Page 60

CHAPTER 60

REDLEY

My hands are speckled in blood as they hang onto my steering wheel. The rearview mirror shows me the empty road behind me, and the low-hanging sun glows bright, making it harder to see. I’m heading east out of the mountain and then up the East Coast to Canada. Maybe I’ll take a ferry or something into Nova Scotia. Wherever I’m going, I’m getting far enough away not to think about this hellhole for a while. I’m not sure where I’m headed, but Doc had a lot of money, and it’s mine now.

Doc also had a sink, and I could have stopped to wash my hands, but I didn’t feel like it. What’s the point in washing your victory off your skin when you can wear it for a little while instead? I can’t keep killing even though there are a fair few more people on my list. Cops who ignored me and people who tried to take advantage of me. Hell, there are a lot of bad people out there, and something inside me is screaming to fight.

I’ve convinced myself there will be some immense freedom for me, a new life free of complications, but I shouldn’t be surprised to find the one and only road in and out of Grimm Groves is blocked. An El Camino is parked across the road, and Wolf steps out. I consider running him straight over. The truck can definitely take him. I don’t stop, though, simply going off the shoulder to get around him. Again, I shouldn’t underestimate Wolf.

A large shadow covers my windshield a moment before he collides with it. The glass cracks in a giant spiderweb, and his weight is so immense the shards nearly dip to my face.

“What the fuck?!” I shout at the top of my lungs. “What now, you miserable asshole?”

“Can’t leave now, can you, Muffin?” he taunts, but it’s weakened by the cough that follows.

I thought I had been angry with him before. Hell, I falsely convinced myself I wanted to kill him, but I truly think this moment is by far the most raw anger I’ve ever felt in my life. There’s no pain to twist the emotion, no sadness, just the raw urge to pummel him beneath my fists for fucking up my damn truck when I was less than an inch from free of him.

“You’re not leaving me,” he moans from atop my truck.

I shove the door open and climb out, coming to face the overgrown asshole lying on top of my hood. I stand in front of him, and he just looks at me, yellow eyes blinking. Does he even care that I killed his father? He sure did the night I took that shot, and they burned down my home.

“Yes, I am, Wolf. Right now.”

I don’t waste a minute, grabbing my bag and running for his car as fast as I can. I nearly get inside, hand grazing the handle, when he snatches me by the arm and whips me around to face him, and he doesn’t let go.

“You aren’t leaving me, Redley. You’re marrying me.” He shakes me for emphasis.

His free hand pulls the same diamond ring he offered me before out of his pocket.

“You stole that from me, Wolf. It doesn’t count as an engagement ring if you stole it from the person to begin with.”

“Redley, please. Listen to me,” he begs.

“Doesn’t feel like I have much of a choice.” I wriggle my wrist, trying to get free.

“Listen with a hope of seeing my side of things, please?”

“I’m not doing that,” I spit.

“I have something for you. It’s in my pocket. If I let go of you, do you promise not to run?”

“Fine!”

He rolls his eyes at me before he lets go, pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket, and hands it to me. I open it and scrunch my nose as I try to figure out what I’m looking at. I realize what’s happening at the same moment he says, “It’s the deed to my mountain, all my property, my house, everything. They’ve all been yours all along. I was just borrowing them. Well, except my mountain, that's a gift.”

“Stealing them,” I correct, eyes roaming over the document like I can’t possibly believe what I’m seeing. After everything, why would he hand this all over to me? “You stole more diamonds than your mountain is worth anyway, but why, Wolf?” I ask.

“I just told you.”

“You’ve never done anything in your life out of a sense of morality. Why are you giving me all this?” I demand.

“Because I love you, and you want your justice, and this is the closest thing I could think to give you to make things right, as well as the other things…”

“Other things?” I ask.

“Well, if you don’t leave me, I’ll make you come every day for the rest of your life, for one. That’s a pretty good offer,” he says, and I hate to admit he’s tempting me again.

“It’s not enough,” I tell him.

“I gave you my home, my property.”

“If we’re married, it’s all yours again anyway,” I say.

“Not if you hide those deeds somewhere I won’t find them. Then I can never do anything but be with you and love you. Littles love their hidey-holes don’t they?”

“We do,” I say, thinking about his offer a little more than I’d like to admit.

“See, think about it. It would all be yours. I would never need to know where you hid them, and I can spend my life making all this shit up to you.” He waves his arms in front of him to generally signal what he’s making up for.

“What is all this ‘shit,’ Wolf?”

“Jesus, Muffin. You’re a princess, and you should have been treated like one from the beginning. I’m going to do that. No more scraps of everything, living hard for everything.” He sounds truly disgusted, and while much of it is his own fault, it warms my heart that he cares.

“What if I like things hard?” I cock an eyebrow at him, and I instantly regret flirting.

“I can fuck you hard and make your life soft. I want to. Let me make up for every time I chased you too close to a cliff or made you go to sleep at night alone. I fucking love you, Redley.”

He pulls me into his arms, trying to impress the weight of his feelings upon me. I stare at his handsome face as he holds me. He’s still hurt from what his father did to him, even more so now that he’s collided with my truck and won. I can’t do this to my family.

“No, Wolf. Not after everything.”

He drops to his knees in front of me, and my mouth drops open in shock with him. There’s no sexual intent in his expression, though that’s the only sense I can make of his actions. He reaches for his shirt and rips it open, revealing a network of thick, fresh cuts. My throat clogs, and I assume his father did worse to him than I realized, but he couldn’t have. I look closer and really see what he’s done. The word Redley is carved into his very muscular chest.

“I could have gone with Muffin, but I wanted to make sure anyone who saw it really knew I loved you and not baked goods,” he says.

“I—”

“I needed to pay for what I did, right? Suffer for it? Bleed for it? I’m willing to do that. Hell, I’ll do it as much and as often as you want for as long as you want. I will do anything for you, except for leave you alone.”

“You’re not serious,” I argue.

“The only thing I won’t do is leave you alone. Run from me and let me show you that I’ll stalk you for the rest of your life, devour you, make you realize how pointless it ever was for you to try to avoid me to begin with.”

I let his words process for a moment as I stare at what he did, and I hate to admit that this has the most effect out of everything he gave me. What does that say about me? I tip my head to the side as I eye his body. “It is sexy,” I say. Everything about him is hot, and because I’ve acquired this strange taste for blood, I dig my fingers into the wounds, and my pussy throbs when he hisses and flinches.

“Anything, Wolf?” I ask. “Anything to be with me?”

He looks up at me from his position on his knees and nods, yellow eyes completely sincere. I’m still not convinced I should forgive him or that spending another minute with him is the right choice, but right now I can’t shake him, nor do I want to. I want to show him how he’s going to pay for his sins.

I dig my fingers into the cuts one more time, and he groans. My pussy gets even wetter, but if I thought it was all pain spurring him on, I’d be wrong. His cock is as hard as can be, pressed against his jeans and creating the most delicious outline.

“Do you like that, Wolf? Do you like when I hurt you?”

“Fuck, yes.”

The sound of his arousal is more than I can take. I’m not sure I have any points to prove other than wanting him to make me come, but two things make a person stupid—love and lust—and goddammit, I feel both in spades for Wolf.