He wants this.
My fear.
My helplessness.
But he doesn’t get all of me.
He will not let him get inside my head.
So I close my eyes.
Pain explodes across my face.
My head jerks sideways, my eye throbbing instantly as tears spill over, and I’m forced to look at him again.
“You close those eyes again,” Russel says, his voice dropping into something colder, “and I’ll take them from you.”
My chest tightens, panic pressing in from all sides as his presence looms closer, suffocating, invasive, everything in me screaming even if my body can’t move.
A broken sound tears out of me.
And then the door crashes open.
Everything shifts.
The hands holding me disappear, and my eyes snap toward the entrance.
Dex.
He stands there, framed in the doorway, and for a single second everything else fades, because his eyes find mine instantly, and I see the exact moment something inside him gives way.
Not hesitation.
Not fear.
Something darker.
More dangerous.
A man moves, raising a gun.
Dex is already there.
He moves with a speed that doesn’t feel human, closing the distance in seconds, twisting the man’s arm until it snaps with a sickening crack, the gun clattering to the floor as a scream rips through the room.
Dex doesn’t even look at him.
He takes the weapon. Lifts it.
“Take your hands off her.”
Another man raises his gun.
A shot goes off.
Dex shifts just enough, the bullet missing as the room erupts, and then Cas and the deputies are there, gunfire echoing as the second man drops before he can fire again.
But Dex doesn’t see any of it.
