Perfect Ruin (Unyielding #2)(51)

I laughed. “Don’t lie to me, London.”

Her eyes glared, chest heaving. “Fuck you. You don’t know what I want.”

I raised my brows with amusement. “I certainly know better than you do.”

She became a wild cat struggling against me, and I had to take her legs out from beneath her with one swipe. With my arm locked around her waist, I lowered her to the floor with me on top of her.

“What are you going to do, rape me?” Her laugh was cruel and hysterical sounding. “Because it’s nothing new. Nothing can hurt me anymore.”

Not physical pain anyway. She was past that stage, but she had to learn to deal with her emotional pain. I had her wrists locked in my hands on either side of her head as I straddled her.

“You have that very wrong, braveheart.”

She spit in my face and the warm liquid dripped down my cheek. “I hate you.”

I smirked. “Yeah, I suspect you do right about now, but not as much as you hate yourself.”

That pissed her off and her struggles started again, but I had all the leverage and there was nothing she could do to dislodge me. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

I softened my grip and sighed. “No. You hate what was done to you.”

Her eyes rimmed red with tears and rage. “I hate you more.”

I gave in to her because she needed it. “Okay, you hate me more.”

She pursed her lips together and it was her thinking face, the way her eyes shifted side to side and narrowed. “Why are you doing this? Just let me go home.”

“So you can fade away into your nightmares? That option is no longer available to you.” I leaned closer so my lips were close to hers and her warm breath brushed across my face. “And I hate Raven. I want London. I want the brave girl who wouldn’t back down from a bastard like me. The one that is fighting me right now.”

“Why were you there?” Her voice quivered. “Why did you come to Mexico if you were only going to leave me?”

“You know why. For you.”

The tension seeped out of her body as she whispered, “But you left me.”

I let go of her wrists and climbed off her to sit leaning against the wall, bending my knees to rest my arms on them. “Yeah. It went bad.”

“You left me. You left me, Kai. You left me there.” Her body tensed. “I didn’t think you were a coward.”

Normally, I’d kill someone for saying something like that to me, but instead I sighed. “Do you think I’m a coward, London?”

She sat up, her hair a mess from our struggle, but the fight had done her good. I pushed her, knew she trusted me enough that if I did threaten her, she’d push back, and I’d been right.

“No.” She raised her chin. “I think you’re calculating, cold, arrogant and believe no one can hurt you.”

I stilled. “You have most of that right except the last. I do have someone who can hurt me. You.”

Her breath hitched and lips parted.

“Baby, I didn’t leave you. Not by choice. I took a bullet, and the guy I came with got me out.” Ernie saved my f*ckin’ life. “By the time I recovered, the compound was burned to the ground and you were gone.”

“You didn’t run.” It was said in a whisper more to herself than to me.

I shook my head when she looked at me, tears still leaking from her eyes. “No, baby.”

Suddenly, a piercing blare wrenched into the air and I leapt to my feet, racing into the kitchen. “Shit.” I pulled the smoking frying pan off the stove and dumped it in the sink. London was right behind me. She grabbed a dish towel, stood on her tiptoes, and waved it in the air under the smoke alarm.

The alarm stopped.

I walked toward her and it was f*ckin’ nice because London kept her eyes locked on me. No flinching, no tension, and she even raised her chin a bit. And that got me hard.

Because nothing did it for me more than London. The girl who had enough compassion for the both of us. The girl who was brave in her own quiet way.

“The belt. You did that on purpose,” she said.

I shrugged and kept coming until I was inches away and she had to crank her neck in order to keep eye contact.

“You were never going to hit me?”

I grinned. “You were ready. So, yeah, I would’ve if you refused to fight back.”

She glared. I grew harder because glaring was good. Glaring meant she had backbone. “And what if I never fought back?”

“Then you’d have a sore ass right now.”

Her mouth hung open, then she snapped it closed.

“It wouldn’t have come to that though. You were ready to fight me. You were just searching for a way to do it. I gave it to you.”

I watched her think about it. London calculated. She wanted every possible solution deliberated before she acted or spoke, except when she got angry. Then she was a missile. I did the same thing. I was dead if I didn’t, because in my business, it rarely went the way you anticipated. And outcomes were variable.

Our outcome was one big variable because she couldn’t stay here forever, and for the first time I was beginning to contemplate the possibility of ending Vault. How to get my sister out? How to shut down the farm and take out the board members? Because doing all that made London safe. It made us safe.