Page 8 of Bound Wings
Fine. I'll just act possessed or something until he leaves on his own.
That's when I hear it—what sounds unmistakably like a fist against skin, the shriek of a chair scraping across wood, and a short, sharp squeak.
What is he doing out there?
I roll my shoulders back and go to clean up my own mess.
What I find instead is worse than anything I could have imagined.
Chapter Six
Slava
My butterfly was a bad girl tonight.
Having to watch her kiss another man. Let him put his hands on her like she belonged to him—when she has always, only, belonged to me.
It was hell. A personal hell, built just for me.
I'm a man who's been shot more times than I can count on both hands. Ambushes, war zones, darkness that would make lesser men beg to die. None of it compares to the sight of her tongue slipping past her lips to meet another man's. When his hand slid down to grip her ass, I started counting the ways I could use his hands against him. How many bones in a hand. How long it takes a man to stop screaming once you start removing them one joint at a time.
I could use his severed arms to hang him from the nearest tree.
His intestines would hold better, actually. Rope always frays. Intestines don't.
I'm going to make him regret every second he spent touching what's mine.
And even though I can't lay a single finger on her—my hand has never once been raised against that girl and never will be—she'll get her own punishment.
I let myself into the cabin. She kept the door unlocked behind her, like she was subtly inviting me in. Did his mouth on hers make her forget to think like mine?
I need to stop following that train of thought, or I'll paint this entire town red before the sun's up. The same red I can feel behind my eyes.
The little shit looks up from his phone with a scowl on his face, pants still tented, hard—for my girl.
In one small act of mercy, for both of them, they're not tangled up together when I walk in. If I'd caught that, I would have lost myself completely. Irrevocably. There would have been nothing left of him.
"Hey, man, who are you?" he asks, and the entitlement in his voice, like he has any right to ask me anything in this house, makes my fist move.
I put him on the floor with one punch. When he opens his mouth to cry out, I feed him a second.
Where the fuck is my Nora?
Is she in the shower? Washing up so she can go back out there clean for him? When we were together, she always wanted to rinse off first if we'd been out anywhere before I touched her, and I never once let her. There's nothing about her body I find anything less than perfect. I've had her in car seats, in the back of restaurant kitchens, against kitchen counters covered in flour. We don't have room in this relationship for her insecurities. I've told her that a hundred times.
Is she in there right now, getting ready for someone else to have what only I've ever had?
I need to cut that thread off too, or he will not survive the night, and I still need him breathing a little longer.
I make quick work of it—zip ties from my jacket around his wrists and ankles, tissue balled up and shoved into his mouth tokeep him quiet, a fresh knuckle to the jaw every time his eyes roll toward the hallway looking for her.
When I finally step back, I let my eyes drag over him properly. What did she see in him? Did she think he was handsome? Did she get wet for this? I need a drink before I answer my own question and kill him. I still need him breathing for now.
The cabin's cozy, which is good—I want both my girl and her sister comfortable. It's strange how much tenderness I can hold for her in one hand and this much rage in the other and not have either one cancel the other out.
I find the fridge, pull a bottle of whiskey from it, pour myself two fingers, and drop onto the couch, spreading out. I light a cigar and wait for my Nora to come find out exactly what she made me do.
I blow smoke straight into his face, studying him one more time, trying to work out what it was about him that had drawn her in. So I know exactly what to mutilate.
