I rush back into the bedroom, grab a towel, then return to the bathroom. The mirror catches me before I am ready. On the right side of my neck, just below my jaw, I noticed a bite mark that turned dark against my skin.
He bit me earlier. I remember the pressure of his teeth, the way my breath caught when it happened.
My stomach tightens.
He is driving me insane. Worse than that, my body is giving in.
My hair hangs wet and tangled around my shoulders. My pupils are blown wide at the thought of him, black swallowing jade green. Heat pools low in my stomach, my pussy aching for him again.
“I will fucking destroy you, Zayne Mercer,” I say to my reflection.
As I stare at myself, something small pulls my focus. Four freckles dot the bridge of my nose, faint but there.
“Freckles,” I whisper, lifting my hand to touch them.
It’s strange how blind we are to ourselves. How easily we notice every flaw, tracing them until they feel permanent, until they become proof of something broken inside us. We stare so hard at what we hate that we miss the quiet, beautiful things living beneath our skin.
The things others notice first.
We dismiss them as nothing, unworthy of attention, while they are everything that makes us the person we are. And by the time we realize we were never as unlovable as we believed, we have already learned how to hate ourselves too well.
A knock at the door pulls me back.
The sound snaps through my thoughts, and I shake myself awake. I hurry to the closet, grab the black robe, and wrap it around my body, pulling the belt tight at my waist.
I open the bedroom door and move down the hall toward the front entrance.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“Rourke.”
“No,” I say, already turning away from the door.
“I found out who the scientist was,” he says. “Please.” His voice drops. “I don’t know who else to call.”
“That sounds like ayouproblem,“ I reply, taking a step toward the kitchen.
“I’ll give you everything I have,” he says quickly. “All the files. Just help me.”
The truth is, I don’t trust him any more than I trust the rest of them. Still, I am alone here, and information is information. I decide I will take what he has and send him back out into the night.
I walk to the door and pull it open.
He stands on my doorstep, soaked through. Water drips from his hair onto the floor. The sharp smell of alcohol clings to him. In his hand is another file, edges bent from the rain.
I hold out my hand for it.
Instead of giving it to me, he steps inside.
He sits at the table without asking and opens the file, spreading photographs and papers across the surface like he owns the place.
My jaw tightens. I shut the door hard and walk toward him, dragging a chair back with a screech against the floor before dropping into it.
“This guy,” he says, tapping an old black-and-white photograph with his finger.
I have seen the face before. It hangs on the wall in the hallway at the Halden Institute, surrounded by others I never bothered to study.
“He had a son,” Rouke continues. “Divorced in 1990. His ex-wife moved to London after that.”
