Page 60 of Bite Me

The footsteps draw in closer, and he places a hand back over my mouth, nervously rubbing my neck with the other.

Dacre rests his chin over my head, squeezing me tighter, and we wait for the footsteps to pass and leave. My cheek is pressed to his chest, and any whiff of my scent that he catches, he smothers it with his mouth: the top of my head, my ear—

The footsteps finally dissipate, and the sound of the lounge door follows.

“Are you okay?” I whisper.

His blood is all over me. All over my face and my jacket.

“Don’t do that again.”

“Okay . . .”

“Don’t do that again,” he repeats unsteadily, his eyes brimming with more emotion than I’ve ever seen him muster. “I’m serious. If he had caught you . . . Emma, he’ll hurt you.”

That I gathered.

“Let me see your hands,” I say. There are two red X’s on the back of Dacre’s hands that are struggling to heal. “I’m so sorry.”

He shakes his head. “It’s . . . It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t go with him.”

“I have to. Just forget this. Go straight back to Luxxia, okay? Can you do that? We just pretend this never happened, like we always do.”

“No, I don’t want to do that anymore. Who is that guy?”

He grabs my face in his hands. “Emma, please. Just this once, do what I say.”

“But I want to help—”

“This never happened. Help me by going to your room. Please do that for me.”

My resolve breaks at the pleading in his voice.

“Okay.”

He leaves me no room to argue as he disappears, leaving nothing but quiet behind.

I sit in the closet for a few more minutes, trying to wrap my head around everything I just witnessed.

I feel his lips all over me and the soft graze of his tongue. My fingers drift across my collarbones where his breath warmed my skin, then over my wrists where his tongue licked desperately.

“Please, do that for me.”

For him.

He wanted me to be safe for him.

Chapter Twenty

Dacre

The water runs over the freshly healed cuts on the back of my hands as the memory runs through my mind again. I came into the kitchen earlier than usual to make sure I cleaned up all my blood off the floor from last night.

Liam is my grandfather’s right hand man—the muscle. He’s his enforcer for everything and his closest “friend.” If you can call a man whom you employ to do your dirty work a friend.

I don’t know much about Liam’s background, other than that he was abandoned by his pack when he was eighteen and that he met my grandfather shortly after. I’ve never heard him mumble a negative word about my grandfather, but I’ve seen him punish my older brothers for doing it.