My eyes flutter open as blinding light spills over me. Sitting up, I rub at my eyes, an attempt to clear away the blur that obscures my vision. I squint at the yellow light leaking from the gap in the bathroom door. The sound of gushing water crashing against a porcelain basin is enough for me to assume Kade is washing his face, or his hands. But why? What time is it? Is it morning already? If Kade’s drapes weren’t so dense, natural light would be able to seep through and I would have some kind of semblance of the time.
Nausea and hunger dance in my stomach. They twirl each other—toss each other—until they stir up my stomach acid, making my throat burn.
I push back the blankets and slip from the bed. As my sore feet touch the floor, I stumble and grip the loose sheets as my shaky legs struggle to hold my weight. Seconds pass until my burning, cramping muscles can bear the weight of the rest of my body. When they’re able to, I bend low and pluck Kade’s shirt off the floor before pulling it on over my head, ignoring the kink in my neck and the ache in my arms as I do so.
Water continues to splash into the basin in the bathroom, even as I reach the end of the bed. Conveniently, it stops as I make my way past the mahogany lounges and the empty fireplace a few strides after.
Kade discards his clothes as I near the bathroom. One by one they’re carelessly tossed into a pile in the middle of the room, a tangle of white, steel grey, and black. Curiously, I reach out for the door frame. My heart thunders and quakes, vibrating my ribs like a hum through paper as I glide my fingers against the smooth white paint. I crane my neck to see around the inconvenient slab of wood—
“Nine.”
Gasping, I jolt backwards, my hand clenching my chest.
“Gosh.” I squeeze out on an exhale. “You scared me.”
Kade’s black eyes zero in on me. I found the stare scary in the beginning, but now I’ve learned the difference in the way they glisten.
“How’d you sleep?” he asks, slightly tilting his head.
He folds his long, thick arms tightly over his naked chest. He is beautiful. Even in sweatpants.
My words catch in my throat, restricted by the tightness that closes it. I’ve rarely seen him without a shirt. His skin looks smooth—poreless—and warm. The kind of warm that would feel nice against my cool, bare flesh. How long has it been since we were intimate? I don’t even know anymore. So much has happened in the last month that it almost feels like any sexual interaction we had was just a figment of my imagination.
It wasn’t.
What we shared felt too good to be fake.
Heat blossoms over my body, blooming rapidly, like flowers in spring.
“I slept fine.” I peer around him at the clothes on the floor. Small red dots coat his white shirt and, if I’m not mistaken, it’s blood. “Did you go out?”
“I had something I needed to take care of.”
He doesn’t attempt to stop me as I squeeze past him and into the bathroom. Crossing the room, I scoop up his shirt.
“Are you bleeding?” I ask, stroking the dry crimson spots with my thumb.
He turns around and leans against the door frame as I analyse the white fabric in my hands. It’s immediately obvious the blood isn’t from an injury Kade has sustained. It’s spattered over the fabric, like someone filled their mouth with it and sprayed it from their lips. It’s a spatter of high impact…a spatter that might occur when someone is excessively and repeatedly beaten with a blunt object…or if their head is blown off by a gun at close range.
I glance at Kade. He is the perfect picture of indifference.
“Why is there blood on your clothes?”
The shine in his eyes changes, darkening like the earth when a cloud blocks the sun’s bright rays. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.
“What did you do?” I’m ashamed the question seeps out as a whisper. I should be stronger. I need to be stronger.
“Do you really want to know?”
I flinch at his disinterested tone, dropping his shirt back on top of the pile. No, I don’t want to know, but he doesn’t have to say anything. All of the evidence is here.
“You climbed out of bed…” I shake my head, unable to stop the irrational tears that seep from my eyes and well along the bottom. “…and you snuck out to go on some kind of murderous rampage?”
Kade pushes off the door frame, stepping further into the bathroom. “You left me with no choice!”
