Page 59 of Piece You Saved

Saige grips my face, halting me. For several seconds, she just stares up at me. “When Rylan kidnapped me, he revealed something to me. About my dad.” She stops. Pain flickers across her gaze, and I want to reach into Rylan, pull out his intestines, and strangle him with them. “It was something so painful I went for his eyes. I knew I couldn’t kill him or even hurt him, and he’d only punish me for lashing out, but I did it anyway.”

She blinks and a little of the pain fades. “When I tell you that Rylan has a gift of provoking you to do something you know you shouldn’t, something that could kill you, I mean it.” She pulls my face down and kisses me softly. “It wasn’t your fault. If you need to blame someone, blame him. I do.”

How the fuck is this girl mine?

I stare down at her, and I still can’t fucking believe it.

“What?” she asks when I don’t respond.

“Just wondering what I did right in a past life to deserve you,” I say, lowering my head to kiss her. Not softly, but a claiming. Fierce. Hot and hard. Exactly how she makes me feel for her.

Someone thumps on the front door.

Saige freezes beneath me. “Rylan?” she whispers.

I’m out of her and yanking my pants up as I round the table, pick up the laptop, discover it isn’t broken—thank fuck—and then see who’s at the front door.

“For fuck’s sake,” I snarl.

“Who is it?” Saige asks, sitting up with a wince.

After grabbing Saige’s torn panties from the floor, I stuff them in my pocket and wink at her. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them. One thing is clear. They’re not going in the trash. Maybe my desk drawer?

I pause on my way to the door and eye her stomach in concern.

“It’s a bruise, Kade. You can’t fuck bruises away.” She grins.

Shaking my head, I continue, fighting my smile because I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of her sass. “Go up—” I take a second to think about where I plan to send her. Saige upstairs with Aden when she was asking about seeing him? Not a good idea. “Stay there.”

I cross over to the front door, swing it open, and stare at the smiling dark-haired man in blue scrubs standing on the top step. Doctor Arrogant Fucking Charmer.

“What the fuck do you want? And how the hell did you find us?”

His nostrils flare, and his eyes dart behind me about the moment I feel Saige’s looming presence. “I need to be involved in this. That shifter killed someone important to me.”

“What the fuck is this?” I snarl. “Should we expect a pack of Girl Scouts to knock on the door looking to put a bullet between Rylan’s eyes for not collecting his Thin Mints order?”

“A pack?” Saige is smiling, but I’m not taking my eyes off this fucking doctor while he’s eyeing Saige as if he knows exactly what we were up to and wouldn’t have minded if he’d been up to the same.

When the surgeon shifts his attention to me, I lose a little of my tension now that he’s not looking at her.

“You must not have seen them outside the mall, but I have. They’re a pack if I ever saw one. Go get some fresh air, angel,” I say with my eyes on the surgeon. “This won’t take long.”

Saige doesn’t move. “You’re not going to kill him, are you?”

I stare at the surgeon.

He stares back.

He was flirting with Saige at the hospital, and now he’s making home visits? There’s only one answer to a question like that.

“Kade?” She moves toward me. “Because—”

“Take a walk in the garden, angel. Two minutes. That’s all I need.”To kill this guy.

His eyebrow goes up. “Two minutes?”

“One of those minutes is unnecessary, if you must know,” I tell him.

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