Page 87 of Sinister Legacy
“The killer threatened to kill Kit and my mom if I didn’t murder my stepdad.” My voice shakes. “He made a game of it.”
“A game?”
His stubble rasps beneath my fingers as I drag them down the sharp line of his jaw.
I nod. “Yes… but that’s not the worst of it.”
“What is?”
It takes courage to confess this next part. Courage I don’t really have, but I force the words out anyway. “I enjoyed it.”
King’s breath whooshes over my face, and then he rolls off me, settles on his side, and drapes his warm arm over my waist. He pulls me closer, burying his nose in my hair. “Tell me everything, baby. From the beginning.”
So that’s what I do. I snuggle close to my new anchor and bare the deepest, darkest parts of me.
The fear of becoming my father.
The fear of losing control.
But instead of retreating and calling me a monster, he slides his fingers into my hair and crushes his soft lips to mine in a searing kiss.
“You’re fucking perfect,” he growls, nipping at my bottom lip with his sharp teeth. “So fucking perfect.”
“You’re not afraid of me?”
He squeezes my bare waist and digs his calloused fingers into my skin. “Of course I’m not scared of you. I want you more, if anything.”
“Because I’m a killer like my father?”
His head shakes, and he leans in to sink his teeth into my neck while rolling his hips against me. It’s unfair how nice he smells in the morning. I breathe in the hint of sweat on his skin. It would be gross on anyone else, but on King…
“Because you’re brave. It takes a lot of fucking guts to do what you did. Do you think your friend Cassie, Madison, or even my friends, Ava and Hayley, could do it? No fucking way.”
“Don’t be sexist,” I tease, causing him to chuckle and roll on top of me again.
“Fine, how about your friends, Miles and Chris? Think they could kill someone in cold blood to save someone like Kit—a guy they’re not close to?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you now, from what I witnessed when they held me down while Liam pummeled me, they’re both scaredy cats who would crap their pants if faced with the same situation.”
“I was fucking furious with him for hurting you,” I grit out, but he cups my jaw and presses his hungry mouth to mine in a deceptively tender kiss that makes my heart turn to putty. He kisses me again, just as painfully slow, his tongue delving past my lips to dominate mine.
I pull away, breathing heavily. “And then I couldn’t get ahold of you. I was scared, King.”
I haven’t admitted that to anyone. Not even myself.
It’s easier to pretend to be strong than it is to be vulnerable. The world feasts on vulnerability. It tears into it like a pack of vicious hyenas until nothing remains but fleshy bone.
“I was always coming back for you.”
“What if I’m a psychopath?”
“Then we can be psychopaths together. The new Bonnie and Clyde.”
It’s meant as a joke, but behind the sparkle in his dark-as-night eyes resides a promise that I’m driven to reciprocate as I pull him down to me and ravage his mouth.
When we break apart for air, he says, “Don’t hold back on me, baby. I want all of you—the good and the bad. I want the angel and the demon, got it?”