I try not to react to the loud boom of his voice as he saunters closer, eating up the distance between us. Two strides is all it takes for him to tower over me. His eyebrows are set in a serious line; his eyes offer no sparkle. Not a single one. It’s a look I know all too well.
“I left you with no choice?” I scoff. “How did I leave you with no ch—”
Then it hits me. His question—the one he asked after I inhaled the drugs he gave me. I told him everything that happened with the moderator in the cell, believing it was only a dream playing in my head. My lips part. I can’t believe it. He knew exactly what he was doing. I look him dead in the eyes.
“You manipulated me.”
He frowns, his face still devastatingly handsome as it pinches together.
“Manipulated you? I saw an opportunity and I took it.”
Inside me, frustration bubbles to anger and anger turns to rage. “It wasn’t yours to take. Nothing that is mine is yours to take anymore. You’re such a—”
“Such a what? A killer? A monster?” He smirks a sad smirk. “If you’re going to call me names at least come up with something I haven’t already called myself.”
I square my shoulders. “A Fortunate.”
He flinches and, as sad as it sounds, a feeling of triumph flares deep inside me.
I hurt him.
For once.
Kade’s sad expression changes, pinching into frustration. He leans close, so close I can smell him.
Part earth.
Part beer.
All him.
“Were you at the sentencing yesterday morning when they put a bullet in your mother’s head and declared you one of us? I wouldn’t throw that word around as an insult so carelessly, Fortunate.”
Surprising even myself, I slap him hard across the face. It barely tosses his head to the side. I clench my fist as I lower it. Heat sears across my palm, drowning my entire hand in painful tingles. Fear stabs me in the chest and twists painfully.
Never put your hands on a Fortunate. Not unless they ask you to.
It’s a rule I once had to adhere to. It’s a rule that no longer restricts me. Even so, the panic remains.
I inch forward, my hands twitching to rub his red cheek, but I stop myself. I’m done being weak. I’m done letting these people shit all over me.
Kade’s angry stare stays locked with the floor and his jaw quickly clenches under his flesh. Clench. Relax. Clench. Relax. Would he strike me? He’s never hit me before. Then again, I’ve never hit him. How far can he be pushed before he crushes every bone in my body? When do I stop being worth the trouble?
I swallow hard and clear my throat, but it doesn’t smooth out the nervous bumps sitting on my voice box.
“I am not one of you.” My voice quivers with every word and I hate it.
He clears his throat, flicking his black stare to mine. “A Fortunate is who I am. It’s who you will become. You hate me now, but tomorrow you’ll need me. You can’t thrive in this lifestyle without me.”
He is right about a lot of things, but wrong about my feelings for him. I don’t hate him. I could never hate him. Becoming one of them is something I don’t want to do without him. I don’t want to do anything without him, but this isn’t about that. This is about humanity. This is about equality and the sanctity of human life—no matter how bad the person may be.
Guilt swirls in my heart. The biggest regret I carry is assisting Kade in murdering his own father. Denial argues that I had to do what I was told, but my conscience knows no one can truly force you to do somethin
g you don’t want to do. I’d confess my wrongdoings right now if I could. The guilt of my actions far outweighs any punishment.
“I will never be like you,” I mutter, sadness overtaking my anger.
It sinks into my stomach, like a stone in water.
“Those are dangerous words you’re speaking,” he warns, lifting his hand and swiping the back of it across his reddening cheek. “Someone hears you talking like that they’ll kill you for it.”
I lean closer, until the warmth of his breath blows across my face.
“Good,” I say, proud my voice stays firm, despite the frenzy of emotions overwhelming me.
He watches me, his chin turned down, and his eyes filled with that Fortunate judgement. The silence is deafening. For six whole seconds we drown in it, neither of us wanting to be the first to break it.
Surprisingly, he’s the first to crack. With a deep, rough huff from the base of his throat, he snatches my elbow and I gasp, my heart leaping into my throat as he pulls me against him. Our bodies crash together. Him, hard and strong, pressed firmly against me, weak and soft. Balanced, like fire and water. In perfect harmony.
