Page 30 of The Vigilant

I gave it a second, unsure if this was the right move, but damn sure that I needed to let go of her softness for my own sanity.

I released her neck first. Then her legs. And finally, her wrists. In a blink, she was off of me, crawling to the wall and resting her back against it.

“I don’t need your help,” she muttered.

Goddamn, I wondered what her defiance tasted like. If it was sweet and strong or sharp and swift. I wondered what it would taste like to dominate her mouth. Her body. To have all that rage taken out on my cock and to feel the depth of her submission when she came.

Fuck.

I stood and grabbed two water bottles from the case next to the door.

“You don’t have a choice.” I extended one of the bottles to her.

Her lips cracked open, and it was then that the last of the fight left her. Like the last leaf of autumn giving way to the bare necessity of winter.

“What’s going on, Sutton?” I growled and stalked toward the door before I could no longer hide what I was thinking.

I rested my back against the door and crossed one ankle over the other. Even though I beat her, I didn’t trust that she still wouldn’t try to make some kind of escape rather than answer me.

Sutton looked away from me—stared blankly ahead of her for a second before fitting that fiery mouth around the top of the water bottle and drinking slowly.

Maybe she knew exactly how she was torturing me, and that was why she did it.

“Four weeks ago, my best friend, Mara, went missing.”

“The one whose apartment you broke into?”

She gave a small nod. “I went there looking for her.”

“After four weeks?”

Her eyes darted to the ground for a nanosecond—just long enough to tell me there was more to the story.

“We’d gotten into a big argument four weeks ago. She said some things. We weren’t exactly talking for a few weeks because I was trying to give her time to cool down, so I didn’t realize…” She trailed off, but the look on her face was one I was familiar with.

Guilt. I saw that same damn look, the one littered with invisible scars of regret and immeasurable pain of remorse, every morning in the mirror.

“She was dating Jack Kang,” she revealed. “He was the reason we argued.”

“Did you report it to the police?”

“No, I regularly just start stabbing people for answers,” she retorted, her tone drenched with snark.

I growled low, demanding the truth.

“Yes, I went to the police. They didn’t believe me. They said she probably just left on her own.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because women are legal prey.”

My eyebrow rose.

Her lips pursed. “Guess you don’t remember all of the book then.”

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

“I remember the gist.” I didn’t need to recall the exact phrases to remember the underlying theme of the story and the injustices it tried to highlight.

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