Page 31 of Worth

“And you’re fucking around instead of –”

I lose my words as he leans in and does the very thing I’d been fantasizing about, licking away that frosting on Blake’s lip. Her eyelids grow heavier and she looks up at him under her lashes, her lips popping open with a soft sigh.

“Fine,” Aiden grumbles, eyes still locked on Blake. “Let’s go then.”

A little wrinkle appears in the space between her brows as she frowns. “What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?”

I slam my hand down on the counter, pointedly ignoring the way my dick has thickened in my pants. “I don’t give a fuck how you entertain yourself. Aiden and I have shit to do, and you being here is as much of a nuisance as I thought it was going to be.”

Blake scowls my way as Aiden presses his lips to her temple with such reverence that I’m distracted again, but her annoyed tone breaks through. “Can’t I go with you? I don’t want to be alone,” she says.

Aiden immediately turns to me with wide, pleading eyes, stopping me before I can tell her she can’t. Inwardly, I groan. Outwardly, my lips thin.

He beats me to speaking. “She’ll be really good. She could help us.”

I glance at Blake and quickly wish I hadn’t. Her big blue eyes are as wide as Aiden’s, blinking at me so innocently. Her puppy dog eyes rival Aiden’s, and that’s saying something.

“Fuck,” I mutter, rubbing a hand over my face. “Aiden, no. She’s untrained and still hot on the fugitive list. What happens if someone spots her?”

They both start speaking at the same time, their words overlapping enough that I can’t understand all of what they are saying. But I get the gist of it—Blake can handle herself; Blake will wear a disguise; Blake will be a good Kitten; Blake will do anything to get out of this house and see the world she’s been missing for years.

“If you think you can handle yourself,” I interrupt, “then attempt to get me on the ground.” Blake meets my glower head on, lifting her chin in that little defiant way that got her ass spanked the last time I saw it.

Why, in fuck’s sake, do I keep thinking about that night?

“Fine,” she snipes, striding forward.

“Uh, Zander?” Aiden hedges, glancing from me to her and back.

I huff out a breath at his concern for her. “She’ll be fine, Aiden. I won’t hurt her too badly.”

Blake grinds her teeth so hard I can hear it, still moving toward me.

“But she—”

Aiden doesn’t get a chance to finish. Not that I would have been able to focus on him if hehadfinished.

A sound like a dying cow escapes my mouth as I stumble back from the momentum of Blake’s throat punch. Before I can do anything to protect myself against further attack, she latches on to the back of my neck and slams her knee into my ribs, using my body as leverage to really make the hit count. I wheeze unattractively as Blake releases me and I crash onto my knees.

“Dude, I tried to tell you,” Aiden chokes out, tears streaming from his eyes as he hysterically laughs his ass off.

I want so badly to hit him or flip him off or glare at him—or anything that will make him see how happy about this I am not. But instead, I just kneel on the floor, trying to breathe around bruised ribs and a throbbing throat.

A petite hand appears in front of me, palm up. My eyes dart up to Blake’s and I find zero repentance for the pain she’s caused me. Instead, there’s a dark humor glimmering in her eyes, and a savage smile twisting her lips, and I wonder if this is what she looked like when Jack lay beneath her dead and bloody.

“Take my damn hand, Zander,” she barks when I just glower at it. “Don’t be a little bitch.”

I hear Aiden’s sharp inhale, but he can’t do anything before I react. I bypass her hand, shooting to my feet despite the protest of my injuries. My fingers tangle in her blonde braid and jerk her head back far enough that her back bows with the force. She’s screeching, cursing me with venomous hate, and Aiden is trying to soothe me, but all I can hear is Blake’s words echoing in my head inhervoice.

I can feel the spearing of the tack strip against my skin asshespeaks, telling me what a pussy I am, how weak I am for not being able to get hard whileshestraddles my cock and sinks the sharp points into my flesh again and again.

Blake grunts as I slam her against the refrigerator and yank her head back again. She’s trying to fend me off, and she’s doing a damn good job of it, but it’s not enough right now. I’m unstoppable in my rage. My body absorbs the impact from her hands and feet, and I hardly feel them. I reach over and snag the kitchen shears from the knife block, gripping them in my hand like I’m holding a dagger above her.

Her eyes flash as she looks at me upside down. There’s fear there, and excitement too. But it’s the relief that makes my hand falter, and the scissors point away from her.

It’s like I’m looking in a mirror and I hate what I see. I hate it for me. I hate it for her.

I mostly hate it for her.

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