At last.
Kade claims my mouth with a bruising kiss, slipping his tongue through my parted lips and hotwiring my entire nervous system. I throw my arms around his neck and squeeze him harder against me.
It’s funny. I’m banged up—bruises, scrapes, and cuts—but I’m the healthiest I’ve felt in a long time, especially as adrenaline and arousal surge through me, numbing every other ache.
“I’ve missed you,” he mutters against my lips, his hands sliding down my waist and over the curve of my backside. I kiss him—harder—until my lungs burn and my head spins—anything to get him to stop talking.
It’s wrong to engage in this behaviour when I’m mad at him and I know it, but I crave to be craved. I need to be needed. Converting to “team Fortunate” doesn’t make me any less an Unfortunate. Despite my new social status, my body will always want to be dominated by one of them. The thought makes me sick. I need brutal hands to arouse me? Even as a free woman I need his aggression and his prejudice to excite me?
Kade grips the hem of my shirt and I barely manage to lift my arms as he whips it off over my head and tosses it over his shoulder. I glance down at my breasts and shiver as the cool air blows across the tips of my nipples. I look terrible naked.
Bruises and cuts…
Pointy bones and depressing shadows…
Heat seeps into my cheeks and I lift my arms to cover my breast. Kade slaps my hands away as the tips of my fingers slide along the underside of my breasts.
Immediately, I drop my hands to my side, clenching my fists. He snatches my left breast with a greedy hand, squeezing it tightly before bending low and sucking my entire nipple into his mouth. The rough pressure of his lips and his hot, wet saliva coats my supple skin and I let my head loll backward, tilting my chin to the warm light above us.
“Kaden…”
He sucks and licks, lapping up my bare breast like he needs it to survive. Maybe he does. Maybe, just like me, he feels he’ll unravel if we stopped touching—if our soft, warm skin stopped brushing.
In the next heartbeat, cool air replaces the warmth of his mouth, and he scoops me up into his arms, wrapping my thighs around his waist.
He drops me hard against the countertop. A couple of things scatter—something breaks—but it doesn’t matter. The porcelain is like ice against my skin—a welcome sensation when pitted against the heat exuding from his pores.
Forcing my ankles to lock around his waist, he crushes his lips against mine and I open my mouth, letting his tongue inside. He kisses me deeply, so deeply I squeeze him between my thighs, causing him to groan deep in the base of his throat as his rough palms slide up my thighs.
My tummy flips.
He is a powerful man.
A powerful man with powerful hands—hands that have beaten the flesh of weak men who’ve hurt me. I open my eyes. How much am I worth to him? How much am I worth to myself? And is this how I’m going to measure it? By being with a man who will murder my offenders only if they’re below his station? Ones no one will bat an eyelid for? Ones he can get away with?
Kade says he loves me…
But his love has limits.
His hands are stained with the blood of lowly men. So easily he destroys them…seemingly without a lingering thought, and yet Vince still lives—still torments me—crushing me with terrifying promises of my demise. As hypocritical as it sounds, I want him dead. I would never feel guilty if his death was brought on by me. I know I said a human life is special no matter how bad the person is, but there is an exception to every rule. Vince isn’t human. Vince is that exception. The only way his reign of terror will stop is if I stay out of his way. I have to distance myself from him. I have to distance myself from the Sario house.
From Kaden…
I tear my mouth from his. “Stop.”
My voice is barely heard over the sound of my heavy pants.
“Don’t make me stop,” he utters, his tone thick with lust and desperation. “I don’t want to stop.”
He plants forceful, wet kisses at the nape of my neck, traveling north to my jaw. Under his lips my skin hums, electrifying me down to the core of my being.
This needs to stop.
Being intimate with him before my trial was easy. I did what I was born to do and I was lucky enough to want it, but that’s not all I’m good for.
I am intelligent.
Compassionate.
Fierce.
