Wrong Kind of Love

It’s not much, but at this stage, I’ll take anything I can get.

7

Jude

Out of all the terrible things I’ve done in my life, scaring her to the point of pissing herself is what has my conscience in a death-spiral tailspin. Not murder. Not arson—scaring her.

When those fear-filled eyes of hers locked with mine, the guilt started to eat away at my soul like a pack of vicious piranhas, taking away entire chunks. She has a sister. She lost her mother. She’s saved countless lives in an ER while I’ve taken them. Jesus Christ...I drag a hand over my face as I head down the stairs and into the kitchen for a drink. Bob’s by the sink, a beer in his hand.

“What are you still doing here?” I ask, reaching for the whiskey in the cabinet.

“I heard you through the window.” His eyes narrow as he takes a slow sip of beer then sets the can onto the counter. Talking with Caleb about the girl’s boyfriend being related to Tom.” He pulls his gun from his holster. “Pretty girl like that—” he cocks a brow —“I’ll fuck her first, then kill her.”

I snatch the weapon from his hand and place the tip against his temple, every damn thing she said in that bathroom playing through my head like a haunting melody. The thought of him touching her sends a jolt of rage charging through me. Without thought, I pull back on the hammer, and he flinches at the click. “You fucking touch her, and I’ll put a bullet through your head.”

“The hell, JP….” His hands lift in surrender before he takes a cautious step back. “I was just messing around.”

Bullshit. I snatch his beer from the counter and chuck it in the sink, using the gun to motion him toward the door. “Get outta my house.”

He backs through the kitchen past the table. When he reaches the door, he glances at his gun. “I need my gun back.”

I shove the pistol beneath my belt on a glare. “Get out.”

The door bangs shut behind him, and I stand at the window, waiting for his taillights to disappear before I go back for the bottle of whiskey. And then I sit on the couch and drink. I wallow in guilt for the first quarter of the bottle, but the more the memory of what happened earlier plays out in my head, that guilt shifts. I go from focusing on the fear in her eyes to the way she looked in that wet T-shirt. And by the time the bottle is half empty, I find myself wondering what her ass would look like with my handprint over it, what my dick would look like buried in her pussy. How sick does that make me? Sick as fuck. But I can’t stop myself from fantasizing about it. I take another glug of whiskey, my dick getting harder by the second.

“Where’s Ria?”

I use the bottle to cover the bulge in my jeans, then glance over the back of the couch at my brother. “Who the hell is Ria?”

His arms come across his chest. “Victoria.”

He’s given her a nickname? My cheeks heat with annoyance, and not because he’s given a hostage a nickname. No, the screwed-up reason it bothers me is that she obviously lets him call her Ria.

“She’s not in my room, so where is she?”

“In mine.”

Seconds tick by, seconds where he glares at me. “Whatever. I’m going to Elysium.”

And I go back to the bottle and my dirty thoughts, imagining what Victoria would look like, on her knees, looking up at me, my dick gliding in and out of her mouth.

It’s past one before I stagger upstairs, momentarily forgetting—thanks to the whiskey—that she’s in my room. When I open the door, Victoria’s on my bed in one of my T-shirts. The hem hits right at the middle of her tan thigh. My gaze falls to her pouty-ass lips—the kind any man would love to have wrapped around his cock. Then I lock the door.

She watches me like a deer frozen in the woods as I cross the room, fumbling out of my boots, my shirt, my jeans, and when I sit on the edge of the bed, she gets up and moves to stand at the footboard. “I want to go back to Caleb’s room.”

She wants to go back to Caleb’s room. A little twinge of jealous spikes inside me. “You have a thing for my brother?”

She snorts. “Are you going to sleep on the floor like he does?”

I fall back onto the mattress, positioning my head on the pillow. “Does it look like I’m sleeping on the floor?”

“I’m not staying with you. You’re a psychopath.”

Since when has she grown a set and gone for the fucking banter? I fight a smile as I allow my gaze to leisurely roll over her. “Doesn’t look like you have much of a choice, doll.”