Page 123 of Viper

Reaper moves toward me. I scramble backward, and he freezes.

I gather my dress and press it between my legs, an oily feeling moving through me from the memory of the soldier’s vile hands. From the feel of his dick slipping over me, so close to violating me. An anguished cry slips free of my throat.

Reaper snarls and takes another step toward me.

“He didn’t,” I say, barely able to breathe around the adrenaline coursing through my system. “I stabbed him before he could.”

“Good.” Reaper holds out his bloody hand, and this time I lean forward, and take it. I stand on wobbly legs with his help. My gaze falls to the dead man, the one I helped kill, sprawled out on the blood-soaked gravel, his cut-off hands lying nearby.

“I killed him.” My knees grow weak.

“He deserved it.” Reaper’s low rumbling growl moves through me as he dips and gathers me in his arms. I press my face to his chest, blood smearing over my cheek as I wrap my arms around his neck. A choked sob escapes, and he grips me harder, pressing me to him like if he holds me tight enough, he can tuck me away under his skin.

“You just cut off his hands,” I whisper. “You…”

“That will teach anyone who dares touch you what happens when they try to take what’s mine.”

Chapter 38

Delilah

Barelyanylightbleedsthrough the window as he carries me through the door of my bedroom. The moonless night turns the furniture a dark blue hue and thickens the shadows. With his boot, Reaper kicks the door closed, and the sound shoots through me like a gunshot. I squeeze him tighter, burying my face in his neck, sucking in breaths, trying to calm my racing heart.

On the way up here, we didn’t come across any other of Fallon’s soldiers as he carried me through the house and up the stairs. Some remote part of my brain registers the oddness of that, but I’m barely hanging on to my sanity to think too long about it.

I killed a man.

Or at least I helped.

My pulse jumps at the thought, and images of what just happened scatter in my head like dry leaves. I bite my lip, but wince at the sting of pain from where he struck me. My chin quivers, and I squeeze Reaper closer, focusing on how it feels tobe in his arms rather than the mess of emotions swirling through me.

There is a part of me that is terrified of what I saw him do. What Striker did. But I think I’m more scared of the thought that passes through my mind.

I’m glad they ended him so horribly.

I’m glad that disgusting man’s last moments were filled with terror and pain.

The vision of Reaper and Striker chopping his hands off makes my throat tight, but numbness creeps through my limbs as he carries me across the room to the bathroom. Carefully, he sets me down, and my boots hit the tile floor with a quiet tap. Reaper switches the light on, and the gold-tinted tungsten light has me blinking, but then I catch sight of Reaper in the full bright light, and I gasp.

Blood splatters the white skull of his mask, dampens his black shirt. Bits of what I assume are flesh cling to him. My stomach twists. I stumble back, my hand to my mouth, and race for the toilet. What little food I ate earlier expels from my body in a rush.

“It’s okay,” he whispers as he gathers my hair, holding it back. “Your body is trying to rid itself of the adrenaline.”

I gag again, my stomach heaving. I grip the toilet, my arms shaking. A violent trembling starts in my shoulders and moves to my legs.

“Come here,” Reaper says, pulling me up. He flushes the toilet and then closes the lid, pushing me down until I sit. He crouches before me, and lifts my foot, removing one boot and sock, then the other, setting them aside before standing. The water from the faucet as he turns it on blasts through the quiet room and into my bones. He washes his hands, scrubbing them with soap to remove the blood, then grabs a washcloth and runsit under the faucet. The cool rag hits the side of my neck. “You’re going into shock.”

He swipes at my neck and it comes away red. I blink, staring at the washcloth, my gaze dragging over to his blood-soaked sleeve, then to his chest.

“Look at me.”

My gaze travels from the gore splattered on his shirt to his black eyes.

“You need to lie down before you pass out,” he says.

I shake my head as he pulls me up and tries to guide me from the bathroom. When I jerk in his grasp, he lets me go and takes a step back. His eyes drop to my dress and then lower. Suddenly I’m aware I’m clutching the material to the space between my thighs.

He growls, this animalistic sound of fury, and drops his head back to look up at the ceiling. Squeezing my eyes shut, I spin to face the sink. When they open, they land on the rag he had pressed to my neck, stained red. With a trembling hand, I reach for the faucet and turn it on, and that’s when I see the blood. My hand is covered with it.