Page 52 of The Stallion
Tilting my head to peer down at her, I dragged my knuckle along her soft cheek and down the side of her neck before resting my hand in the dip just below her ribcage.
“Mm… Dallas.” She groaned, lightly fluttering her eyes open to meet mine before looking at me with a questioning expression. “What? What happened? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“There’s something we need to discuss—” I sighed, biting the inside of my bottom lip as I tried to focus on anything but her striking eyes—the wall, the ceiling, her bare leg draped across my hips. “And I don’t know how to explain this without scaring you…”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess—You’re a serial killer.” Bria joked as she propped herself up on her elbow, looking down at me as I worked to figure out how the fuck to respond. When I didn’t react or meet her playful gaze, her smile faded into one of worry. “Dallas... You’re not a serial killer?… Right?”
Releasing her from my embrace, I rubbed my face with both hands, buckling under the pressure that had been building for fucking days.
Here we fucking go.
Just rip the band-aid right off…
She’ll understand.
She has to.
Chapter 20
Bria
“I’msorry,you’reafucking what?” I felt my jaw drop to the floor faster than my panties had fallen earlier.
This was all just some sort of fucked up fever dream, right? Like I wasn’t just in the process of falling for an ultra-hot, murderous dancer, was I?
Dallas was joking.
He had to be.
There was no fucking way—
“And you fucking pickedme? Marriedme?” I couldn’t help the increasing rise in my voice with every word I spoke. A tone that wasn’t quite angry but blatantly not fucking happy at the news I was just now hearing.
“You were perfect—areperfect—” Dallas rushed out, and I couldn’t tell if he was expecting me to feel flattered or entirely fucked right now. “Bria, every wife has to betested—”
“Are you telling me that there are other women in this—this secret society—that commit murderwillingly? Are theyinsane?”He had lost his fucking mind.
“Bria…” The plea of my name as it fell from his luscious lips was too fucking much…
“No. Stop. I need some air… I can’t even right now...” I threw the blanket off my body and forced myself out of bed, leaving the comfort of his warmth, even if it hurt to do so. My skin pebbled from the cool air’s chill as I rushed out of the room.
Days… I’ve known Dallas for onlydays, and already I was finding it hard to walk away from him. This tight tether that had snagged between us, now feeling more like a noose around my goddamn neck.
I hadn’t even fully recovered from my previous relationship, yet here I was, already attached to another like a fucking idiot.
It was sheer insanity—all of it.
How could he expect me to be okay with murder and a secret society that demanded it as a rite of passage?
Spilling blood, as if that would make it sound any better than what it actually was.
Tugging the strands at the sides of my head, I stopped my sad attempt at fleeing just as I had reached the center of the living room, realizing that no matter how hard I fought, I wasn’t going anywhere—alive, that is.
I stared out through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the undeveloped desert landscape behind the house, and for a single moment, I collected my racing thoughts.
Breathe—I needed to breathe, focus, and think.
Everything inside of me was screaming at me to run.
