“I hate you!” I sob, spinning around as I hit a wall of dense, impenetrable thorns. “I hate you for coming back! I hate you for not staying dead!”
I see him then.
He steps into the moonlight, a silhouette of pure, unadulterated violence. His shirt is torn, his chest heaving, his eyes glowing with a dark, obsessive light that makes my knees turn to water. He’s covered in Noah’s blood and the island’s dirt, a god of ruin.
He doesn’t lunge. He doesn’t catch me. Not yet. He likes the hunt too much. He stays ten feet away, the knife glinting in his hand like a silver tooth.
“You hate that I’m the only one who knows who you really are,” he rasps, stepping closer, his boots crunching on the dry leaves. “You hate that even when you’re standing at the altar with a billionaire, you’re still thinking about the way I taste.”
He tilts his head, a feral grin stretching across his face.
“Run, little sister. The sun is still a long way off. And I’m just getting started.”
I scramble, my hands clawing at the sharp, volcanic rock until my fingernails bleed. The path narrows, a treacherous slip of stone that drops off into the churning, black throat of theocean. My feet find a jagged opening—a slit in the earth that smells of salt, rot, and ancient damp. I slide inside, my body slick with sweat and the blood from my chest, and collapse into the shadows of a hollowed-out sea cave.
The waves crash against the mouth of the cave with a violent, rhythmic boom, but it isn’t enough to drown him out.
His boots thud on the ceiling of my hiding spot, heavy and deliberate. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. He’s right above me. I can feel the vibration of his weight in my teeth.
“You really think a hole in the ground is going to save you?” Kai’s voice drops through the cracks in the rock, mocking and sharp as a razor. “That’s your plan, Scarlett? Crawl into the dark and wait for the sun to come up? The sun belongs to me now, too.”
I press my back against the wet, slimy wall, pulling my knees to my chest. I’m shaking so hard I’m afraid the rocks will rattle. Above me, I hear the metallic shink of his knife scraping against the stone.
“That bastard Noah will come looking for you,” Kai roars, his voice escalating into a feral, jagged laugh that echoes off the cliffs. “He’ll send his guards and his dogs and his pathetic fucking money. But he won’t find you. By the time he figures out you’re not in the villa, I’ll have already scrubbed his name off your soul.”
He stops walking. The silence is worse than the shouting. I hold my breath until my lungs feel like they’re going to burst.
“You should be on your fucking knees right now,” he drops his voice, a low, guttural rasp that feels like he’s whispering directly into my ear. “You should have my cock in your mouth, thanking me for saving you from that fucking prick. Thanking me for making sure he never touches you again.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, a sob catching in my throat. The image of Noah’s broken face flashes behind my lids, followed by the heat of Kai’s fingers.
“What were you thinking, little sister?” He slams his heel into the rock above my head, a punctuating strike of rage. “Building a life on my fucking grave? Decorating a house with my ghost? You thought because I was behind bars, I was dead? You thought you could just move on to the next man who could buy you pretty things?”
I hear him pace again, a restless, caged animal.
“You don’t get to fucking leave me,” he snarls, the words dripping with a possession so thick it’s suffocating. “Not in this life, and not in whatever hell comes after. You’re the only thing I have left, Scarlett. The only thing that kept me from hanging myself from the rafters of that cell was the thought of how your skin would feel under my hands again.”
I hear him lean down, his voice coming through a narrow fissure in the rock just inches from my face.
“I can hear your heart, Scarlett. It’s thudding against the stone. It’s calling for me even while you’re trying to hide. Give it up. Come out and take what’s yours, or I’ll come down there and make this cave your tomb.”
He starts to whistle again—that low, haunting melody—as the sound of his boots begins to descend the jagged path toward the cave entrance.
I don’t wait for him to find the entrance.
The second I hear the scrape of his boots descending the path, I lunge toward the back of the cave, where the black water of the tide pool meets the open sea. I don’t think about the sharks, or the rocks, or the current that wants to drag me to the bottom of the Atlantic. I just plunge.
The water hits me like a sheet of ice, stealing the breath from my lungs, but I scramble through the surf, my hands catching onbarnacles that rip my palms to shreds. I claw my way out of the secondary opening, a narrow blowhole that spits me out further down the coast, away from the path, away from the man who wants to devour me.
I’m back on the sand, shivering, my silk robe clinging to me like a second, freezing skin. I don’t stop. I run until my calves seize, until the salt in my wounds feels like liquid fire.
Behind me, his laugh erupts—a raw, jagged sound that carries over the roar of the ocean. He saw me. He saw the white flash of my robe disappearing into the trees again.
“That’s it, baby sister!” he roars, and I can hear the grin in his voice, the pure, unadulterated adrenaline of the chase. “Make me fucking work for it! Make me earn every inch of you!”
I dash into a thicket of ferns, the ground turning to mud beneath me. I can hear him crashing through the brush behind me, not even trying to be quiet anymore. He’s a hurricane in human skin.
“Fuck!” he grunts, the sound of a heavy branch snapping under his weight echoing like a gunshot. “Do you even know what you fucking do to me, Scarlett? Watching you run, watching you struggle… I’m fucking throbbing, fuck! I’m going to be so deep inside you when I catch you that you won’t know where you end and I begin!”
