Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Kian gives Tate a little salute, then nods at me. “Catch you guys later.”
I nod my head. “Goodbye, Kian.”
“Was nice to meet you,” Tate calls after him, but he’s already looking in my eyes again.
“Come here,” I tell Tate, and I take his hand to lead him around to the back of the tent stalls. I take him behind the music stage, shrouded by a stack of tall boxes of equipment.
“Sorry to interrupt a date with this blue-haired boy,” I tell him. “Did you have fun, drinking into oblivion?”
“Kian’s cute, but he isn’t my type.”
“Did he make you uncomfortable?”
“I wasn’t afraid of him, if that’s what you’re asking—”
“You’ve looked uncomfortable about a dozen times tonight,” I tell him.
“I just wanted to have a fun night at the fair.”
I reach out and squeeze his arm. “You haven’t been having fun?”
The truth is that Tate hasn’t looked at his phone since the moment Kian left.
“Kian never made me uncomfortable. Just was trying to find a way to let him down easy. Was flattering when he told me I’m fuckable, though.”
“Well, he will never get to do that.”
Tate lifts an eyebrow. “Roman.”
I speak more slowly, drawing out every word. “Kian is never going to fuck you.”
Tate’s eyes sparkle. “Because you really do dictate when I decide I need to get fucked.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t want him.” Tate sighs, leaning his forehead on my chest for a moment. “I only want you.”
A breeze blows through the trees, fluttering the tops of the tents on the stalls in the fair.
It smells like the start of rain.
The clouds are thicker in the sky now, and the air is even colder than it was when we arrived.
“There is nothing that feels as good as you feel,” I murmur.
“But we aren’t safe, Roman,” he whispers. “So what the fuck are we supposed to do?”
I bring my hand up under his chin and gently tip his head back.
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted another person,” I tell him.
Holy fuck.
That is the truth.
It feels like something is pushing at the seams inside my body.
What am I going to tell him? That I’ll snap my fingers and not have Bratva blood anymore?
His eyelashes flick up and down, and when he looks at my lips then my eyes like that, I feel like something in me is about to blow.
“Sleep in the bed tonight,” he says. “Not on the floor. Sleep with me. I can’t be alone tonight. You don’t understand, Roman. There’s so much…”
“If I’m in that bed with you, I will fuck you until the sun rises,” I say. “And then I’ll fuck you again after it does. Your ass will be raw and aching and you’ll still beg for me.”
“I’ve wanted that for weeks and now I’m so goddamn afraid we’ll be dead, Roman. Fuck—”
It’s like the breath is knocked out of me all at once when I see the fear flash through his eyes.
All traces of anger are gone from his expression now.
And I’ve never seen his expression so scared.
Rain starts to fall in tiny, cool drops on my hair, the pattering sound hitting the leaves and the tops of the tents.
I draw him close, putting my arms around him and pulling him close.
“Hey. You’re okay,” I tell him. “Stay with me. Let’s walk home. What is going on?”
“I have to tell you something,” he says, his voice shaky.
I put my arm around him as the drizzle comes down along the walkway toward Red Row.
And I keep my arm there for the entire walk home, as Tate opens his phone and reads me things that break different pieces of my heart, one by one.
He reads every text message.
In detail.
He shakes, and looks up at me every once in a while, like he’s worried I’ll explode.
But I’m only thinking one thing.
I will kill him.
For making you this scared.
All of this needs to come to a brutal fucking end.
Immediately, after I hear all of the texts, I call Hunter, even as drops of water fall over my phone as we walk. Hunter checks through every single one of Lucian Farina’s accounts, and all of them still say he is in the city, hours and hours away from us here.
For now, we are safe.
But I’ve never been more certain that I’m no longer sticking to my duties of simply watching over Tate on campus.
I’m going to find the guy.
And eliminate him from the face of this Earth.
I'm also not surprised or even fucking bothered to hear about the police record. “There are ways to access crime records like this online. It’s not always easy, for the general public, but for a psychotic man addicted to the dark corners of the Internet, it’s not impossible. The document was meant to scare you, but it does not scare me.”