Page 25 of Locke 2

Thirteen

Kali

Minutes passed.

Maybe an hour.

He was making himself busy. With what, I had yet to know. I didn’t even care. Everything was already a mess.

My lips slackened, the bottom lip aching. Blood still coated my tongue. The blood he’d practically sucked into his mouth, like he wanted to taste my very essence. I ran my tongue along my bruised lips, pushing out through a shaky whisper, “What took you so long?”

No response.

Not even Dahlia raised her head from the other side of the bed. Little traitor should have been barking at the intruder. She should be defending me. Then again, she’d probably witnessed my surrender, getting dicked down by this man. She probably couldn’t even look at my hussy ass.

I had to do this alone then.

I let out a slow breath and very slowly shifted my body, resting my back against the hard mattress. I stared up at the dark ceiling and saw his moving form from my peripheral. I felt both defeated and relieved. I felt dread and excitement. These clashes of emotions were irritating.

Finally, I turned my head, and even though I knew I would find him—the man who’d already held his gun to my head as he fucked me—it didn’t prepare me for him. His presence was all consuming, even in the darkness. He stood over my dresser, his giant back to me, the gun put away, grabbing and flipping through papers I’d had on there. I watched him, barely breathing now as he shined a little flashlight over the pages. Beside the countless papers he must have collected throughout the house was my purse, opened and empty, the contents spilled out over the dresser. My wallet’s cards were emptied. The loose change scattered across the surface; the little bills crumpled in a tiny little pile. He was rifling through everything.

“What are you doing?” I asked, but I knew what he was doing. He was going through my little life I’d built, collecting all the information he could get.

“You dare question me,” he returned, his tone dark and merciless. “It would be wise you kept your mouth shut, Kali, until I calm down.”

He was still angry, even after he’d fucked me. It wasn’t the reaction I expected from him. I had imagined him strutting around me, oozing cockiness as he goaded me like I was a passing amusement. Wasn’t that what I was, after all? And yet when he used my name, caressing it with his tongue even while he was angry, I felt an involuntary quiver in my being. The same feeling I felt when he’d said it as he fucked me.

He still remembered my name.

Why did I think he wouldn’t?

He opened one of my drawers, his hand roaming inside it. I slowly sat up, wincing at the aches in my body, and rested my back against the headboard, watching him intently. My pulse hadn’t slowed. Nor the feeling of genuine surprise that he was actually here.

“Hello to you, too,” I retorted, sarcastically, if only to cut through the tightly wound tension between us.

He slammed the drawer so loud, the dresser rattled. Exactly the opposite reaction I hoped for. I stilled, my eyes widening as he slowly turned to look at me. The light flashed in my eyes, and I squinted, looking away. I didn’t get to have a look at him, and that sort of horrified me. I wondered if he did that on purpose. He didn’t want me to see him, which was a shame. You could know a lot about a man when you looked into his angry eyes.

And, deep inside, Iwantedto see him.

“Eighteen months,” he quietly uttered, that rage I wasn’t familiar with dripping out of him. “Five hundred and forty-eight days.”

I looked down, feeling the heat rush to my cheeks as he took a step toward me, closing the gap between us. The light was still on me, like he was peering at my reaction closely. The light shook, though, another indication that he was pissed.

I swallowed, whispering, “I told you that you wouldn’t find me—”

“Shut up,” he growled.

And I did.

I sensed the danger approaching. I closed my eyes, telling myself to calm down. He had never actually hurt me when we were together. God, I made that sound like we had a relationship. When hekidnappedme, he had never actually harmed me without my permission. It had been pretty fucked up. I should have spent the last eighteen months decompressing from it all, and analysing how sort of sick it had been. If I had, I might have explored the possibility that he could hurt me without my permission. This was Max fucking Locke. He was corrupt and dangerous and a total serial killer.

Abruptly, the light disappeared from my face as he climbed over the bed so quickly, I didn’t have time to think. A hand shot out to my throat, and I went deathly still, gaping up at the dark figure that was now astride me.

Was he going to fuck me again?

No, this felt different.

It felt like he was everywhere. My entire vision was filled with him, and the weight of his body—of his thighs clenched around my outer thighs—caging me. His grip was tight as he leaned down, his nose bumping mine.

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