Page 59 of Tormented
Me either.
“Your daddy never teach you any manners, boy?” I holler. “Or was he just as heavy-handed with your momma?”
Abbey takes a couple of steps back, still in the fucking room.
“I told you to leave,” I snap at her.
The worry melts from her face and she hardens her brow. “You’re still not the boss of me, pretty boy.”
“Wanna bet?”
The prospect tries to wriggle his arm free while she’s got me distracted, so I crunch a little tighter.
He yelps, his vocal chords breaking halfway through the sound and into silence.
Abbey crosses her arms over her chest, dropping one shoulder so her head is cocked at a smartass angle. “Yeah.”
“Come on, boy.” Tap reaches for the prospect. “You and me have got words to exchange.”
I drop the kid’s wrist, smirking as he cradles it to his chest. He keeps his gaze trained on me, even as Tap sticks his fingers in the neck of the prospect’s cut and jerks downward, stripping the boy of his patch. “You can have this back when you’ve earned it.”
Overreaction? Hardly. We might dance on the wrong side of the law, but touching a woman out of anger or violence is something that’s rarely tolerated.
“You okay, Abbey-girl?”
Her shoulders sag. “Yeah, pretty boy, I am.”
“But?”
“I could have handled him.” She shrugs. “You don’t need to sweep in and save me.”
I chuckle, running a thick finger along the edge of the sticky bar. “Oh, baby, I ain’t savin’ nobody. But you already knew that.”
She frowns, turning her body side on as she leans both elbows on the bar again. “Nothing’s changed, Sawyer.”
“Hasn’t it?” Because it’s been five fucking weeks, and all I’ve thought about is her and that mysterious goddamn past. She can’t tell me she hasn’t been doing the same, thinking about what we started, even if just a little.
Not everybody is as obsessive about things they can’t have as you are . . . .
Abbey pops her ass to the side again, and I screw the heels of both hands into my eyes to try and shove that noisy fucker in my head in a box for the night. Once, just once, I’d love to have a good time without wondering whom I’ll be apologizing to the next day.
“Something on your mind?” She sticks a black cocktail straw between her teeth and delicately chews on the end.
I answer her cherry-red lips. “Always somethin’ on my mind, Abbey-girl.”
She nods, seeming to think over something herself. “Have you thought about how you gonna do it?”
The spark in her eyes has my chest doing funny fucking things. “Do what?”
You know what she’s talking about . . .
Fuck. Off.
“Kill your father.” She twists her waist so that her perky little tits face me, but that butt still pops out behind. “I mean that’s what you’re going to do, right? Go back and kill your dad?”
So many options . . .
This is one thing I have to agree with my devil on: so many options. Where would I start? A little light torture? Maybe fuck him up with some drugs so he’s paralyzed but can feel every damn thing I do to him? Poetically finish him off in the same way he did Mom?