I lie back on my bed, close my eyes, willing the nightmares to stay away, just for a little while.
You need to fix this — now. Or you’re gonna die in this hellhole.
I need to think about carrying on with all this, I think. Facing the rest of my life. One day at a time, one foot in front of the other. I can’t do this for much longer. The checks. The panic attacks. It’s become too much that it’s starting to seep through the fractures of my fake happy mask. Shepherd’s seen my true reflection. But is he the right person to help me?
All I know right now is . . . I can’t keep doing this.
11
YOU
My memories come in nightmares. And when I wake up in the dark, I scream out into the room, covered in a film of sweat.
Immediately, I smell tobacco and cologne. Shepherd is still here. And he’s standing in my bedroom. Has he been watching me sleep?
The nightlight has been turned off. Did he do that? Put me in darkness?
I sleep with a small nightlight that casts a circle against the dark. I need it, otherwise I don’t sleep. Can’t sleep in the dark. Always, when I wake in the dark, something is there. A monster waiting. And now, a man from my past who I hated, though now, he is something else entirely.
Some dark secret.
Pushing myself up in bed, I whisper, ‘Shepherd,’ tasting it in my dry mouth and gagging over it.
‘Amylocks,’ he says. ‘Just something about you screaming loud in bed that turns me on.’
And then I remember that crooked smirk.
Beautiful.
When I was a child, I thought he was beautiful. How long ago was that? How long has it been since I looked at him and thought he was beautiful?
‘Please don’t call me Amylocks. You don’t get to call me that anymore.’
The name is a reminder of yesterday’s false hopes. I can’t handle the long fall. I can already feel my heart tumbling off a cliff.
‘Then why did you answer to Amylocks when I first arrived?’
I don’t say anything. Can’t say anything.
‘Remember the nickname you gave me?’ he says, almost seductively. ‘Say it.’ It sounds like a question instead of an order.
‘No.’
The nickname hurt me once already.
The bed shifts under his weight as he stretches out beside me. One of his heavy boots scrapes against my bare ankle and I jerk in surprise.
I try to move away from him. He catches my wrist and pulls me against him, his hand twisting over my skin like a pleasurable Chinese burn.
‘Put the light on,’ I beg. ‘Please. I need it.’
‘Since when do you tell me what to do?’
‘Please.’
‘Please what? Say it.’
I don’t want to say it, but I want the light. Need the light. That little glowing circle to keep back the monsters. Want it so badly that I force the name past the knot in my throat.
‘Please, Law, turn the light back on.’
He clicks his thumb and middle finger, like he’s a magician.
He says, ‘Light,’ chuckling low in his throat.
He moves closer to me. The nightlight casts back the black.
I look at him closely, filling in the gaps in my memories. The shape of his broad shoulders, the way his large rough hands move, that darkling spark in his almost-black eyes.
‘I can make the nightmares go away,’ he whispers darkly as his hand explores the neck of my nightgown. Then abruptly, he gathers a fistful of fabric and tears it open.
Those narrow black eyes burn mine with a fierceness I’d never seen until I saw him again. It’s eyes like that, which get me in trouble. Eyes that show I care about something. Eyes that prove I feel something. I harden my own eyes as I look back. I don’t want him to see it. I don’t want him to see that I would sell my soul just to feel him inside me again.
He trails his thumb along my lips. Our eyes never leave each other’s, until we are breathing the same air. And then he kisses me. He plunges his tongue inside to lap at mine, and stars explode behind my eyelids.
I shiver uncontrollably. I don’t know if it’s from the heat or fear. Maybe both. I’m instantly damp between my legs.
I’m helpless. Hopeless. My stubborn spirit dies. And my body betrays me, like it’s been starving for a hundred years and needs to get every single drop of him — or die.
Then those little dark whispers start crawling inside my ears.
Elizabeth nearly died because of you. And you’re here, with a man you — is it lust? — feel some kind of . . . magic.
His calloused hands come up and cup my chin, fingering the smooth skin of my jawline. I clench my teeth together hard, fighting that touch with every piece of me I have to fight with. I can’t want him. I can’t keep him.
What is it about Shepherd that makes my heart thump in my chest like this? All stinging words and threats that I hate, yet all I can do is stare at those lips, think about how they feel on my lips, how they feel on my skin. I’m blind with vivid memories of him fucking me in the woods, every touch electric, every touch flammable, and I never felt so wonderful.
He’s a dangerous drug an inch away from my fingertips.
‘I can make the pain go away,’ he breathes hot on my lips.
The attraction is painful — toxic. I am Eve and Shepherd’s lips are the apple, and his tongue is the snake, pressing me with clever words for just one taste to seal my fate.
‘I
