bin.

He never left the fire unattended.

My heart picked up a bit, and I hurried to the window beside the front door, the weakness in my legs causing me to stumble twice. I clutched the window frame with one hand to keep upright, blinking to focus on the landscape through the glass.

No car.

No Gideon.

He left me.

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