Page 68 of Oblivion
I slowly removed the key from the ignition and opened the door, my limbs heavy, my heart breaking because I knew I wouldn’t get to see him. I needed to get as far away from here as possible.
Ventus City was the perfect hideout for me, but it didn’t last long enough.
I would need to tell Cillian, to let him know what was happening. If I was lucky, I would be out of here within the next couple of hours.
Slamming the door shut, I started walking toward the house, fucking hating the heat enveloping me. I missed Santa Monica, the breeze, the beach… I fucking missed him and Zozo, and the shenanigans she was always doing, trying to make me laugh, trying to evoke all these emotions from me.
I even missed Indigo and his grumpy ass. I worried about Atlas and the cracks in his eyes. I hated that I couldn’t talk to him all these months.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t even realize that Kaiser wasn’t barking, and he always barked whenever I came home. The air was heavy with emotion, too quiet, too ominous after everything that Lazar told me. As I opened the door, I couldn’t see my best friend waiting for me.
There were no sounds in the house. There was no pitter-patter of his humongous paws, and my heart squeezed painfully in my chest.
“Kaiser!” I called out, slowly stepping inside, preparing for the worst. “Where are you, buddy?”
I was trained to hear things that others might not, but the only thing I could hear was the tick-tock from the clock in the hallway.
“Kaiser!” I called out again and walked straight toward the stairs, freezing immediately at the vision in front of me.
The man who owned my heart and my soul sat on the couch in the living room, with a sleeping Kaiser right next to him. Storm dragged his hand over Kaiser’s fur, grinning at me and my shocked face.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head.
That grin of his only became larger when he saw my terrified face. As he stood up, looking at me, there were no traces of the pale skin he had back in the hospital.
Wide shoulders, hair longer on the top and shaved on the sides, he seemed larger than life, standing there in front of me. I was like a brick wall, cemented to the spot, hating the weakness in my limbs as he started walking toward me.
I was sure the others were here, and even if they weren’t, I wasn’t a match for him. And I refused to hurt him no matter how much he wanted to hurt me. I couldn’t bring myself to do it even if it was self-defense.
I couldn’t leave Kaiser, not with him, not when he probably knew how much Kaiser meant to me.
The scent of leather, oak and gas enveloped me in its embrace, and I closed my eyes, unable to look at the face of the man who was here to hurt me. Sometimes pain ran skin deep, but what he felt for me, the pain and anger he had, that one ran soul deep.
That kind of pain consumed him, made him insane from needing to hurt me. I saw it earlier when he looked at me and as I opened my eyes, I could see it now.
I tilted my head backward, refusing to back down. His long legs closed the distance between us in mere seconds, and before I knew it, he was standing right in front of me, towering over my body.
His chest was almost fused with mine, and I waited for the punishment that was about to come. But instead of the pain I expected him to inflict on me, his hand trailed over my arm, to my shoulder, his fingers dancing over the fabric of my shirt, and all the way to the loose strand of hair falling on my face.
He tucked the hair behind my ear and bent down, his breath whooshing over my earlobe.
“Hello, Persephone,” he whispered. His teeth came out, biting down on my earlobe, eliciting an involuntary moan from me.
“You’re mine now,” he gritted out, wrapping his other arm around my body, pulling me to him. My chest pressed against his stomach, feeling the hard planes of his abdomen. Heat erupted from my core and I shuddered, remembering all the other times he held me close.
His hand snuck to the back of my head and he removed the hair band I put in earlier when the heat became too much, letting my ponytail disintegrate, my hair falling down my back. His fingers went over the nape of my neck, through the messy strands, and he gripped me tight, pulling my head backward.
“You’ve been a bad girl, Ophelia,” he murmured, looking me straight in the eyes. “And you know what bad girls get?”
“Please don’t hurt him,” I whimpered, begging him to spare Kaiser. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
I used to love his smile. I used to love the way he looked at me, but the hatred oozing out of him right now, the sorrow reflected in his orbs, was enough to have me gasp out loud. The wickedness with which he observed me, the anger with which he held me, it was too much to bear. My eyes closed of their own volition, unable to look at his.
“Look at me, Ophelia,” he ordered, but I shook my head, refusing to witness this. “Look at me!” he thundered, and like a pet obeying its master, my body obeyed him.
My eyes opened, unable to look anywhere else but at him.
“This,” he gripped my hair tighter, “this is your doing.”
