The Monster (Boston Belles 3)

“I don’t fucking think so, Nix. You don’t get to call me the help and live to tell the tale unharmed.”

Feeling my eyes flaring, I was surprised to discover I didn’t fear him. I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me. Not physically, anyway. After all, he said it himself—his kingdom was on the line. His fate was entwined with my family’s. This was the way it had always been.

It boggled my mind that I’d ever thought he would stand against my father and my brothers. Insist on being with me. Even if he hated my family, he still needed it. For more money and power. We were his door to Boston’s upper crust, and he wasn’t going to let it slam in his face. Not because of me.

If the men in my family paid him to keep his hands off of me and found out what we did in secret, in the dark, it would be the end of their business relationship.

I also wouldn’t put it past Sam and Cillian to try to kill each other.

“You can’t harm me more than you already have, you fool.” I writhed underneath him, attempting to push him away. “Unfortunately, I’d never be able to hurt you the way you hurt me, but at least I can stop loving you.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” he said grimly, reaching for his boot and yanking out a small dagger. He took my fingers and curled them around the handle. He directed my hand to the center of his throat.

“You want to hurt me? Go ahead. You should know where my carotid is, Doc.”

I slid the blade across his neck, to the pulsing artery calling for me, faint blue against his endless, smooth brown skin. My hands shook and my teeth chattered.

His eyes bore into mine. “Now be a good monster and kill me, Nix.”

I tried to poke the blade against his skin, to push it through, to cut him, even a shallow nick, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t inflict pain on him. I caught my lower lip between my teeth, struggling, panting, trying desperately to push through, to make him bleed.

I shook all over.

The knife fell to the floor with a dull thud beside us.

“I can’t!” I roared. “I can’t hurt you, no matter how much I hate you. And I do hate you. Because I love you. I love you and you treat me like garbage. What do you want me to say? That I’m jealous of your dreams because you belong to them at night? Because I am. I cannot breathe, eat, or blink without thinking about you, Sam Brennan. You’ve conquered every inch of me before you’d even touched me. After you did, things got worse. Way worse. I’ve always loved you, Monster, but the more I get to know you, the more I wish I didn’t.”

Getting it out there, in the open, felt like shedding old, dead skin. Even if I knew I was putting myself in a position of weakness, I was still happy that I did.

If my confession stirred anything inside him, Sam didn’t let it show.

In fact, he made it a point to keep my arms pinned with one hand as he jerked down his slacks, kicking my legs open and pushing my pants down.

“Rape? That’s the only thing you haven’t done to me yet,” I spat in his face, seething. Having him was a torture because it reminded me he would never be mine.

He stopped undressing us.

“You think I’ll rape you?” His eyes were hooded, the hint of a sneer on his face.

“I know you will, if you enter me,” I kept my voice steady, “because I don’t want you to touch me.”

“Then what the fuck was that love declaration a second ago?”

“A confession, not an invitation, you moron. I don’t trust you. I don’t know what you want from me. I’m not even sure what part you play in my life. My father is MIA. My mother is an addict and a cutter. My brothers left me with this mess. And the only thing I know for sure is that the person I’ve been pining for over a decade doesn’t want me back but is willing to play with me whenever it tickles his fancy. I’m done.” I shook my head. “Let me go. I don’t want this anymore.”

We stared at each other. He knew this time was different from all the others. Because all the other times I tried to make light of things, to playfully banter with him while drawing closer and closer to him.

Now, I wanted to leave.

“You’re serious,” he rasped.

I jerked my head in a nod.

He sat up and let me go, allowing me to scurry backward toward the wall. I tugged my pants up.

The truth of my statement hit me all at once.