I open the door, calling out hello as I cautiously step inside. I check all the rooms, but no one is here. But they can’t have gone far because there’s a toasty fire going in the living room and something is cooking in the oven.
I move to the wall-mounted phone and place my call. It takes five attempts to rouse Sariah because that girl sleeps like the dead, but finally, she answers, promising she’s coming as fast as she can.
Although it’s tempting to conk out on the comfy couch in front of the fire, I don’t want to overstay my welcome, so I exit the way I came in, cringing at the muddy footprints I leave behind. I replace the key under the pot and retrace my steps toward the entrance of the forest.
I’m slumped against the wooden railings, utterly exhausted, when Sariah shows up a few minutes later.
“Jesus Christ,” she exclaims, climbing out of her grandma’s battered red Volkswagen Golf. “What the hell did they do to you?”
I’d only given her the cliff notes version on the phone, so on the drive back, I fill her in on everything that happened last night.
“Those motherfucking bastards!” she seethes, gripping the steering wheel in a tight grip. “You could’ve been eaten by wolves! Or some psycho out burying bodies might’ve come across you. This means fucking war!”
“That’s what they’ll be expecting, but I’m altering my strategy.”
AfterI go postal on Saint’s ass, I decide, tiptoeing into my house fifteen minutes later. Sariah wanted me to come home with her, but I’m not hiding from them. They don’t scare me, and they need to know they won’t get the better of me.
I go straight to my bedroom, retrieve my knife and my kit, and step back out into the hallway, picking Saint’s lock as quietly as I can.
When I’m inside his room, I stare at the asshole as he sleeps. He’s flat on his back, sprawled across the king-sized mattress, the black silk sheets bunched at his waist, his chest inflating and deflating as he breathes deeply, as if he hadn’t just left me alone in the freaking forest.
Slivers of buttery light slip through the blinds, bathing him in a dim glow. He looks magnificent with all that toned, tan skin on display, and the ink on his arms and one side of his chest only adds to the attraction. His face is all angular masculine lines, his jaw covered in a smattering of hair I find so sexy on guys.
I wish he was an ugly fucker because it might help to make it easier to hold on to my anger. But, somehow, I know that wouldn’t make any difference. Saint exudes this aura, this magnetism, that sucks me in, and it’s less to do with how he looks and more to do with his dominant personality, his cutting humor, the dark intensity he brings to everything, and the power of the connection between us.
A connection forged in a split second in a stolen moment when we were kids.
Right now, that connection means jack shit, and his gorgeous looks aren’t distracting me from my anger either.
I move with purpose toward the bed, leaving a trail of muddy, bloody footprints on the gray carpet.
I’m a dirty, sweaty mess, my hair is knotted and caked with mud, and I stink to high heaven. I’m covered in cuts, my feet are bleeding, and there isn’t one part of my body that doesn’t hurt as I climb up over him, straddling his thighs and pressing the sharp edge of my knife to his dick through the sheets.
His eyes blink open the second my body weight presses down on him, and he’s instantly wide-awake, his gaze taking in the filthy state of me before lowering to the knife pointed at his family jewels. He turns his head to the bedside table, glancing at the time before facing me again with a cocky smile. “I’m impressed,” he rasps, his voice dripping with raw sexuality, doing funny things to my insides.
Focus on your anger. I give myself a silent pep talk because the shithead is not getting away with what he’s done to me. “I’m not,” I snap, angling the knife over his crotch. “I’m livid and I have a tendency to act recklessly when I’m mad.” I rip through his silk sheets until the tight black boxers he’s wearing are revealed.
Bending his arms at the elbows, he tucks them under his head, grinning at me like I’m no threat.
It infuriates me, and I rip a hole in his boxers, exposing some skin and curls of wiry hair.
“If you want to see my cock, princess, you only have to ask.”
“Mock me again and I’ll slice your dick off.”
I expect him to wince and attempt to protect his manhood, but he smiles instead. A smug smile that indicates he’s not concerned, because he clearly underestimates how mad I am, he thinks I won’t attack, or he’s just not like normal guys who would cower in this scenario. “No, you won’t. You love it too much.”
I bark out a laugh, pressing myself down over him, loving that I’m soiling him with my dirty, mud-spattered skin, and holding my blade against his face. “Delusional much, Saintly?”
“You’re not the only one who feels it, princess,” he says, running the tips of his fingers up my arm. “And I’m tired of fighting.”
“Then maybe, you shouldn’t have kidnapped me in the middle of the night and dumped me in an open grave in the fucking woods!”
He cups my face, uncaring I have a blade flattened against his cheek. “It was a test, princess, and you passed with flying colors.” His blue eyes burn with the usual intensity, and when his tongue darts out, I catch a glimpse of metal in his mouth. The tongue piercing is new.
“Explain.” I sit up, pulling my knife back, unable to think clearly when I’m that close to his face. Bile swims up my throat, and my stomach is tied into knots. It takes colossal willpower to ignore the feel of his growing erection under my ass, but I do because his words have thrown me.
“Theo has been championing your cause,” he says, sitting up with me on his lap. He leans his back against the headboard, and I slide lower on his body.
