Page 36 of The Darkest Chase

Last night, she looked at me like I was the danger.

The one she should be afraid of.

Can she see right through me so easily? I wonder.

Does she know that underneath the calm façade, under the mantra to serve and protect, I’m not a good man?

I tried to be once.

I tried to be better than my father, but since the day Jet died, there’s just this slow, deep-rooted poison swirling with black thoughts.

Horrors I’d like to do to Xavier Arrendell.

To Ephraim Jacobin and his rotten fucking clan.

Also, what I think about doing to Talia Grey—very different, very devastating things—as I watch her now.

She’s standing on my doorstep under the bright morning sun.

There’s a bulging rucksack piled against her back. Her slender shoulders strain, making her chest thrust forward in curving mounds that threaten to burst through her pink plaid flannel.

Danger tits. She just invented them.

And pink again.

Damn if I don’t smile.

The shirt looks brand new, still a little stiff despite the way the fabric clings to her—and there’s not a single scuff on the dark-brown leather hiking boots she’s wearing, laced up tight over the cuffs of dark jeans molded to her shapely legs and vanishing into her scrunched pink and black argyle socks.

Is she already flushed?

A little breathless, perhaps, her coppery-red hair pulled up in a ponytail, minus a few wild strands that billow against her cheeks.

Her eyes are so bright.

So eager.

Even if I never lay a hand on her, fuck, I’m going to defile this young woman’s innocence no matter what I do.

One more reason why I’m a terrible person.

The more I think about how wrong it would be, the more I want it.

I screw my mind back in place, though, giving her another once-over.

“Did you buy out the entire sporting goods store?” I ask dryly, and her flush deepens. I can’t help wondering if she blushes so easily all the time, or if it’s something unique about me—the way I clearly twist her up.

Yeah.

Bad fucking man.

Because that just makes me want to pin her up against a wall and find out how red I can make her, how I can make her tremble, and if that flustered look could ever be something else.

I don’t know why vulnerability turns my crank.

Maybe because I was made to feel helpless my entire young life, and now there’s something darkly satisfying about turning it back on someone else.

About being the one in charge.