Thousands (Dollar 4)

The fact she stood next to an officer made my rage fucking explode. How dare these assholes trap her against her will. How dare they take away her freedom when she’d fought tooth and fucking nail to earn it.

Couldn’t they see the trials she’d endured?

The horror she’d survived?

So fucking what she’d stolen from some pretentious, self-absorbed mark? If anyone deserved the right to bend the law for her own gains, it was her.

Her.

Her green eyes met mine, her shoulders tight. “El—”

I didn’t let her finish.

Launching forward, I grabbed her in a possessive embrace as if she’d be snatched away at any moment.

She was so fragile in my arms. So warm and small and right.

I groaned as her breasts pressed against my chest. I needed her closer. Touching her wasn’t enough. Nothing would be enough.

Plucking her from the floor, I relished in her light weight, squeezing her as tight as I dared. Far tighter than I should.

I squeezed her in protection, affection, and most of all, aggression for what she’d done to me. The agony she’d injected into my heart. The poison she’d infected my brain with. The knowledge I now carried that she was selfless in trying to shield me from myself, and I was selfish in letting her try.

Never again.

She’s mine.

It’d taken a separation to understand that, but now I did.

Good luck to the rest of the world and anyone else who wanted her because they couldn’t fucking have her.

Even if it meant tying myself up for the rest of the trip to England. Even if it meant I could never say goodbye when we arrived. Even if it meant I lived the rest of my life in a fog of marijuana just to be able to talk to her without the incessant need to be inside her. Even if it meant my mind finally cracked, and I became so helplessly tangled I might never be normal again.

Even then.

She would remain mine.

I should’ve seen this coming. I should’ve sensed the warning signs: the first time my heart tap danced when she smiled. The moment when my gut clenched because her happiness affected my future rather than just my present. The second my entire body drenched in sensitivity whenever she came near.

All those warning signs I’d ignored or misread.

But now I understood the message.

I was dead without her.

I was alive with her.

Simple.

Her breath escaped into my ear as I clutched closer—doing my best to crawl inside her. Her arms wrapped around my shoulders, hesitantly at first then braver as I buried my face into her neck and inhaled.

Christ, she smelled amazing beneath the stench of police and stupid laws. Laws I’d spent most of my life breaking and had the smallest amount of tolerance for.

Did she still mean what she’d said in that hotel room?

That she loved me?

Did she love me as a friend or something more?

The question stained the tip of my tongue, ready to demand an answer.

Because just like the other two epiphanies, I had another one.

I loved her.

I was in love with her.

There was nothing platonic or grateful about my love. It was cruel and wicked and unwanted because love almost destroyed me once, and it would destroy me again if I did what I was hardwired to do and hurt her.

And I would hurt her.

Eventually.

By loving her, I not only doomed myself but her too. She would be a part of my world—a world she still knew so little about. A world where war was coming, death was hunting, and curses were sure to rule.

“Elder…” Her whisper kissed my cheek, grounding me and sending me into a tailspin all at once. I shouldn’t have come here clear-headed. I should’ve smoked every joint on the Phantom and been numb before attempting to see her.

Someone patted me firmly on the arm, clearing an authoritative throat. “Put her down. Immediately.”

“Do as she says, Elder,” Pim breathed. “I’m okay. Truly.”

It hurt right down to my bones to obey, but slowly, I unlatched my death grip and released my hug—not that it could be called a hug…more like an embrace of apology, of acknowledgment, of soul-crushing fear of what I’d just signed my life to.

Backing away, I pinched the bridge of my nose and forced myself to get it together. At least standing with a precinct of police for an audience kept my twisted thoughts on Pim’s incarceration and her needs, not mine.

I didn’t get hard or drown in all the ways I needed to fuck her.

The past few days had done what my past tricks used to achieve and gave me enough mental distance to ignore sex.

Plus…I loved her, and because of that awful, terrible fact, I was now celibate as a fucking monk.

“She’s coming with me.” I glowered at the officer in her unattractive suit. “No discussion. Whatever you’ve booked her for. Unbook it.”