Riot Act (Crooked Sinners)

by Callie Hart

Want something? Pax will take it from you. Love something? Pax will destroy it. Love him? Then Heaven help you. You’d have to be the stupidest person to walk the face of the earth.

I’ve been bleeding out, one way or another, my entire fucking life. What’s another cut? What’s another drop?

“We’re not at a used car dealership. I’m going to blow your back out, Chase. That kind of arrangement does not qualify for a fucking handshake.”

“A bastard’s touch, the thought of you. Aye, a waking curse upon my days, I endure you like sun and rain, and both the heat and the cold you feel the same. I crawl atop the shattered panes that fell from the windows of the house you did destroy. And I relish the blood that seeps from me, even as I hate you, because it flows only through my wretched veins for you.”

At no point did he wash me off of him. And he was still wearing the friendship bracelet.

If I were in my right mind, my usual, regular, take-no-shit self, I would have canned this nonsense a long time ago and done or said something terrifying enough to make sure Presley Maria Witton Chase stayed the hell away from me for forever and a day. And then an extra day on top of that.

Is this how other people feel? Is this fucking normal? I don’t see how it can be.

He glances over to Chase, something nasty and hungry flashing across his face. “Just remember our agreement, Presley. I wouldn’t want t—”

I grab him by the face, wrenching his gaze away from her. “You don’t look at her. You look at me. You don’t talk to her. You talk to me.”