Page 76 of The Outlaw's Savage Revenge

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.A lump forms in my throat, thick and suffocating. I force it down, but it sticks, heavy in my chest.

“You’re not on my list, princess, in case you were wondering.” Cade’s voice is a gentle caress.

My eyes bug out. “You have a list!”

“I meant what I said about protecting you,” he murmurs. “And about you trusting me.”

My nails bite into my palms. “Right.”

I’m supposed to trust that this predator just happened to rescue me out of the goodness of his heart—the same heart that orchestrates elaborate killings.

Myvoice trembles with the next question. “What did they do to get on your list?”

“Which ones?”

I swallow hard. “Um, the masochists—the submissives.”

“It wasn’t what they did. Their fathers messed with the wrong person.”

My breath stutters, “Their fathers? When?”

A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Twenty-two years ago.”

My own jaw slackens as I stare at him. At the hardened lines of his profile, the way his skin stretches taut over his sculpted features. The faint creases at the corners of his eyes and the shallow groove around his sensuous mouth tell me more than words ever could. While Cade doesn’t look old enough to carry this kind of weight, there’s something ageless about him.

“How old are you?” My whisper is barely audible over the hum of the engine.

“Thirty-five.”

My stomach twists violently as I do the math. “So you’ve had this list since you were . . . what, thirteen?”

Silence.

Cade says nothing, but the air between us becomes charged with something dark, and I know I’ve hit a nerve.

I shouldn’t ask. Every instinct screams at me to stop. But I can’t help myself. “How many are left? On your list?”

His fingers whiten briefly on the steering wheel. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“If they’re mandatory . . . or optional.”

I blink in shock at the way he paints it—like a to-do list of lives categorized into must-kill and might-kill columns.

“When does it end?” The question spills out before I can stop it, desperate and foolish. “Is there a point where you just . . . retire?”

Heexhales. For the briefest moment, I think I see something flicker across his face—vulnerability, maybe, or something close to it. “I suppose when something stops me.”

A sick feeling coils in my gut. The idea that something—someone—needs to physically stop him from killing should terrify me. Instead, I feel something far more dangerous—an all-consuming need to understand what flipped the switch and created this beautiful monster.

“Something happened.” My voice barely holds together, trembling on the edge of crossing a line. “When you were thirteen. What happened to you, Cade?”

The change in him is instant—like watching a door slam shut during a storm. “Your twenty questions session just ended, princess.”

25

Cade

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