Page 159 of Fuckboy Psychos (Scarlett Force 1)
Think, Scar. Think, think, think.
“What happened to your hand?” I ask, nodding my chin in his direction. My heart is beating so fast, adrenaline rushing through me. For a second there, I think he might actually let me keep the knife, but then he presses his finger against the trigger in a very apparent threat.
“Drop the knife,” Aspen commands, and I do. But I make sure to drop it close by so that I can retrieve it fairly easily. “And what about my hand?”
“It’s healed,” I remark, finishing the buttons on one sleeve before reaching for the other. He looks like he might just shoot me now and rape my dying body. It’s a fate every Prescott girl fears, one that I’ve managed to avoid for the entirety of my life. I’ve made myself a monster so that I could fight back against other monsters, ones just like this.
Instead, I willingly let one fuck me.
Now, here I am, about to become another woman mowed down by an intimate partner.
It’s too much.
I can’t let this happen.
“Healed?” Aspen asks, glancing down at his hands for a brief second before looking up at me. “Of course it’s healed. What sort of a stupid question is that?”
“Your brother,” I continue, and when I see that the mention of Ash is agitating to him, I strip the shirt off completely and toss it aside, spinning my skirt around so that I can reach for the zipper. “What does he look like?”
Aspen smiles at me, but it’s not a very nice smile. Oh no, not at all.
I can see it then, in the way his finger tightens even further on the trigger. He really is planning on shooting me. This is actually happening. I won’t go down like this; I won’t.
When I unzip my skirt, and bend down to step out of it, I get the idea that Aspen is getting ready to fire. Likely, at my thigh or belly. Instead of rising back to my feet, I throw myself into the dirt, snatching the knife up as he takes that first shot at me.
Pretty sure I surprise him with that move because I’m able to slam my body into his and knock him onto his ass. For the second time that day, I’m on the ground struggling with a man with a gun, fighting for control of the weapon in my bikini top, undies, and heels.
For as muscular and strong as Aspen felt when he was fucking me, it seems that it was all an illusion. That or … I can’t think of the other possibility, not right now. Not in the middle of this.
I’m just as strong as he is. That, and I’m on top. He fires off another round and then another, wasting his bullets like the moron that he is. The first thing I do is take my knife and aim it at his wrist, throwing a hard slash that cuts right through the tendons there that control a person’s grip.
As soon as I do that, Aspen loses the gun. It falls to the ground beside us, and he immediately switches his focus to my eyes, shoving his thumbs into my eye sockets. The pain is violent and immediate; he certainly isn’t holding back, even with the injury to his wrist. There’s blood everywhere, but this isn’t my first time at the rodeo.
You know, since I just killed a guy earlier in the day.
I swing the knife blindly at him, slashing … something. Aspen’s grip loosens instantly, and I blink through white stars as I look around for the gun. My bloody fingers fumble as I grab it, hefting it up so that I can point it at him.
He snatches at it and, somehow, in the midst of our melee, the gun goes off. I’m sure that I didn’t pull the trigger, but there’s a bright spark, a rush of heat, and then blood, spattering across my skin as I blink through it.
With the gun still held in both of my hands, I struggle to clear my vision only to see Aspen clutching at his upper arm. Blood is spurting out around his hand as he presses it hard to the wound. The bullet passed through his brachial artery. Fuck.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I murmur, staring in confusion at the weapon before tossing it aside; I stumble over to my shirt and grab it before I can question what it is that I’m doing. Saving him? Why? Because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to make the mayor’s son disappear as easily as some nameless thug? Because this is going to ruin my entire fucking life?
Aspen’s car is at the track; everyone saw me leave with him; again, he’s the mayor’s son.
“No, you can’t die,” I say, dropping to my knees and pressing the fabric of my shirt to his arm. He stares up at me with dark, empty eyes, like he’s already gone, like he’s already dead. There’s no recognition whatsoever in his gaze. “You can’t die and ruin my whole life,” I scream, shaking and fighting against the flow of blood.
