Page 108 of Captive Souls

Lukyan looked at Piper, examining her black eye, the marks on her wrists where the handcuffs had rubbed them raw. The blemishes on perfect skin that still haunted me even though the ones who’d put them there were rotting in a cheap motel room.

Because the man who ordered her suffering was still breathing air.

Lukyan took it all in, Piper, her state, my presence. I saw him putting the pieces together.

I watched him on the precipice. Of killing me despite the audience, despite Piper’s warm smile. That’s what his true nature hungered for. And he was a man who rarely deprived himself of that.

My body was nothing but a taut fucking wire in those handful of moments, Piper’s hand in mine while my fingers twitched for the gun in the holster at my shoulder.

It would be the smallest tell, enough for Lukyan to decide to kill me, scant seconds for me to decide to kill him first. In front of his home. And then we would’ve been shit out of luck.

I squeezed Piper’s hand even tighter as I waited for Lukyan to make a decision.

When he put his hand out to shake hers, I had to tamp down the beast inside of me roaring at his touch on hers. I ached to rip his fucking arm off.

“You’ll have to speak to my wife about that,” he replied smoothly. “She’s the green thumb. I just kill everything.” His eyes gravitated to me for a split second, and for ab insane moment, I wanted to laugh. “I’m Lukyan.” Surprisingly, he offered her his real name.

The moment he let go of her hand, my lungs began working properly again. “Won’t you come in? Elizabeth is inside, and I’m sure she’ll be delighted to talk to you about the wisteria while Knox and I discuss … other matters.”

His threat was clear, even if I was the only one who could deduce it. We were not out of the woods. Or at least I wasn’t.

Entering the house wasn’t a surefire guarantee that I would exit it alive. But it was a risk I’d take for Piper.

I’d die for her in a heartbeat.

Though I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.

I had an ache for something unfamiliar.

A life.

With Piper.

It was fucking ironic that I was walking into the home of the deadliest man in the country—myself excluded—in order to attempt to make that happen.

Piper

I hadn’t known where Knox was taking us. We’d spoken little since his declaration last night. We’d left the motel—sensible, considering we’d lingered too long next door to two dead bodies Knox was responsible for—driving for an hour or two before Knox checked us into a moderately nicer hotel off the highway.

He’d taken me roughly and urgently once more until my exhausted body had lapsed into a deep and dreamless sleep.

It surprised me that I didn’t have nightmares about what happened. Maybe my brain knew that the nightmares were not over. Save all the falling apart for when we were safe. If that was ever going to happen.

I sensed it. The tension in the air, a knowing deep in my marrow. Knox had come to ‘save’ me, but the battle was far from won, the story far from over. I was a sucker for a happily ever after. In fact, I refused to consume any art that didn’t promise that. But I had a terrifying premonition that this story, our story, wouldn’t have one.

I tried to keep that panic at bay, choked down food that Knox had ordered for me at a diner, had let us sit in complete silence, eating.

He had watched me intently, waiting. He knew it was unusual for me to go so far inward. I could sense his concern, almost as palpable as his ownership, the ferocity simmering underneath his skin.

It had taken the drive to Connecticut for me to find my trademark optimism. We’d stopped at a gas station for me to pee, and I’d bought two matching keychains.

When I handed him one, he stared at them as if I were presenting him with a severed body part instead of a kitschy keychain.

“They’re souvenirs,” I explained. “Every good road trip needs one.”

The slight narrowing of his eyes communicated that he was worried I might’ve gone completely insane. Which was fair enough since I didn’t think any of our trips should’ve been immortalized with tacky keychains since the first one was a kidnapping, and this one was a journey toward some sort of battle to the death.

Nevertheless, I ignored him, taking the keys from the ignition so I could thread the keychain into them.