Primal Pursuit - Page 177

“No.” With his free hand, he traces the curve of my cheek. “Save yourself.”

“That’s bullshit. You want the coward’s way out. What if I kill you and suffer? What if I let you live and don’t?”

He considers me, and the air thickens. “Can you?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I just know how I feel. And how you feel.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

Davian comes in close, the gun still between us, pressed into him. “Can you forgive me for the unforgiveable?”

“Can you take it, if I do?”

Suddenly, he lets me go, all except my wrist. He keeps that there, the gun on himself.

“I don’t fucking know, Rabbit,” he growls. “I’ve never felt like this before in my life. I fucking tortured and killed a man with a young girl, told her to unleash herfury and corrupted her into doing the unthinkable to that man.”

“Lies,” I snap. “If that happened, I think you might have saved her. I don’t think you’re as bad as you say you are.”

“I fucking killed your parents.”

“And you killed a bunch of people for me, too.”

“That doesn’t make it even.”

“I know.”

“Goddammit, Rabbit! Fuck!” He slams his fist into the side table. “I fucking love you, and I shouldn’t. It’s like you’re…like you’re in my blood and bones, and I marked you as mine. In the most primal way. The most bloody, violent way. And I’ll do it again. I’m a motherfucking psychopath.”

“You—” I stare at him. “You’ve never done that to anyone, have you?”

“No. I don’t go around tattooing women and carving into them. Just you. The most annoying woman. You’re noise I can’t turn off. You’re the itch I can’t scratch. You’re a wound that won’t stop bleeding, and you won’t keep the fuck out of my head. My God. I sat in a room with a live sex show, and you know what got me hard? What got me hot? You. Your fucking texts. I can’t even fucking kill you. Killing you would be killing myself, so just. Fucking. Shoot me.”

In that moment, I know.

I thought I knew before, but now it’s a knell resounding in my soul.

He doesn’t just love me.

He’sinlove with me.

He’s as lost in me as I’m in him.

He’d rather die if he thought it would save me. He’s killed for me.

And…

I’m in love with him. So much in love with him, and it hurts beyond comprehension.

Love is a funny thing. It comes sideways, makes no sense. And I need him more than revenge. I love him more than I hate him.

We are, as he said, the same. Together, we fit. And as horrible as it might be, I like the games, the death, the destruction. The twisted.

“Let go of my hand, Davian.”

He lets it go, and I throw the gun down.