Page 99 of Dollhouse

She smells like a fucking porta potty, but that doesn’t stop me from pressing a soft kiss to her lips. She’s disgusting, but that’ll never stop me from touching her any chance I can get.

Eli’s fumbling with the ankle cuff trying to figure out a way to remove it so we can get her out of here.

It doesn’t budge, only upsetting him more. I try to distract her, and even that’s not working either.

“How did you find me?”

“We have our ways,” Eli grumbles, kicking at the chain attachment on the wall, still struggling to smash it down.

Good. I know he knows this is his fault.

“We have to get out of here before he comes back,” she warns, grabs fistfuls of my hoodie and pulls herself closer to me, as if she’s trying to bury herself inside of me. Little does she know, she’s already inside of me. She’s dug herself in my fucking soul already and has been since the day I laid eyes on her. “He wants all of you dead.” Her eyes glisten with unshed tears.

My poor strong butterfly is terrified for us. I hate seeing her weak and afraid.

“Who are you talking about, baby? The blond fucker? He’s dead.” Her eyes shoot open, and she frantically shakes in my arms, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.

“No, not him. The one pulling his strings.” She confirms what we already knew. Tyson wasn’t the only one behind this, nor was that unknown blond fucker I shot in the hallway. They were both merely a pawn in the game that was being played.

I make a mental note to have Eli and Maverick look into him later and find out everything about him.

“No one is going to die. We’re all going to get out of here alive. Rowen is upstairs, and we’ll be okay. But first, we have to get you out of here,” I say, doing my best to ease her worries. She’s unconvinced but nods anyways.

Pulling my hand away from her hip, my brows furrow, seeing the crimson that stains my hand.

How have I not noticed that she’s been bleeding this entire time? Slowly, I grab the hem of her dress and pull it up, revealing the bloody bandage on the front and back of her body. With steady fingers I remove the bandage, gasping at the sight of her torn stitches. Whoever stitched her up did a really shitty job.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

“Eli, we have to go now!” I roar, shifting to move off my knees and sit on my butt, laying her small body out across my lap.

“I’m going to check and see if Tyson has a key or anything to pick this fucking lock,” he says in a rush, still examining the cuff around her ankle.

Tate’s beautiful blue eyes are staring deep into mine. Her hand comes up to my face and her fingers run along my wiry beard. “I didn’t have anything to do with this. They set me up.” I don’t like the way she’s looking at me.

It makes me feel uneasy.

“Shh, stop talking, butterfly.” I run my fingers along her perfect heart-shaped face, and trace over her features, as if I am subconsciously trying to memorize everything about her face, but she’s impossible to ever forget.

Her blood is staining my hand, and this time, I am not getting hard at the sight of it.

This is the only time I don’t want to see her blood. I want to scoop it all up to put it back inside of her paling body and make her stop bleeding.

She’s going to be okay.

She has to be.

I need her to be.

If she’s not, this is on me. This is all my fault.

I’d finally found someone that awakened my soul. Her demons called out to mine the first time I laid eyes on her, and I answered that call. She’d seen the darkness within me, and within herself, and didn’t shy away from it. She embraced it, and even when I brought her into my workshop, she wasn’t afraid.

She watched me kill a man without flinching. And it turned her on. She let me chain her up on the bloody chains that I’d hung my victim on and cried for more while I fucked her. The moment I carved into her delicate skin, her flesh spread apart like soft butter, that was the moment she officially became mine.

I marked her in the same way she marked my dark and damaged soul.

“King! We have to go now!” Eli comes running into the room, covering his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his hoodie, his eyes wild and frantic.

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