This was it. I realized with absolute certainty that Beast was there to kill me.
I didn’t know how heknew, but he knew. The cold look, the heavy sighs—it all made sense now.
“You done yet?” he said, his voice gravelly and cold.
I stood up, my knees almost buckling as I tried once again to put my bra on. “I don’t want to die, Beast,” I admitted softly, the soft material limp in my hands.
He sighed again but didn’t say anything, and hot tears burned down my face. I realized that everything in the clubhouse had gone quiet. There was none of the usual laughter or chatter, no music playing, no engines roaring or doors slamming. Everyone in the clubhouse knew about me, and they were all just out there waiting for Beast to bring me out and kill me.
I suddenly couldn’t breathe, the world spun and I clutched at my chest as I started to fall, the sheet pooling at my feet. Dizziness gripped me, the terror and fear ready to knock me unconscious, but then Beast’s arms were around me, hauling me upright and dragging me against his hard body, and I clung to him, sobbing.
“Please don’t kill me, please,” I sobbed, and I felt his arms stiffen, his fingers digging into me almost painfully as I held on to him. “I don’t want to die,” I sobbed.
His arms were around me, my face buried in his chest as I cried, soaking his T-shirt with my misery. The safety I’d felt in his arms earlier was gone and I was suddenly petrified of him; this beautiful, brutal man who hours ago had worshipped my body with his was now the epitome of evil, ready to take my life. He gripped me tighter as I tried to pull away, his large, rough hands trying to soothe me as they stroked down my back.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he growled.
But it wasn’t.
It wasn’t going to be okay.
He was going tokillme.
“I can explain, Beast.”
I sobbed even harder and continued to pull away, but the more I pulled the harder he gripped, holding me against him no matter how much I thrashed in his arms. I looked up at him, my tear-stained face pleading with him to let me explain, but his face showed nothing. It was empty, hollow, a shell that had been cracked open and the insides tipped out.
Beast reached down and hooked my face in his hand before leaning down and kissing my salty tears away.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he said again, kissing each tear away, but I saw it in his eyes that he didn’t mean it. That he knew it was just lies he was telling us both. He didn’t want to do this, but he still would. It wasn’t going to be okay, not even a little bit.
When he pulled back, his lips glistened with my tears—their misery and sadness, their fear and shame—and I saw that he felt those things too. I sobbed as I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his lips, reclaiming my tears back from him, because if he was going to kill me then he couldn’t have them—they weremytears. But as my lips touched his, his mouth opened and his tongue came out, pushing its way into mine so he could kiss me brutally.
I was still fighting against him, still crying and pushing him away even as I kissed him back, our mouths colliding in a nuclear collision of lips and teeth and tongue. I was desperate for him to listen to me, to know me, to love me, and understand that I hadn’t meant to betray him. That I would never ever want to hurt him, but even as I kissed him, I knew it was too late.
Beast had made up his mind.
The club had made up their mind.
It was over.
Chapter Sixteen
~ BEAST~
Belle pulled away so suddenly she stumbled backwards, and this time I let her go. The look in her eyes was one I knew well. I’d seen it on many a man’s face once they realized that their time was up. That their brief moment on this earth had come to an end. She stared at me, naked, chest heaving, hair wild, cheeks damp, and I thought that she was going to crack—to break down and start begging.
There were two things in this world that I hated more than anything: cowards that begged for their life, and traitors. She’d checked off one of those boxes, and I was just waiting for the other. But she didn’t. Belle smoothed back her hair and reached for her clothes, putting those beautiful tits away behind her lacy bra. She pulled on her T-shirt and slipped on her skirt, all the while her eyes darting between me and the door.
I’d seen that look too, and I already knew she was going to try to run, but she wouldn’t get far.
Belle sat down on the edge of my bed, reaching for her sandals that had slid under it. As she pushed her foot into one, I noted how pretty her feet were. Small, like really small, perfect pink nail polish, and a small ankle chain, and as ridiculous as it sounds, I thought to myself how sad it was that she wouldn’t ever get to use those pretty feet to walk on a beach again. Or to let the sea wash over her toes. Or how she wouldn’t paint those toenails any other color. They’d just be pink, forever, until those toes rotted away.
“I’m ready,” Belle said, suddenly standing in front of me, looking up into my face. She seemed smaller than normal. Her shoulders rounded, her back hunched, like she was trying to curl in on herself. She’d wrapped her hair up in a knot thingy on top of her head, and I thought about how I’d never wrap it around my hand again. I’d never feel how soft it was against my chest or move it from her neck so I could kiss a path to her collarbone.
I turned to the door, pushing all of those thoughts away. It didn’t matter—none of it mattered.
She was a traitor to the club, and to me. None of this was real. I’d been played because I’d been weak, but that wouldneverhappen again.
