Obsession(10)

Still, the words “I love you” were on the tip of my tongue as I looked into her silvery-blue eyes.

“What do you want, Talon?”

Her. I wanted her. Just seeing her again made my dick hard, but I couldn’t just grab her and kiss her, not after how I’d treated her.

“Are you going to actually speak, or are you going to just stand there with your mouth hanging open?”

Then again…

I stepped through the doorway, gripped her shoulders, pulled her to me, and pressed my lips to hers.

She opened for me instantly, as I knew she would. We couldn’t resist each other. Was she as obsessed with me as I was with her?

Smack! She broke the kiss and pushed me away from her. Hard. My back hit the wall right next to the door that was still open.

“Stop it,” she said, her eyes on fire. “That isn’t going to work this time.”

“It worked every other time,” I said.

“Every other time you hadn’t kicked me out of your house and out of your life. This is bullshit, Talon. Nothing more than bullshit. Now I asked you once before. What are you doing here?”

What was I doing there? I couldn’t answer her when I didn’t know. All I knew is that I had to see her, touch her, know she still existed in the universe. “Do you…want to go to dinner?”

She pointed to half a sandwich and a takeout bag from Rita’s sitting on the bed. “I’ve already got dinner, and I’d like to get back to it. So please leave.”

I turned and closed the door to her hotel room, locking the deadbolt.

“I told you, leave.” Her full lips trembled.

God, I wanted her. My body reacted to her very presence. I quivered before her, the effect as unsettling as it was arousing. How had I been so stupid to think that kicking her out of my home would make the desire go way?

I hadn’t been that stupid. I’d known I’d never be free of her.

Could she help me? Could she heal me?

No one could heal me. I was a broken man, a shattered soul. But when I was with Jade, in her arms, her lips on mine, I became someone different. Someone almost…special. Special didn’t make me any less broken or any less shattered, but it gave me something I’d never had before.

Hope.

“I said leave,” she repeated.

I owed her that much. I would go, and I wouldn’t come back until she invited me. I turned toward the door, my gaze zeroing in on the peephole at eye level. Please, Talon. Leave her in peace. She deserves that. Hell, she deserves the best.

But my feet were stuck in blocks of concrete.



“Run, boy. Run.”

The evil laughter of the three masked men whirled around the boy’s head, almost visible—black swirls of smoke morphing into devilish images.

“What are you waiting for, boy? We’ve left the door open for you. Can’t you see the light up there? How long has it been since you’ve seen light, boy?”

The boy stood at the bottom of the stairs in the cold dark cellar where he was kept. They had finished with him and then led him, his legs wobbly like jelly, over to the landing, where the open door pointed the way to daylight.

To salvation.

His legs itched to run, to scramble up the stairs and never look back.

But they would never let him go. This was a tease, just like all the other teases that amused the three monsters. He’d tried it once before. He’d gotten to this top of the stairs and then been grabbed and forced back down. His punishment had been taking the big one, the one with the tattoo of the flaming bird, into his mouth.

“Go on, boy. You can go. We’re done with you.”

How he longed to escape. How he wanted to keep running until his legs could carry him no farther.

But his feet were stuck in blocks of concrete.



I couldn’t leave. I wanted to leave for her sake, but I couldn’t. I was too weak. Too weak to climb the stairs away from her. She had a hold on me. I didn’t understand it, but it was there. As sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, it was there.

I turned to face her, her hands again on her hips, her red lips swollen from our brief kiss. I walked toward her slowly, taking in all of her sweetness, her goodness, her pure heart. When I was close enough to touch her arm, I looked into her steely blue gaze and muttered only one word.

“Please.”

The beautiful lines of her face softened. “That might be the first time I’ve ever heard you say that word, Talon. Outside the heat of passion, that is.”

The fact that she was right hit my gut like a brick. Had I become so hardened by my life that I was incapable of common courtesy?

I had.

I touched one of her cheeks, thumbing the apple. Her skin was soft as silk under my fingertips. She closed her eyes, turning into my hand. She softly grazed my palm with her lips.