Page 48 of Sinners Atone
He mutters something under his breath. “Do you just do anything any man tells you to?”
I blink up at him. He’s still staring straight ahead, a fresh sheet of annoyance cloaking his features.
“Um, when they’re carrying me like a purse, yeah?”
He drags his teeth over his bottom lip but doesn’t reply.
We move through the forest for what seems like miles. Through clearings, over a stream, twisting and turning until the canopy above us is so dense that not even the moonlight touches the forest floor. Each step adds another brick of impending doom to my shoulders until the weight is too heavy to bear.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Don’t have the time,” he grinds out each word, sounding almost regretful, as if he’d love nothing more than to put a bullet in my skull and drop me in a shallow grave. His tone nor reasoning plug the burst of relief flooding through me.
“You won’t?” I try to sit up in his arms, but he fists the back of my jacket with a hot hiss, pulling me flat again. “Do you promise?”
Again, no reply, but I don’t care. There’s hope now, real, tangible hope, and I’ll cling onto it like a life raft until he gives me reason to let go.
We stew in silence. Shivering branches, crunching leaves underfoot, and contrasting heartbeats knit together into a steady soundtrack. In different arms, under different circumstances, and if I actually knew where I was going, I’d be almost comfortable.
After a while, Gabriel lifts the arm under my knee to check his watch, and an icy breeze skitters up my thigh.
The movement slid the hem of my dress up. I move to adjust it, but when Gabriel’s head tilts down, something stops me. It’s too dark to see, but I don’t need to, because the strip of exposed skin tingles where his eyes touch. A slow-moving heat grazes over goosebumps, up the inseam of my thigh, and settles on the pink silk pooling in my lap. My breath catches at the shiver chasing after it. It’s warm, weird, and unwarranted, invading my core and tightening my nipples.
Fuck, you’re beautiful.
Suddenly, the night doesn’t feel so bitterly cold anymore.
In the absence of light, my other senses prickle. I tune into the warm masculine scent of his neck, hear the strong throb of his heart and the slowing of his footsteps. I can feel the bulge of his muscles propping up my body, and when he curls an arm upward, sliding a rough hand over my bare thigh, I feel what it’s like to be touched by him too.
He yanks down my dress with a quick tug. It’s a simple, almost reluctant move, as though he didn’t want to touch me at all. It’s gone as quickly as it arrives, but the heat of it lingers. A small puff of air leaves my lips, and now I’m wondering about irrelevant things, like if he has a wife or girlfriend. If he’s this cold around her too, or if she’s as scary as he is.
For some reason, the thought rubs until it chafes.
A calloused drawl reaches out from the dark and pulls me back to the forest. “Do you believe everyone who tells you they won’t kill you?”
His words linger longer than his touch. They trickle into my pores, slow and thick, and twist my stomach. With them, comes the realization that he’s referring to his earlier promise not to kill me.
And like that, I slip off the life raft, his question a brick tied to my ankle. This time, annoyance and a flurry of bitter memories propel me to the surface.
He’s playing mind games with me. Dangling hope, only to snatch it away and give it back again.
I’ve seen it played out before, in another lifetime, orchestrated by a different psychopath. I’ve seen grown men cower, then cry with relief. Rinse, repeat, repeat again until they’re dizzy and weak and desperate. There’re no rules and no chance of winning: the outcome is always the same.
I’m tired of swimming in this man’s threats and drowning in his shadow. I won’t dance for the Devil or beg for my life simply for his own entertainment.
I tilt my chin up and glare at him. “You can stop with the psychological torture, you’re not going to kill me.”
“No?”
“Nope. Too many people saw you with me, including your sister-in-law. Who, by the way, will be wondering where I am.”
As we cross through a slither of moonlight filtering through the forest canopy, I’m sure I see his lips tilt. In amusement or annoyance, I don’t know, but the silence that follows holds me at knife point, leaving me with bated breath and an ever-expanding lump in my throat as I wait for his reply.
It finally comes. A murmur, deep and ominous. “If it happens in the dark, it didn’t happen.”
The words leave his mouth in a tight coil of condensation. I watch it dance and dissipate, and a trickle of cold unease washes the heat of my annoyance away.
What the hell does that mean? It sounds like another cryptic threat, but this one has an unnerving undercurrent. Something softer, more bitter, as though pulled from somewhere deeper.