I’m more than a possession—more than a worthless vessel a penis just so happens to fit. I am deserving of a life outside of Kade’s bedroom, outside of this poisonous society.
I love Kade. I love him so much it hurts, but there is no future here—no future I want. We didn’t have to share the same values before my trial because we were never going to make it far. He was a Fortunate and I was forever destined to be his Unfortunate.
Now we are equal.
Now I can’t sit idly by while the kings of this world shit all over the people who’ve built it from the ground up. I am in a powerful position—a position where I can do something. I don’t want much out of life, but I’ll settle for saving the world.
“I said stop!” I shove his shoulders, but he barely budges, a testament to his strength.
He can overpower me without breaking a sweat, but I trust him enough not to.
Growling with impatience, Kade tears himself away from my body, breaking into a quick pace. Back and forth he carries his large body as he rakes ten angry fingers through his hair. I press my knees together and shield my bare breasts as vulnerability seeps into my bones.
“God damn it!” he hisses under his breath, slowing his powerful legs. “I’m sorry. You’re injured, and healing, and I…I got carried away.”
“I don’t think we should do this anymore.”
I hold my breath. My heart shatters painfully in my chest as his eyes cloud over and his face darkens.
“This?”
“Us.”
Kade presses his lips shut, his jaw clenching tightly. An eternity passes. For a whole eternity I am stuck, locked in place, by his confused eyes.
“You don’t mean that.”
I don’t want to mean it. I don’t want to do this without him, but what choice do I have?
“I do.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t—”
“I mean it, Kaden.”
He snaps forward with a growl, making me jump. I squeak as he snatches my wrists, pinning them underneath his on the cool bench beside my thighs.
“I almost lost you. Do you know how bad I was hurting?” he demands, his terrifying glare unrelenting.
I shake my head.
“It felt like there was a knife lodged between my ribs, scraping against my heart every second you were gone.”
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, desperate to hold back the trick
le of tears that sting my eyes. I shake my head again. “Kade…I’m sorry.”
“I love you!” he snaps, his face contorted by pain, by heartache. “That’s what you wanted! I’m giving you what you wanted! Why is it no longer enough? Why am I no longer enough?”
Tears well up and spill down my cheeks. I hate that I’m making him feel like this. I hate that I’m prying his ribcage open and crushing his heart in my hands, but what choice do I have? He can’t protect me from Vince and I can’t live under Vince’s thumb. He haunts my dreams and terrorises my reality. I have to stop it. I have to stop it before he follows through with his threats. Before he hurts me for real.
“You are more than enough.” I sniffle, sadness leaking from my nose. “That’s not what this is about. You love me, sure, but you love this poisonous society more. I get it. You’re scared.”
He pulls away from me. “I’m not scared.”
“You know that as long as this barbaric structure is in place you will always be powerful. You’re terrified of losing it all—terrified of becoming worthless, becoming like me. That’s why you kill these pathetic men who impose on me. I’m lower than them so they hurt me. They’re lower than you so you hurt them. I’ve yet to see you defend what is yours to those of your station or higher. I’ve yet to see you use your brute force against anyone who isn’t lesser than you.”
He pushes his fingers through his hair and tightens them. “That’s not true.”
I tilt my head. My tears roll with my stomach and slide down my cheeks. “If Vince hurt me today…would you kill him?”
With a heavy exhale, Kade drops his hands to his side. “It’s not that simple. There are regulations in place. Regulations—”
“That protect the Fortunates. I know.” I swipe at my cheeks and slip from the bench. “I have to protect myself. I have to put as much distance as I can between your house and mine.”
His eyebrows curve softly, the last of his pleading expended on them. “Nine…”
A thunderous pounding on the door cuts Kade off and makes me jump in my skin.
“Lady Anna. Time to go.”
Confused, I glance at Kade. His serious expression has settled in place, hiding the desperation I just saw. His eyes are dark, his lips pressed in a tight line. I swallow hard as fear seeps up my spine and poisons my blood.