He goes silent.
We lock eyes.
His change. Right in front of me.
And there he is.
The predator.
The killer.
The monster I never saw coming.
He lunges, and I don't even blink.
I pull the trigger and the next thing I know, he's meat.
Chapter 16
Caleb
The shotgun kicks against Scarletta's stomach.
Ryan's chest opens like a flower blooming in reverse—red petals spraying outward, wet and immediate. The force throws him backward, and what hits the concrete floor isn't a person anymore. Just meat and bone and the copper-bright smell of fresh death.
I watch Scarletta.
Not the body. Not the spreading pool beneath what used to be Ryan Adamson.
Her.
Blood mists her face in a fine spray. Droplets cling to her platinum hair like scattered rubies, catching the barn's dim light. Across her forearms, streaks of crimson where the blowback painted her skin. Her chest heaves, breath coming in sharp, ragged gasps that make her whole body shudder.
There's blood on her lip.
A single dark smear, almost black against the pink.
She's hyperventilating now, hands shaking so violently the shotgun rattles. She drops it—the clatter against concrete sounds distant, irrelevant. Her fingers come up to her face,swiping at the blood, but she's only smearing it. Spreading Ryan across her cheeks, her chin, her forehead. She spits, tries to clear her mouth, and the motion just transfers more of him onto her tongue.
She's panicking.
And I'm hard.
Fully, achingly erect. The kind that strains against fabric and demands attention.
I should be concerned about the body. The cleanup. The evidence. The fact that she just committed murder in my barn, and her fingerprints are all over the weapon, and this will require significant resources to make disappear.
Instead, I'm watching blood drip from her jawline onto her collarbone, and my cock throbs like it has its own heartbeat.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
I take a step toward her, and my hand moves without conscious decision—sliding down, between my waistband and my skin, wrapping around my cock.
Her gaze drops to my hand. To what I'm doing.
The horror in her expression should stop me.
It doesn't.
