Fallen Angel: Mythic Series, Book 2 by Abbie Zanders Read Free Book Online Page B

her arm, catching her sleeve.
    “Jesus,” he murmured, holding her delicate wrist in his much larger hand and pushing the material even farther. He found deep tissue bruises, and what looked like a series of puncture wounds around her wrists. Something dark and feral uncurled in his belly. “Ryssa...”
    He looked again at her face, now not quite as unmarred as it had been before. Her skin seemed to flicker, then it was back to being smooth and pale again. He blinked and shook his head, certain that it had been a trick of his imagination. But those marks on her arm, they were real enough.
    Ryssa reclaimed her arm and met his eyes only briefly. It was enough to see the raw, ugly truth.
    David swallowed the lump in his throat. “Let me get my car. I’ll take you back to your place so you can pick up some things. You can stay in one of our guest rooms.”
    She looked at him as if he had sprouted wings. “What?”
    “You can’t go back there,” he said firmly. “I can take you down to the police station. You can file a complaint.”
    Ryssa laughed. “A complaint? Are you kidding me?”
    That gave him pause. “You can’t let him do this.”
    She fixed him with those haunting gray eyes. “Yes, I can. He owns me. He can do whatever he wants.”
    David couldn’t have been more stunned if a tribe of pygmies decided to squat on his land. “People don’t own other people.”
    She smiled at him, but it was a sad smile. “Not in your world, David. But in mine...”
    “We don’t live in the same world?”
    “Not even close,” she breathed. She readjusted her sleeve, tucking it down over the worst of her injuries. “Tell Elizabeth I’ll be back tonight after my shift. Assuming you don’t do anything else stupid,” she added for good measure.
    David was about to open his mouth, the protest already on his lips, when she held up her hand and stopped him. “Look. You don’t understand. I get it. But you have to trust me on this, Corrigan. Do us both a favor. Do what everyone else does, okay? Just walk away and pretend you didn’t see anything.”
    Several minutes after she disappeared into the tree line, David was still standing on the front portico. He wasn’t sure what surprised him more - the things she’d said or the fact that she’d called him by his actual last name instead of Gilligan or something cruder.
    The more he thought about it, the more he was sure the woman was batshit crazy, or at the very least, on drugs. A danger to herself and others. If he wasn’t sure his mother would hate him for it, he’d call the cops and have her taken into custody for psychiatric evaluation and a tox screen.
    God only knew what the girl had been through, what had made her snap into a bona fide froot loop, but there was no denying she’d gotten herself mixed up in something pretty bad. There were professionals who might be able to help her. The bruises were real enough, as were the puncture marks he’d seen on her wrists.
    Not yet, though. He needed – no, he corrected, Elizabeth needed – Ryssa nearby and available. Maybe he’d make a few phone calls after his mother...
    David slammed a solid wall down on that train of thought. He would not think about that. Not now. There would be plenty of time for that later. Right then, right there, his mother was still with him, and he was going to make the most of every moment.
    He forced the images of big gray eyes and alabaster skin mottled with purple – the only hint of color about her - out of his mind’s eye, ruthlessly shutting down the totally inappropriate protective instinct that had somehow risen, completely unwanted and unbidden.
    She was not his responsibility. She hated him, and he didn’t trust her. End of story.
    Turning on his heel, he went back into the house and closed the door behind him.
    “Ryssa wouldn’t accept a gift,” Elizabeth said, almost causing David to groan aloud. Was it not possible to go five minutes without thinking of her?
    He looked