Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance Savannah Rose (readnow TXT) 📖

over his shoulders, down his torso, up to his neck again. “I mean, sort of. I didn't kill anyone from your family. We can't say the same for you.”

His breath was deep, no longer rattling, but I don't think the rapidity had anything to do with sex. He looked like he couldn't trust me.

“You can’t,” I said, drawing my fingers toward his waist, to the edge of one of the survival blankets. I'd covered him last night. It was pretty chilly.

I wiped my hands on my thighs, and poured him a cup of the aspirin water. I'd tasted it last night, and it was bitter as hell. A squirt of papaya made it a little more palatable, though. Now that he was awake, he could drink it his own damn self.

I handed it to him.

He propped himself back up on his elbow – the act of which took the better part of a minute – and finally took the cup from me and brought it to his lips.

“...poisoned…?” he asked.

“For me to know and you to find out.”

He gulped it down in two swallows, handed the cup back to me, and collapsed back to the ground.

“That's terrible,” he coughed.

“So are you.”

Maddox placed his hand on his chest, running his fingers along the salve that coated his flesh.

“What is this?” He brought his hand up to his eyes, rubbed his fingertips together, the salve smooshing between them. I watched with vested interest when he saw what the cuffs had done to his wrists. Black and blue bracelets, with a smattering of red scratches and cuts.

“Aloe.”

Maddox's attention was on the skin of his wrists – swollen and tender to the touch. He smeared some of the aloe on one, trying to hide a wince from me.

“Hurts like fuck,” I said. I should know.

His arms fell back to his sides, and he looked up through the fawns of the palm trees, our little protective canopy. He turned his head and put his eyes on mine. For the first time, there wasn't any lurid ogling, no hint of testosteronean drool dripping from the sides of his mouth.

“I'm sorry,” he said, never taking his eyes away. “About your niece. About Rebecca.”

“Okay, first of all, I'm not cool with her name coming out of your stupid face. Got it? And second,” I grabbed one of the remaining Arrowheads, and took a big draw. “My niece's name was Leslie.” I forced the water down. It always hurt so, so much to say 'Leslie'.

“Can I ask what happened?” he asked, and for the life of me, I detected sincerity. The problem was Maddox's type wasn't capable of sincerity. He had to know I knew that.

I glared at him. While it was entirely true that he could not trust me, I could not trust him triple fold.

“You can ask all you want. Doesn't mean I have to answer.”

“Fair.”

“No. No, that's where you're wrong. Again. It wasn't fair. Nothing about it was fair, it was all bullshit, and it was all. Your. Fault. You big, stupid prick. That's the trouble with corporate fuck heads like yourself. You sign a piece of paper, you make some executive decision, never giving a tinker's fuck about the trickle down effect. You want to know what happened? You ripped the rug out from under us. You claimed we were a liability, and presto change-o, you get to eat five hundred dollar steak, we get to lose our health insurance.”

Maddox's expression didn't change. That fucking sincerity was plastered all over him. He looked sheepish. Dare I say ashamed, like he really didn't have a single clue there were consequences to his actions. Was he that good of an actor? No. Not even DeNiro was that good of an actor.

“Was Rebec- was your sister sick?”

“What do you care? And no, she wasn't sick. You're the sick one, Maddox. Sick and fucked in the head. And I hate your god damn guts.”

“Was… was it your niece?”

He had no right to know. No right at all.

I threw the water down, scrambled to my smoldering fire, and snatched up the knife. Turned back to him, and he didn't move. Not even a twitch. The funny part, hah-hah, was that he could. He was perfectly capable. Perfectly free to go. Sure, he was stiff and achy, but he was at liberty to take his leave.

“Enough about me,” I seethed, growing angrier as I watched him watching me as if he felt sorry for me. As if he was able to elicit compassion or empathy or anything similar. That's what I saw. And I never wanted to run this blade through his heart more than I did right now. “How fast was he going?”

“What?”

“Your brother. How fast was he driving when he ran his Porsche, or BMW, or Bentley, whatever the fuck he was driving into a pole? Oh, hey. Did he take out some pedestrians, too? Some innocent bystanders? Like brother like brother, huh?”

Maddox didn't say anything, just looked back down at his wrists and touched one of the more severe abrasions.

“Wow, Maddy. I'm surprised I never heard anything about it on the news. I guess the Petersen fortune can cover up anything. Money doesn't just talk, it screams like a banshee. It silences, too, I guess.”

“He overdosed.”

“Ah. Well, typical.” I tapped the tip of the boa on my chin. “Frat party? Like, at Harvard? Notre Dame? Wherever rich boys go to pretend to get an education.” I smiled and pointed the knife toward him, like a professor encouraging a student to answer a hypothetical. “Meth? Heroin? Mmm, nah. Those are too street. Too lower class. Golly, I can't think of anything he may have used. Why don't you enlighten me, Maddy?”

I think it was the word 'Maddy' that struck the proverbial chord. He'd always hated when I called him that, and now was no different Except he wasn't griping this time. If I didn't know any