Page 74 of Star-Born Anomaly
In her peripheral vision, he sliced a line in the flesh of her inner arm with the laser scalpel, red blooming across pale flesh. The familiar pain overrode everything else, even the ache in her wrists, her entire focus targeting the incision. Her breath stalled in her throat as the haze obstructing her vision dissipated. Blood dripped down from the wound to her armpit.
Her breaths accelerated as she breathed through the pain. The cargo hold stopped spinning. Everythingcleared.
Sawyer finished the line and paused, waiting. She sucked in a breath, feeling like herself for the first time since he’d landed near her outpost.
With a tilt of his head, he started a second line above the first.
He thought this would make her talk?
A soft breath left her mouth, and the need for pain she’d left in her past returned with full force. She’d gained a small taste of that comfort when she’d added the last line to her trio, but she hadn’t returned to her kit in the washroom until after Iax arrived.
The line scored her flesh, and a breathless inhale expanded her lungs in the wake of the addictive sensation, the allure of control.
Sawyer flicked the laser scalpel off, his hand tightening on her elbow. “What the hell? You’re getting off on this?”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was so damn funny. He’d stripped her, intended on doing harm, andthiswas how he thought he’d get her to talk?
His chin tilted down, then up, scanning her body, like he was truly looking at her for the first time. Maybe he searched for evidence of past cuts. But he wouldn’t find them. Not after Iax.
Iax had healed her marks out of kindness, and this man returned them to her out of anger and perversion.
She laughed harder.
The fingers flexed around her throat.
His confusion made her heady with power. She knew the feeling was false, a trick because she hung there at his mercy, but it didn’t dampen the boldness that rose inside her.
She jutted out her chin. “Let me see the eyes of the man who wants to kill me.” Her voice rasped the more he squeezed. “Or are you that much of a coward, Sawyer?”
His head jerked back like she’d struck him, his one hand dropping away from her elbow but the other tightening around her neck.
“What did you call me?”
“Sawyer Knox,” she gasped between clenched teeth. “That’s your name, right?” Stars dotted her vision as her airway closed up.
She wouldn’t let him knock her out again.
Using every last bit of strength inside her, she smashed her forehead against his visor.
Smack. Snap.Pain bloomed across her face as he stumbled back. But her effort tripped his helmet to disengage.
She sucked in a breath and held it, her head aching from the hit. She couldn’t regret it. Not when she stared into his shocked brown eyes.
Wynn didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Perhaps a face as grotesque as the beasts of Earth, one to match the state of his soul.
Sawyer Knox was not scary to look at. Some might even call him attractive. His dark, almost black, hair was cut right to his scalp. A dusting of facial hair covered his jaw.
He looked normal. Unimpressive. If he wore the same uniform as her, she would have taken him for a scientist.
Until she stared deeper into his eyes and saw the taint of his soul. This man had done many horrible things in his lifetime. She could taste it in the air as easily as she could smell her blood.
Chapter twenty-eight
Hearing his real name aloud for the first time in decades froze every part of his body and stole the words from his mouth.
Sawyer Knox.Blood pumped between his ears as he glared at the woman hanging from her wrists.
That’s your name, right?Her words echoed hollowly in his head.
