Branded (Fall of Angels #1)(57)

Thankfully, she doesn’t say anything else. I don’t want to have another shouting match with her. Enough is enough. We’ll never see eye to eye. It doesn’t matter what I tell her, she’ll never forgive me for what I did, and I don’t want her to.

We both did something we regret.

I chuck the dirt into the fire and grumble along with it.

Women.

Why the hell are they so difficult?

Suddenly, something attacks me from behind.

I roar out loud when teeth sink into my neck. Believing it’s an animal, I drag it over my head and throw it on the ground in front of me.

Only, it’s not animal, it’s Dixie.

She immediately lunges for my throat again, trying to choke me. I grasp her wrists and push her off, but she bites my hand next. I yelp, and she attempts to steal my gun, so I shove her away.

She growls and tries to hit me, but I’ve grabbed her hands just in time and pin her down to the ground, lying on top of her to keep her there.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” I yell at her face.

“You!” she yells back, struggling badly. “You’re what’s wrong with me. Why won’t you fucking let me kill you?”

“Because I don’t wanna die,” I spit. “And I figure you want the same thing.”

“You don’t know what I want,” she hisses. “Now get off me.”

“No. Not until you listen to me,” I say.

“Nothing you say will make this okay. Nothing!”

“I don’t care.”

She fights me again, trying to kick and scratch me, but it won’t work. I’m much stronger than she is. She’ll never win this fight, and she knows it. The longer she goes on, the more worn down she gets. The lack of food and sleep are getting to her now, and her eyes fill with tears.

“Why won’t you just pay for your crimes?” she mumbles. “Why won’t you just die?”

“Do you really want me to die so badly?” I respond, sighing.

“Yes,” she says with such conviction that it feels like a stab wound. I don’t know why it gets to me the way it does. Why everything she says to me hurts like a fucking brick to the face.

I look deep in her eyes, searching for something … anything … that can make me stop feeling this way. This haunted by the pain in her soul.

Despite hating her so badly, I want to fix her too. I want to break her and then build her up again. I want to ruin her and then make her mine.

Fuck.

“Look into my eyes, Dixie,” I murmur, forcing her to stay still by sitting on top of her and pinning her firmly to the ground. “Look at me and tell me what you see.”

A single tear rolls down her cheeks. “The eyes of a killer.”

“The eyes of a man who regrets everything … everything he ever did,” I say in a single breath. “Except you.”

Her lips part, but no sound comes out. Her chest stops moving, and for a moment, she stops fighting me.

“What do you mean?” she mutters.

“I need to hate you to stay sane, but fuck me, you make it difficult,” I growl.

She licks her lips in such a delicious way that it captures my full attention. I wish I could have a taste. I wish I could kiss her without feeling the guilt flow through me.

My father deserves better from me.

But so did she.

I close my eyes and sigh. “I’m sorry.”

It’s the first time in ages that I’ve admitted I did something wrong.

That I made a mistake.

In my pain, I retaliated in the worst of ways, and it killed her love for me along with her soul. I never wanted to do that to her, despite the fact she burned whatever was left of my heart.

Maybe that’s why I feel such a need to inflict the pain I feel onto her. Because it’s a catharsis to me.

“Wha—” she mumbles.

Instead of answering her, I press my lips onto hers.





Chapter Twenty-Seven





Brandon



I needed to kiss her. I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I had to remember what she tasted like before … before all this.

In light of what’s happened, this is the most horrible thing I’ve done to her. Not the tying up, not the threats, not almost shooting her … this.

Because I can see it in her eyes. The passionate, bitter rage seething from them.

I deserve it all.

Yet she doesn’t push back. She lets me kiss her right here on the dirt in the middle of fucking nowhere. So I keep going, kissing her as hard as I can, savoring every single inch of her skin. However, the moment my lips move slightly off hers, she panics and bites me instead.

“What the fuck?!”

She frees herself from my grasp and a slap follows.

Dazed, I stare at her and touch the burning sting on my face. “Fuck. Do you really wanna hurt me that badly?”

“Like you hurt me? Fuck yes,” she says, trying to slap me again.

I pin her down to the ground again, her hair filling with dust as she squirms underneath me. “I hurt you because you hurt me.”

“Stop acting like you’re the one who lost everything,” she hisses.

“You don’t know what I lost,” I spit back. I don’t want to tell her about my papa. It’s my only weakness, and I’m not about to hand it to her on a platter. Not when she’s still trying to get to me. “It doesn’t fucking matter. You and I are both in this together.”