Page 142 of Beautiful Scars

“I don’t know either, hon,” I tell her, when she’s down to just sniffles and the odd hiccup. “But you realize you have a choice, right?” I push her away, holding her shoulders as I stare hard into her eyes. “Are you going to stick around and be his punching bag, or are you going to find someone who loves you?”

She nods, dropping her eyes as she swipes her palms over her face. “Yeah,” she murmurs, and then lets out a low laugh. “I think I’m drunk.”

I laugh at this and hold out the last swig of champagne. “We’re just getting started, babe. In fact, I think we need to get another bottle.”

“Not a fucking chance,” comes a growly voice behind me.

I jerk in surprise, Sarah gasping like she’s auditioning for a role in Scream 7. Kill is leaning against the wall of the passage leading into the living area from the garage door, a cigarette dangling from one hand, a bottle of booze from the other.

I get to my feet, sensing something in the air. Not violence, more a kind of tension. I can’t explain it, but I know Sarah shouldn’t be here. Me neither, probably, but I’ll figure that out once she’s safe. “Hey, how about we finish this upstairs?” I tell her, sending Kill a scathing glare as I lead a swaying Sarah past him with my arm over her shoulder.

“Haul, Kill,” she mumbles. She rears back, and stabs a finger into his chest before I can drag her away. “You stop being such a cunt, and just tell her, alright?”

He watches her with a crooked, bemused smile, but then his eyes are back on me and they’re anything but bemused.

They’re smoldering, like embers.

I take Sarah upstairs to the study. Better she’s in there in case Cole comes home just as drunk. She’s grumbling about Kill in my ears as I urge her onto her side on the overstuffed sofa and tuck a blanket over her. Her bridesmaid dress is going to be creased as fuck tomorrow, but I couldn’t give a shit right now. I heard Kill following us up the stairs, and my hair’s practically standing on end by the time I close the study door behind me.

He’s not in the hallway though.

Not in his office.

Not in his bedroom.

I go into his en-suite bathroom just to make sure he’s not in there, but the room’s empty. Maybe I was imagining things and he never actually came upstairs with us. I’d been too nervous to look back anyway.

Which is when I turn and walk right into him.

He grabs the back of my neck in one hand, and pushes a hand into the small of my back, melding our bodies together. “Still bad luck?” he asks, his words running together.

“Very bad luck,” I manage, getting my hands between us and pushing against his chest. “I should leave.”

He lets go of my neck and twangs one of the curlers in my hair. “This for th’morra?”

“Yes, and I’m going to look like a fucking scarecrow if you mess with it.”

The crooked smile is back. “Myscarecrow.”

I push against him again. “You’re drunk,” I tell him. “Why don’t you get into bed?”

“Good idea.”

I gasp as he ducks down, grabs my ass, and hauls me up like I weigh nothing. And of course I struggle when he turns and heads to his bed with me, because I wasn’t joking about the rollers. And we’re still technically fighting—not like I’ve forgiven him yet, right?—so he has no right to be tossing me about like a toy truck.

He throws me over his shoulder. When I pummel his back with my fists, yelling at him to put me down, he does.

His bed doesn’t squeak when I land on it, because he’s a big man and he has the kind of money to buy things that don’t go squeak in the night. I bounce so high that I would have landed on my feet on the rebound if Kill hadn’t crashed into me and driven me back into the springy mattress.

“No!” I shriek, and then yelp when my curlers drag against the bed, pulling at my scalp. “Kill, no! Let me go!”

He growls.

He fuckinggrowls.

The bridesmaid dress rips down the back with one tug of his massive hands. He yanks the bodice down, baring my breasts and then starts devouring them, his weight pinning me as effectively as if he’d gone and strapped me down in the dungeon’s bed downstairs.

“Kill!” I try and punch him, but the angle’s all wrong and the blow just glances off the side of his head. If he felt it, it wasn’t even enough to make his eyelids flutter. “Please, just—” And then I sob. More out of fucking frustration than anything else.