Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(93)

Lyrik’s muscles twitched. A palpable rage skimmed just below the surface. It lifted and rose and shivered in the air.

Yet there remained a gentle softness to him that had never been there before.

This beautiful boy had always been both cautious and heedless when it came to me. His touch gentle in its aggressive demand.

But I felt the shift as I took him with me to that place where I’d never wanted to return.

Images flashed. I blinked, viewing them like old, faded snapshots I hadn’t known were taken yet somehow intimately recognized.

“I lost sense of time, but I would guess it had to have been about six months after he started holding me in that room upstairs when I woke up to him dragging another girl into it.”

Old horror circled and circled. I could barely speak. “I guess in the time he’d been isolating me, he’d started the same process with Madeline. Making her fall for him and his lies. Cutting ties with her family. Convincing her she was nothing without him. Making her wholly reliable upon him until he had her where he wanted her. No resources. No fight left to fight.”

I squared myself, the words suddenly strong as I looked up at his blistering expression. Anger restrained in agony. As if he both wanted to stand up right then and hunt Cameron down yet refused to leave my side.

I touched his cheek. “But he hadn’t broken all my fight, Lyrik. It was still there, buried deep. I watched and waited. Listened. Counted the knots in my ties. Memorized them until I could untie them in my head.”

I gulped. “In the corner, he’d…left a video camera on a stand for days. Taunting us.”

My skin crawled with the thought of it.

“I waited until I heard his motorcycle start up and drive away. It was so clear in my head. Untying myself. Untying Madeline. Running. Jumping. But she seemed so shocked when I was suddenly out of my bindings, and she screamed when I smashed the window with the camera.”

On the waves of the memory, the words broke in my throat and I looked at the bare wall over Lyrik’s shoulder as I forced out the confession.

“Madeline…she was too scared, Lyrik. Too scared to jump. Too scared to leave. She begged me to stay. Begged me not to leave her there alone. I’ll never forget the defeat in her eyes when I looked at her one last time, giving her one last chance, before I climbed out onto the eaves of the second-story roof.”

Everything rushed out. “But I was the coward, Lyrik. I was the coward because I just left her. Left her without a word and ran. I never looked back. Madeline had made her choice and I’d made mine. I never picked up the phone because that would mean I’d have to voice what Cameron had done. It was so much easier to pretend it’d never happened. Easier to become someone I wasn’t. Someone no one could touch.”

No one until him.

Lyrik’s hold was fierce. Unyielding. Those eyes searched every inch of my face.

Sorrow shook my head. “I didn’t know they’d found her body until a year later. I…I was missing my mom so bad. I signed into my old Facebook account…just needing to see her face. There was an article I was tagged in linking all of us…one naming me as a missing person after they’d discovered her. They were looking for Cameron as a person of interest.”

Lyrik squeezed me tighter, voice as harsh as broken glass, disbelief and so much hate. “He killed her?”

I shook my head as more tears broke free, begging for him to understand. “No, Lyrik. She killed herself. He dumped her. Just left her like garbage. He was gone when the police showed up at his house. They finally caught up to him and arrested him. He’s…he’s getting ready to go on trial.”

The room swam, the decision dangling over me like a noose.

Run.

Or turn around.

“Jesus.” Everything about Lyrik softened with a thready caution. He dragged the back of his hand across the tears soaking my cheeks before he knitted his fingers through my hair.

“Blue. I want to destroy him. Never wanted to hurt someone the way I want to hurt him. Can’t f*cking stand it…thinking about someone hurtin’ you. What can I do? Tell me what to do and I’ll f*cking do it. Say it and it’s done.”

I gripped him by both wrists and rocked toward him. “Kiss me.”

Two months ago, he’d promised to erase Cameron Lucan from my body. To touch me and fill me until I knew nothing but his name.

But it was Lyrik who made me remember mine.

There was zero hesitation. Lyrik hauled me up against the warmth of that strong body. Mouth overwhelming.

But this kiss. This kiss was so excruciatingly slow.

Deliberate.

Measured.

From every wisp and tug of his lips over mine to every flick of his tongue.

An intentional dance.

Unhurried yet brimming with need.

Barely contained.

I felt dizzy on it.

“So brave. So f*cking brave.”

And we spun and we spun and we spun.

Searching hands. Heedful touches.

Edging back, he dragged my shirt over my head, whispered, “Blue.”

A cool rush of air prickled my skin, my flesh covered in chills as he leaned in and kissed across the upper curve of my shoulder.

My head dropped back.

His mouth fell fervid at my neck.

Hot hands at my sides.

I fumbled under his shirt and pulled it free. My hungry gaze roamed, as if I could decipher each bunch of his muscles, the flex and the bow, the smooth skin covered in tantalizing ink.