“You don’t have to learn shit,” he argues. “You shouldn’t have to change yourself for this place.” His voice is rough with something that sounds close to pleading. “Don’t let us dim your light, Laurel. Don’t let us,me, take pieces of your soul because, I promise you, once they’re gone, you won’t ever get them back.” His voice breaks on the last word. “I know that lesson better than anyone.”
Sadness creeps into his expression. No, not sadness,desolation.
“I’m giving you a way out,” he says quietly. “Take it.”
“Is that what you want?” I ask, my throat tight, and I hate myself, because on the inside I’m begging for him to say no. I want to hear that he doesn’t want me to go. That he choosesme.
What does that make me? To need him, a man who breaks every moral code I’ve built my life around? To crave the very darkness I used to fear? I want to deny it. Pretend this is just adrenaline or trauma or temporary insanity, but I can’t. Because the truth is, he fills my every waking thought, invades my dreams.
I’m addicted to him.
Obsessed.
Earlier, after seeing Staci, I’d been planning my escape from this nightmare, but now Carrson is handing me the keys to my prison. He’s holding open the door to my cage, and…I don’t want to leave. Not without him.
I shift closer and let my thigh brush against his. His body is tense, coiled heat and violence barely leashed, but I draw comfort from it. From him, because I know without a doubt that he’s dangerous, deadly, but he’d never hurt me.
Lightning flashes, illuminating the muscle that ticks in his jaw. “No. I don’t want you to go,” he admits, his voice hoarse. “But wanting you has never made me a good man.” He lifts a hand, the backs of his fingers graze my cheek, and my breath hitches.
“You deserve a hero,” he whispers. “You got the villaininstead.”
I swallow hard.
“Make no mistake,” he says, low and fierce. “Ilikeit.Craveit. The power and control.” He closes the distance between us, his fingers curling around my jaw, rough and possessive, holding me still like he needs me to hear this. Like the truth will hurt us both, but hiding it would be worse.
“It’s all I have. I need it, don’t feel safe without it.” His voice is a deep rasp. “I like being the person everyone listens to, how they all jump when I say so.” His thumb presses into my chin as he leans closer. “I’ll make ugly choices to keep that. I’ll step on the bodies and not notice how the bones crumble under my feet.”
His breath is hot against my mouth, but he doesn’t kiss me.
Not yet.
“You? You build. Me? I destroy.”
He thinks I’ll push him away after all those dark confessions, I can tell. He’s testing me, testing what he believes about himself. Maybe we all do that? Maybe we can only really see ourselves in the reflection of someone else’s eyes?
I don’t shove him away. I pull him closer.
“You like power and control because that’s all you’ve been taught to value,” I say softly, staring into his storm-dark eyes. “It’s the only currency you know, but there are other things of worth too. Love and friendship and acceptance. It’s not true that you only destroy. You’ve built a brotherhood here that runs smoothly, that, mostly, follows your rules. Those rules keep others safe.”
He shakes his head, disbelieving. “A brotherhood built on fear. On blood and violence. Don’t romanticize it. I don’t lead them because they believe in me. I lead them because they’re more afraid of me than they are of each other.”
I flinch at the quiet truth of that.
His tough façade cracks, and his face crumples. “When I saw Staci, I felt weak, a failure. What’s the point of it all if I can’t keep a single woman safe? If I can’t keepyousafe?”
He lets out a ragged sigh. “Do you know the first question I asked when they called me about Staci?”
I shake my head.
“I asked aboutyou. If you were okay. I should have been thinking about the Sisters, about my duty to them, to the Brothers, and to The Order, but all I could think about was you.”
He takes my chin between his fingers and tips my face up to his. “You have me all fucked up. I don’t know what to do with these feelings. It’s reckless, the things I’d do for you. The people I’d kill for you. The way I’d burn down the fucking world, turn it all to ash, to keep you safe.”
His voice drops lower, darker. “But what if the safest thing for you is to get as far away frommeas possible?”
He leans in, his forehead to mine, breathing fast and uneven. “What then, Laurel? What do I do to make this a place where I can have what I want? Power, control, and…you, the one thing I can’t command?”
“You have me,” I tell him. “And power, by itself, isn’t necessarily bad, not if it’s used to help, to heal.” I take his hand in mine and thread our fingers together. “If you don’t like the world you live in, then we change it.”
