Sweet: A Dark Love Story by Kit Tunstall, R.E. Saxton Read Free Book Online Page B

college.”
    “How I wish I had. I would have married any of them if I’d known it would save me from you.”
    He observed her coolly as he finished the vegetables on his plate, not speaking until he had swallowed the last bite. “Sweet, deluded Kat, do you really think I would have let something like that stop me? You could have been married and had little brats of your own, and I still would’ve taken you at the right time. You belong to me, and now, you always will. You wasted the opportunity to have a short-lived average life with any other man, and now you’ll never have the chance again.”
    His words shocked her. “You would have torn me away from my own children just to be part of your mad plan, if I’d had any?”
    He shrugged. “I might have allowed you to bring them. It’s a moot point, since they don’t exist.”
    She couldn’t let it go. “What kind of monster takes a mother away from her children?”
    He got to his feet abruptly, the chair screeching against the hardwood floor as he shoved it back quickly enough for it to fall with a crash. “What kind of monster takes a wife and unborn baby away from their family? Your father.” He slammed his hand onto the small table, making the silverware and plates on it clatter together. “We’re arguing over something that didn’t happen. If it had, I would have been no worse than your father.”
    She sneered at him. “That’s the standard to live up to then, is it? I guess by that reasoning, kidnapping me, sexually assaulting me, and planning to knock me up against my will is all about as bad as my father robbing, raping, and murdering your wife and child.” Even as she said the words, she regretted them. It wasn’t fear of his reaction that prompted the regret. No, it was the way his face paled, and the stark reflection of pain in his pale-gray eyes.
    He came around the table quickly, and she braced herself for him to grab her or hit her. Instead, he walked past her stiffly, in a rapid clip. She was actually surprised by his show of restraint as he sped from the kitchen. If he’d been her father or her uncles, she would have been lying on the floor by now, cradling a throbbing cheekbone or staunching the flow of blood from a broken nose.
    A few moments later, bracing herself to face him again since she couldn’t stay in the kitchen all night, she turned and walked through the house and up the stairs. He wasn’t in sight, and she made it to her room without running into him again. It was a relief to close the door and push the chair underneath the knob, and she was happy to have survived the meal with no more than angry words exchanged.
    As she settled on the bed, trying to force her mind to the problem of how to escape, she couldn’t help another dart of regret at the awful thing she had said, though his awful words and actions had spurred them. Maybe she’d gone too far, but anger at his manipulations wiped away the shred of remorse.
    For a long moment, she indulged in self-pity and mourned the loss of the relationships she’d had the last six years. Michelle had been a friend, and it hurt to know she’d never actually been her real friend, but it didn’t hurt nearly as badly as it did to know the Blakes had been practically on Declan’s payroll as well.
    Despite how he dressed it up, the bald truth was they had stayed part of her life past the age of legal obligation because he had paid them to. They had been more like parents to her than either one of her own, but they had never been her real parents. She’d never been more conscious of that reality than she was at the moment as tears slipped down her cheeks.
    Trapped in the room that she had barricaded herself in, on this private island, she felt more alone than she ever had in her life, even after the police had brought the news that her father had killed himself in a drunk driving accident two days after the state dropped its charges against him. Then, there had been the tentative