Shake away the thought.
“You’re a liar,” I sneer, wrapping my arms around my knees. “All you’ve been doing is screwing with my head. You don’t want to help me.”
With more than necessary care, he sets the bandage back in the little leather bag—ominous, like the room. Strange objectsclutter the walls, furniture arranged a hair too orderly to be mistaken for storage. A wooden chair, two workbenches with shallow drawers, a padded pole, some curved, cloth-covered contraption whose purpose I don’t want to guess.
Everything obscure.
Everything intentional.
“Helping you isn’t my biggest priority, no… But I don’t want to hurt you, either.”
His calm presence suddenly looms sinisterly as he stands.
I shuffle backward until I slip off the bench. I hit the floorhard—tailbone first, breath punching out of me.
“Stay back,” I snap, scrambling backward until I can get to my feet. “Don’tcome near me.”
His eyes—histrueeyes—track me with surgical precision as he stalks my way. Menacingly calm. “I know you won’t believe me, but … I didn’t come here to hurt you. I didn’t come here to hurtanyone. Hell, I asked to initiate as aKeeper.” He laughs bitterly and slowly closes in as my back bumps the wall. My eyes dart left and right, searching for escape until his palms slap a centimeter from each of my ears. I jolt, eardrums spasming.
“You saw how that turned out for my friend,” Sawyer says, voice low, sky blue eyes lingering on my lips. Intimate,waytoo intimate for the tension strangling the air between us. “This is what they want from me, so this is what I have to give them. Whatwehave to give them… Because trust me, beautiful, you need this to work out as much as I do.” My lungs hitch when he leans in, as if savoring my fear.
His lips brush my open mouth, barely a breath of contact, and then something even lighter—a slick whisper of tongue along the crooked ridge of my front teeth. So faint, sosubtleI wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t taste the cool trace of mint. Like he brushed his teeth for this.
“Remember that.”
One hand slips from the wall and edges onto my shoulder. It travels the curve of my collarbone, fingers curling beneath the collar of my sweater.
He yanks hard while twisting his body to propel me forward. I gasp; stumble; catch myself on the foam-wrapped pole.
Sawyer’s there in an instant. He spins me around and pins me with an elbow.
“What are you doing?” Another gasp escapes as he disappears behind me and pulls each of my arms around the pole. I jerk, pull, panic, but his grip is unflinching. “Let go!”
“I will. I promise. This’ll only take a minute.”
“What?” I turn my head to search for him, but am forced straight by his arm wrapping around my neck.
Can’t breathe.
Can’tbreathe.
I kick and yank so hard, one hand frees from his grasp. He lets go of the other—voluntary—and doesn’t bother securing them again while I claw and pull on his arm.
“Stop struggling,” he commands, calm yet firm. My face feels thick with blood. “You’ll want to stay perfectly still for this. Trust me.”
Trust him.
Trust the man choking the life from me. Whostolethe lives of hundreds of women before me, luring them with false promises and superficial charm.
No.
My nails scrape the golden plain of his arm before I dig around his wrist in search of a pressure point.
But he’s smart—everything stays tight, every vulnerability just out of reach.
I feel myself slipping. My knees wobble, legs tripping more than they kick. The claws raking his arm slip into weak drags, two hairs short of a caress.
And then…
