Page 19 of The Cruelest Chaos

He takes my fingers from his face, pins my hand against the door at my back. “If you want me to hurt you, say it. But don’t put your nails against my back again—”

I do it before he can finish his sentence. I drag one nail down his back, not searching for a wound, but it doesn’t take long to find one. Like a free fall through empty air, until you hit a rock jutting out of the side of a cliff.

I feel something warm against my finger, his blood under my nail.

His body is tightly wound, every muscle tense as he tries not to say a word. The hand pressing mine against the door circles my wrist, as if he’s holding on.

He’s not breathing.

As my finger comes to the waistband of his shorts, I realize I’m not either.

I can’t stop the smile pulling at the corners of my mouth, anticipation washing over me in waves.

But just as he exhales, just as he brings his hand to my throat and squeezes so hard my eyes water, something goes off.

Something shrill and loud that makes us both jump, his grip loosening on both my throat and my wrist.

I clamp my hands over my ears, jerking them away from his body.

What the fuck?

Then it hits me just as he says the words: “Fire alarm.”

“Shit,” he hisses, and before I can react, he picks me up, tossing me over his shoulder.

He flips on the light, and before I can hit him, I realize I’m staring down at his back.

It looks...horrible. My mouth falls open, taking in the mutilated flesh, flayed open and blooming with dried blood, as if he didn’t clean these wounds. There’s fresh blood, too, from my fingernail. A small drop in the ocean of lacerations, but it makes my stomach churn.

He walks with me back to the bed, pushing his feet into his boots. And then he drops me onto the bed and tosses me my own boots. As I quickly put them on, he swipes up a white t-shirt—stained with blood on the back, probably from when I scratched him last night—shoves it on then picks me up again. I’m staring at him, upside down in a daze, the piercing shrill making my stomach tighten into knots, the sight of his back making it worse.

“I can walk!” I manage to gasp out.

He ignores me, his hand tightening around my waist. He yanks open the door and I hear screaming. Laughter. The footsteps of people running.

“Get her out of here,” he barks to someone and I wonder if he’s talking about me, but he just heads down the hall, not pawning me off to anyone.

I can’t see who he was talking to, but I hear a raspy voice say, loudly, “Gee, thanks. If you wouldn’t have told me that, I’d have no idea what to fucking do!”

Maverick says nothing, just keeps heading toward the end of the hall.

We enter a stairwell, the rushing footsteps are louder, the screams shriller. I’m jostled over his shoulder as we come into a crowded corridor, but he easily shoves people out of the way, and no one touches me.

No one bumps into me.

Then we’re outside, the night pitch black and cold as he heads toward the parking lot.

He sets me down on my feet, and I clutch his shirt to steady myself. His arm is still around me, holding me close, and he examines the enormous stone building, tipping his head up to take it in. All around us, people are scattering to their cars, pouring out of the compound.

There’s no smoke. No fire that I can see, but the place is huge.

The alarm is loud here, too, but not nearly so piercing. I inhale, exhale, waiting.

He tilts his chin down, looking at the exit. I try to move away from him, but he just tightens his hold on me without looking my way.

I turn to see what he’s looking at, and then I watch Natalie stumble out in a daze, her boyfriend, Atlas, holding her hand. Then some of Atlas’s other friends that I don’t really know.

“Let’s go,” Maverick mutters, more to himself than to me. He steers us back toward the parking lot.