Page 55 of Roped

His eyes move up, go to my hair as he rasps, “How every night you braid your hair for me.” His eyes move down the length of my braid that, yes, I made specifically for him. “How you take your time, go slow and steady, all because you know I like to watch you. How you’ve been followin’ my rules like my good little Princess. Keepin’ yourself safe, tucked away from danger.” Then he adds, “Mostly.”

I blush, biting my lip.

He watches my mouth for a few moments before adding, “How you sing for me. In your soft voice. Soft, fragile, so delicate. Like a snowflake. How I’ve slept every night these past few days, listenin’ to that voice. How I conjure it up durin’ the day, when the noise in my brain becomes too much, and it all goes away. Just like that. You make everythin’ go away.”

“Radisson, please, can I—”

“But you had to go and make it even worse, didn’t you?”

“I don’t… How?”

“With your little love note,” he says, his voice somehow both fond and irritated. “Except it’s a murder note, ain’t it? And now all I’m thinkin’ about is how fuckin’ sweetly you woulda sat in your bed and wrote down all those codes for me. Like writin’ in your diary. Only you were tellin’ me how to kill your daddy.”

My breath hiccups. “I—”

“You know that’s evidence, don’t you? That piece of paper. If I kill him and they get their hands on it, it won’t take ’em a long time to get to you.”

“They won’t get that piece of paper.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because you won’t get caught,” I tell him confidently.

Not only because I have complete faith in his ability to kill, but also because I took my time with that note. He’s right; I did sit down on my bed and write it all out like I was writing things down in my diary. Only I was giving him as much detail as possible about how to kill the man who killed his family. Who took pieces of him he can never get back. He’s not any less because of it like he thinks, but they were his and my father took them. So I want Radisson to have justice too. I want him to have closure, freedom. I’m getting mine soon, too, aren’t I, from my father? He deserves his too.

Gosh, he pulled his dead mother out of a burning car. He watched his father burn alive and then die in front of him. There shouldn’t be anything human about him; no morality or code, however twisted, should be left in him whatsoever. But somehow he’s the man people look up to at the ranch; he’s the man they come to when they need a problem solved; he’s safety for innocent animals; he’s a brother, a friend his family cares about and loves.

He deserves this. He deserves peace.

“He hurt you?”

“What?”

He’s clenching his jaw, his features tight and angry as he states, “He hurt you.”

“No,” I say immediately. “He—”

“Don’t fuckin’ lie to me.”

“I’m not. I’m…” Another deep breath before I give him a little bit of truth. “Those men, the ones I don’t want to go out with. I go out with them because of him. Because he says it’s important for business. It’s important to socialize.”

I hear a growl at this. It’s low and unmistakable, the growl of an animal when it’s poised to attack, and I have to clench my thighs and let it pass through me. I have to tamp down my shivers because I like it. I like how crazy protective he is. How insanely guarding. I know if I told him to, he’d kill my father for me. I know that. But this is for him. For his sake, not mine. So I explain, “It’s just… it doesn’t make you happy, what you do”—I swallow, looking him in the eyes—“to those men. You do it because you’re angry. You’re so angry, Radisson, and I don’t even know how you’ll ever not be angry after everything you told me, but…” I have to swallow again to get control of my tears. “But I want you to have a chance of that. Of not being angry. Of somehow, some way moving on. It controls your life, what happened to your family, what my father did, and… I want you to have some closure, do you understand? Some of the justice that you dole out for other people. And if that means killing my father, so be it. He’s destroyed too many lives. He’s created too much misery and suffering. He deserves whatever you’ll do to him, and you deserve peace.”

His eyes are swirling over my features, swirling and swirling, a strange expression on his face. Strange because I can’t quite believe it’s there, not on him. A hint of tenderness as he mutters, “Fuck, she’s so fuckin’ sweet.”

His words are like a sucker punch and I ask again, “Can I please come to you now?”

Something flares in his eyes that makes my heart race and my skin hot. He shakes his head once and rasps, “No.”

“But—”

He glances down, at somewhere by my hip, and with my heart in my throat, I follow his gaze. My knees shake at what I see. The skirt of my dress is stuck to the wall. With knives on both sides. The ones he threw that went lower, that I didn’t bother to see, they’re pinning my dress, me, to the wall like a butterfly. Like the prey I am. For a few seconds all I can do is stare at them in shock, those sharp gleaming objects skewering the fabric. Then, a deep shiver of fear rolls through me, making me all cold. Followed by a gush of wetness between my thighs, making me hot. By the time I process what has happened, I’m flashing hot and cold and my breaths are haphazard.

It doesn’t help that in the next second, my hunter is on me.

He’s in my space and I’m breathing his air, his words as he rasps against my lips, “So fuckin’ sweet that I pin her to my wall for sport and my Princess gets wet for me.”

“I am…” I say shakily, clutching his shirt at his torso, “also very s-scared.”