Page 97 of On Edge

If I move now, I’ll wake her. And she needs sleep more than I need my arm back. So I stop moving and lie there, half-propped against the headboard, my arm pinned beneath her head, and let my mind drift to that damn doctor.

Geoffrey Fogg.

He’s already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet. I’ve already added him to my list. The way he touched her. The way she looked at him with that instinctive fear a wounded animal gets when it knows it’s being stalked. Whatever he did to her in that hospital, whatever role he played in making herthatscared of him….

I’m going to take him apart piece by piece. And then I’m going to make him eat it. For every lie he fed her, every injection, every manipulation, he’ll get a taste of his own viscera. Then I’ll deliver what’s left to Richard Lovett with a fucking bow on top.

But first…

I glance down at Sage, her face serene against my arm. First, I’m going to lie here and try not to do anything that might disturb her.

My arm is already going numb. But I don’t care. Although I wish I had my laptop so that I could do some work while I’m here, the deal is rapidly going south without that article Ragg promised but never fucking wrote. I glance around for my phone so that I can at least check my messages. But I left it on the other side of the room. All I have to hand is the TV remote.

I reach for it and turn on the screen, flicking through the channels with the sound on low. But nothing interests me. One glance at my watch tells me it’s not even late.

She shifts slightly in her sleep, and a strand of dark hair falls across her face. Fuck, she’s beautiful like this, totally unguarded. No hostility in her eyes when she looks at me. I loathe seeing that look on her, the one that tells me she hates me with every fiber of her being.

Fear riles me, but hate….

It ruins me.

Without thinking, I reach out and brush the lock of hair back. Her skin is warm beneath my fingers and so soft. I let my thumb trace the curve of her cheekbone, barely touching, and instantly, my cock thickens, straining in my pants.

My gaze drops to her mouth.

I could kiss her right now. Taste her. Bury my face in her neck and breathe in the scent of her. That dress is so damn tight, I could run my hands over every tight curve. It’s so tempting to give in, to do what I want with her while she’s pliant in my arms.

The way she looks at me when she’s awake...Like I’m something to be locked up and the key thrown away, like at any moment I might turn into the monster her mother warned her about, has started eating away at me.

It’s easier like this when she can’t turn me away, when she can’t run.

And, she’d never know.

My hand stills against her hip, where it’s gone of its own accord. I’m straining in my pants. And my pulse pounds like I’m standing over a kill.

But.

What the fuck am I doing?

She passed out because she was in shock and terrified beyond reason. Because I dragged her to my office and interrogated her like one of my victims. She even tried to cut me with my own razor. And then she drank her own weight inDom.

And here I am, trapped beneath her head, mauling her while she sleeps, wanting to do things to her I have no right to.

My thumb brushes the corner of her dress, she shifts, and it rides up.

Just once. I could?—

No.

I curl my hand, making a fist, and pull away.

Another minute of this and I’ll do something I can’t take back, that will make her look at me with even more dread than she does now.

My mind goes back to Dr. Fogg and what he did to her. As my muscles tense, and red flits across my vision, the urge to fuck her or fuck someone up is heightened by the whiskey, so I down what’s left of her drink.

Then I lie back and tally the ceiling tiles. What else am I going to do?

Forcing myself to exhale, to calm the dark part of me rising, I count and wait until her breathing deepens, and she is well and truly in dreamland. Then, carefully, I slide my arm out from beneath her head and replace it with a pillow.