Page 94 of The Vigilant

“Please, Tynan,” she panted. “Please, Daddy. Please.”

Fuck.I could take a lot of things, but when she begged me like that—with that vulnerability in her voice—it was like a knife to my fucking soul.

And if I heard it again, I’d give her exactly what she wanted…but it wasn’t what she needed.

With a deep growl, I closed my fingers around her clit, the plump bud pulsing between my broad fingertips. And then I set my lips to the strained nub, sucking and pulling until I felt the fight in her—the war inside her finally give over to me.

Her neck slumped into my hold. Her hands clutched the back of my head like a life raft in a storm. Her aching cries grew louder and more desperate, and just when I felt all her limbs tense around me, I pulled my mouth away.

Her gasp was pained, but not as pained as when I released my fingers and let sensations stampede her clit, everything knocking in the door of release that I wasn’t going to open.

“No, Daddy,” she begged, slowly realizing what was happening and stumbling over her words. “Please…I can’t…I need…”

“Tell me the reason for the scorpions, Sutton.”

Murky black-blue eyes found mine through her fugue, desperation bruised with anger. “This is my punishment?” she choked out. “You’re not going to let me come unless I tell you?”

“Your punishment and mine,” I rasped tightly. “You have any idea how badly I want to feel you come on my tongue? To taste your fucking surrender on my lips?” I drew a deep, bone-quaking breath to steady myself and then notched my finger under her chin. “But I won’t settle for half truths and half trust. If you want a release, little wasp, you have to let it all go.”

“And if I don’t?” Even flushed and wanting, she fought it—she fought the safety of trust. Her throat bobbed, those onyx irises piercing me with their brash bravery.

My jaw tensed violently. “If you don’t, then you can finish yourself off. Something I know you’re well capable of,” I growled, the memory of her moans from the bedroom that night rattling around in my head. “I won’t take pieces of you, Sutton. You want me to be your Daddy, you obey me. You want me to take care of you, you trust me. You want me to end your punishment and give you what you want, you tell me the truth about your scorpion.”

Her expression took on a gorgeous fury—the kind of violence used to keep everyone away rather than risk losing them like she’d lost everyone else in her life.

“The truth?” She let out a husky, dangerous laugh and sat tall, her spine uncoiling like the tail of a scorpion about to strike. Our eyes locked, and she reached around my neck, tipping me back as her head lowered to mine. “The truth is that you don’t have to worry about me shooting that man at the house because he wasn’t the first man I’ve killed.”

I stiffened. Part of me was shocked to hear the words, but another part of me, the instinctual part, somehow already knew.

“The man who murdered your mother.” I knew without having to ask. When I’d read the reports on her mother’s death, the details had turned surprisingly sparse when it came to what exactly happened to the man responsible.

“Randy.” Her lip twitched. “He was with the Wah Ching. Started out as her dealer, and when she couldn’t pay for drugs, he took a different kind of compensation.”

The hot thrum of wrath began to infiltrate my veins. “Did he touch you?”

“He tried.” The anger in her eyes was fringed with lunacy. “I came home from Mara’s that day, and he was standing over Mom’s body, cursing at her. I knew she was dead the second I walked in. He regularly got violent with her, but he just gave her more drugs to forget about it.”

I started to lose control of my breath. Ragged inhales. Strained exhales. All my body’s genetic instincts were replaced one by one, word by word, with pure fucking rage.

“He came for me. Grabbing at me. Telling me all the things he was going to do to me—saying it was what he was owed,” she said, releasing a slow exhale. “We struggled. Ended up on the floor with him on top of me. He was bigger. Stronger. Hethought one hand around my throat would be enough to hold me. He thought because I went limp it meant I was giving up.”

Motherfucker.

Sutton shivered, her expression completely flat for a second. “He was wrong.” One side of her mouth curved up. “I had a pocket knife on me. I flipped the blade open and stabbed him in the side of the neck as he was undoing his pants.”

Here she was, telling me about a man she’d killed who tried to rape her, and I was the one trembling.

“He was so fucking surprised. Like it never crossed his mind that his small, weak prey could kill him,” she said with a small laugh. “I still remember how wide his eyes went. I remember the warmth of his blood spurting on my fingers.”

“Sutton…”

Her hand tightened on my neck as though to remind me I was the one who’d asked for this—for her whole truth.

“I shoved him off of me. He was gurgling. Sputtering. And then I straddled him.” Her chin notched a little higher. “I pulled my knife from his neck, blood going everywhere, and ripped open his shirt. The last thing he saw in his pathetic life was me carving ‘PIG’ into his chest.”

She stared at me then, her nostrils flaring and the blue in her eyes fringed with what she wanted me to see as lunacy.

“I could’ve stabbed him anywhere to try and get away, but I went for his neck. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to punish him. And I wanted him to leave this world marked as the kind of monster he was.” Her tongue dragged over her lips, and then she drawled softly, “Do you still want to take care of me now?” The catch in her voice belied her bravado. “Because I don’t regret it. I’ll never regret it.”

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