Trapped by Lies (Truth or Lies 3)

I relive my own bullet wound. I know the pain. I remember the blood that never seemed to stop pouring out of me until I was too weak to stand. And she’s suffered worse.

“Here.” She moves my hand to her ribcage. “Milo beat me until it burned to breathe. He broke ribs that have been broken numerous times before.”

Jesus.

She sucks in a breath, and I can see the pain. Not from the wound on her neck. But I see how her lungs move cautiously, never pulling in a full breath of oxygen to avoid expanding her lungs as little as possible.

“The worst was here.” She forces my hand down to her lower abdomen. “I was stabbed here so many times. The pain always made me wretch. But worst of all, I faced the fact that I couldn’t help but thinking each stab was going into my ovaries, my uterus. I might not be able to ever have kids because of these stabs.” A tiny sob escapes. “But at the same time, I begged for them to keep stabbing, because I never wanted the ability to have kids and bring a child into such a cruel world.”

She rips my hand from her body.

“You may have fixed your error, but it doesn’t mean I can ever forget what happened.”

She shoves me back against the bed, and then her body is straddling mine. She’s reaching back, and I know instinctively what she is reaching for.

She doesn’t need it. I will say and do whatever she wants, but she needs to feel the power of holding the sharp metal in her hand.

Kai grabs the knife from my ankle and then presses it hard against my neck.

Adrenaline drills through my body in spades. Not because I truly fear for my life, I know Kai won’t kill me even if I deserve it, but my body reactions to the threat all the same. I grip the sheets to force myself from retaliating. It takes all of my restraint to keep myself planted on the bed instead of disarming her.

Her eyes engulf me, and a sly smile curls on her lips.

“Why?” she asks.

“You already know why,” I breathe, careful not to move my throat much to prevent the knife from dragging deeper into my neck.

“I know why, but do you? You say you sold me because I betrayed you, but that’s not the truth. Tell me the truth.”

“It is the truth.”

“No, I don’t owe you my loyalty. We are enemies. We are playing a game that generations of our families have played before. You own me. It shouldn’t have mattered to you that I slept with another man to win the game. It wouldn’t have been a betrayal.”

My nostrils flare, and I see red as I think about her with another man.

“You’re mine,” I curse, rolling us over so I’m on top. The knife is still pressed to my neck, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who is in control anymore. It matters she realizes that even though we are enemies, she is still fucking mine.

She glares like a dragon breathing fire at me. “I’m not yours, not in the way you want.”

I lower my mouth, hovering over her tender pink lips. She keeps the knife pressing against my carotid artery, like that is going to keep me from claiming her.

“Admit it,” she raises her eyebrows, her confidence never as great as it is in this moment.

“No.”

I feel the warm blood draining from my neck, but I know it’s nothing more than a nick. She doesn’t want me to bleed, at least not from my neck. She wants me to bleed from my heart. But she forgets I don’t have a heart. I’m incapable of feeling anything.

Yes, I want to protect her, but in the same way I want to protect my favorite car from getting stolen. She belongs to me, not anyone else. That’s all this is.

“You have a heart.” Kai trails the blade down my neck, over my shirt, to my chest. She stops it over my heart.

“My heart hardened, years ago. You learned to shut down to survive; I learned to shut off my feelings.”

“And you brought me back from my darkest cavern. I was trapped inside the darkness, and you showed me how to live in the light. You may have shut off your heart to protect it, but it’s starting to thaw.”

“You can’t thaw it. You’re made of ice.”

“And you’re fire, but it’s going to take more than fire to free your heart.”