Page 17 of Blind Devotion (Letters of Ruin #1)
A hollow sensation built in my chest as the colors of the scene faded to black.
His face and features slowly dissolved into oblivion, all of him whisked away on an imaginary wind.
The sounds of paper folding were so much louder now.
A thickness swelled in my throat as I tried to call the memory back, because that was what it was.
That was what it had to be. Someone cared for me.
Someone out there wanted me, and until just now, I hadn’t realized how much that mattered.
I was back in my room in a place I barely knew, healing and so very lonely.
My only company was a man who intended to kill me and who used silence like a weapon.
Tears made my eyes sting. Whatever I had seen, it was years ago.
I wasn’t that young, na?ve girl anymore, no matter how little I remembered, but I still wanted a piece of it.
“What kind of origami do you make?” I couldn’t quite figure out the shape through the feel of the paper and folds alone. It made me think of a linked chain circle of some sort.
Of course he didn’t answer. That would be too convenient and make him too much of a human being.
“Do you…do you make animals? Could you make me a lion and a butterfly?”
The paper folding stopped suddenly. His chair scraped along the tile. Two clacked footsteps and then he loomed over me, his body heat radiating like a furnace, his stern presence nearly suffocating in my own disorientation.
“What did you just say?” he whispered menacingly.
“I was just asking.” My frustration rose. “You don’t have to say yes, and you definitely don’t have to act like a grumpy ass either. It was just a simple question.”
Just like yesterday, his palm pressed against my throat, but this time he didn’t squeeze.
His thumb brushed up and down over my pulse point.
His skin trembled against my own—warm, firm, unyielding, and yet somehow vulnerable too.
Maybe that was what drew me to him, because it wasn’t rational how much I wanted him closer, his arms around me, his body against mine.
We were suspended like that for seconds…
minutes. It could have been hours. Somehow deep inside, I felt protected for the first time in forever.
It didn’t make sense. It didn’t have to, but in my jailer’s arms, in this moment, the void melted away and lightness spread.
I wanted more, but the instant I reached for him, before I even touched him, he jerked away.
He cleared his throat.
“Never ask that of me again.”
“Or what?”
He stomped across the room and threw the door open so hard it crashed against the wall and skittered back in scattered croaks.
A strangled laugh choked out of me. Pain shot up my side, and tears seeped under my eye dressings. None of this was funny, but his switch in moods was giving me whiplash, especially after the lightness of that memory.
“You don’t possess a touch of sunshine, do you? You’re angry. Tormented, so you hide behind violence thinking it makes you so tough, but you’re nothing but a big ol’ grump, trying to spread his own misery.”
“You know nothing about me.”
He didn’t stick around for my rebuttal. The door battered the frame on his way out, and the lock clicked loudly into place.
His absence left me lonelier than before, and I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.
One thing I was almost certain of though.
He didn’t really want to kill me. The next time I saw him, I’d put that to the test.