“How’s it feel being a widow?” Lynn asked, watching me.
“Good,” I said with a tentative smile. “Really damn good.”
15
DEVIL
There was a reason I was given this name. I could manage my rage, could quieten it until most people didn’t even realise it was there, but when it erupted it had no mercy.
“Please!” Pierce screamed, his body convulsing as I hit him with the cattle prod Tybalt conveniently plugged in for me when he learned who this motherfucker was. No one hurt Jessia and lived. So, I drove the prod into one of the welts I’d already painted across his body with a blowtorch, blood oozing from each site until he looked like the monster he was.
His back arched, mangled hands straining against the chains holding him to the wall. His scream was satisfying but not enough, never enough.
“Why should I go easy on you?” I asked in a cold voice. Whatever warmth I’d possessed had frozen when I saw the blind terror in Jessia’s eyes, when I felt that spike of panic and dread and desperation through the bond. Raw, cutting, suffocatingemotions, all caused by this sick excuse for a man hanging from the wall. “You hurtmy mate.You terrorised her and threatened her.”
I’d held her while she shook and gasped down air, tears in her eyes at the wedding invitation this sick fucker sent. So no, I would not have mercy.
“I’m sorry,” he babbled, his voice blown out, little more than a rasp. I’d been at this for hours, and I saw no reason to stop until he was dead. “I’m sorry, I’ll leave her alone. I swear. She’s nothing to me. You want her? She’s yours, keep her, I don’t care.”
I drove the prod into another welt and turned the charge up to full. “I intend to keep her, but I don’t need your permission.”
His scream covered my words, and he couldn’t see me because I’d already burned his eyeballs to gory pits, but I spoke the words anyway. He thought Jessia was his, thought she belonged to him, a possession to lend out at will if it saved his ass. And that didn’t just make me angry. It made melivid.
“Please!” he screamed. “Please.”
I ripped the prod away, shut off the current, and discarded it as I searched for a knife.
“That,” I said with icy rage, “is enough of your pathetic pleading.”
It wasn’t a clean slice. I had to hack his tongue off with rough, messy cuts, but the blood that spilled over his chin and the desperate whines he was reduced to were a balm to my rage. I threw the dismembered tongue aside and contemplated the slab of bloodied meat in front of me. So many places left for pain to burrow. So many possibilities.
“Right,” I said, approaching the table of tools. “What shall we do next?”
16
JESSIA
Ichewed on my fingernail as I waited for Devil in our room. My stomach tangled with worry even though every person I’d spoken to today said he wasfineand Pierce couldn’t do a damn thing to hurt him. Instinct was hard to shake, but I kept reaching for the bond and felt only frozen rage, no pain, no fear, so I told myself to stop worrying.
But hours and hours later, with the clubhouse quiet and dark, and all my friends in their beds, the anxiety was harder to shake. I’d done everything I could think of to distract myself, and showered and got ready for bed, but not a single cell in my body would relax until Devil was here.
I sat at the dressing table he’d had brought in for me and dried my hair with painstaking care; and since I had nothing better to do, I painted my nails a soft pink colour, falling into the therapeutic motions. I’d just decided to add flower designs to them when the door opening startled me to my feet.
“Fil,” I breathed, rushing to him as he shut the door, his hair damp, not a speck of blood or a single bruise on him. I exhaled hard, and walked into his arms when he opened them for me.
“I felt you worrying,” he murmured, kissing my temple. “Did you forget your mate’s the devil himself?”
“Even the devil can be hurt.” I smoothed my hands over his bare chest, checking he was whole. “Is it—done? He’s gone?”
His arms tightened across my back, a reassuring weight that pushed away the last of my anxiety. “He’s gone,” Devil promised. “He’ll never get to you again.”
It didn’t take away the fear that had burrowed into my bones, didn’t erase any of the things Pierce had done or the way I’d had to survive, but I never had to see his face again. He could never send another message. I wouldn’t feel true relief for a long, long time, but it wasover.
“Thank you,” I breathed, pulling Devil as close as I could get him.
“I made sure he regretted it,” he promised, his head bowed, face pressed to my throat. “Every last thing he did to you. And I want a list of anyone else who’s ever hurt you.”
“Fil, that’s not necessary,” I said, though my chest warmed.
