My knuckles are white from my grip on the steering wheel. I thought I’d been angry before. In fact, I’ve always considered myself a generally angry person. But none of those moments compare to the rage pumping through my body with every beat of my heart.
The car is silent the whole drive back to the estate and the quiet only seems to make me angrier. I can’t believe how fucking reckless she was. Doesn’t she fucking understand I was just trying to protect her? Doesn’t she get that for some reason her health and safety have shot to the top of my priority list? And doesn’t she understand that she has attracted the attention of one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the world?
She’s so young, so naive, that perhaps I gave her too much credit. Maybe she isn’t ready to be in a life like this, even if I would put myself between her and danger every fucking day of the week.
I slam the brakes on when we reach the house, stones hitting the underside of the car in protest, but right now I don’t give a fuck about the car. I don’t care about making moves or figuring out where Annalise went after she left us. I don’t care about debriefing with my men or talking to Everett about what he’s found in Ayvah’s file.
No, all I care about is making sure she never disobeys me like that again. She may not understand yet, but soon she’ll get it. Soon she’ll know exactly who she belongs to and what that means.
I’m around her side of the car before she can so much as open the door, and I quickly scoop her up, throw her over my shoulder before pushing her bag over the other one.
“I can walk,” she squeals.
“I know. But given you can’t follow simple instructions, I thought it was better I do it for you,” I rumble. I can barely contain the fire in my words, but I’m trying not to scare her any more than she already has been in the last twenty-four hours. Fuck, I’m walking a tightrope of restraint, and at any moment it’s going to snap, consequences be damned.
“Storm, put me down.” Ayvah’s tiny fists beat at my back, but I barely feel the impact of the hits. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
I growl, taking the steps two at a time to the front door and quickly making my way through the house and into my bedroom. I don’t care if I should take her to the room I’ve had set up for her, because she’s not staying in there anymore. She’s staying with me, where she belongs, and where I can keep an eye on her.
The moment the door clicks closed behind us, I set her on her feet and place her bag beside my chest of drawers. The bag is so light I doubt there’s much to unpack, but we’ll take care of that once her punishment is out of the way.
A voice in the back of my mind screams at me to calm down before I do anything but I can’t be away from Ayvah right now, and every time I look at her all I see is guns pointed at her and all the ways this afternoon could have played out. She could have been killed or taken away from me, and I may not have been able to find her.
“Storm,” she whispers from where she’s rooted to the spot as if she’s worried moving will make me even angrier. If only she thought about that when she got out of the safe, bulletproof car while we were surrounded by men with guns and a notorious human trafficker. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t want you to get hurt because of me.”
I close my eyes and breathe through the fresh wave of fury that washes over me. She’s only digging herself a deeper hole than the one she was already in. “Ayvah, I was very clear in my instructions. Stay in the car no matter what you see and stay on the phone to Everett to feed him information. I don’t think I could have been more clear. And yet you got out of the car and almost handed yourself over to the person who would sell you to the scum of the earth without batting an eye. Is that what you want?” The tension in my jaw is at the point of pain, the muscles so tight I’m afraid they may snap.
“No, of course not.” What’s left of the color in her cheeks drains away. “I’m just not worth sacrificing yourself for.”
I stare at her for long moments, processing the words she’s just said and before I realize what I’m doing, I’m lifting her from the ground and depositing her on the black sheets on my bed. I crawl over her and relish in her body beneath mine. “Do you want to repeat that for me, baby girl?” I growl.
Her brown eyes are wide and dilated as she stares up at me with a mixture of fear and lust. She should be scared. She may not realize it, but she’s in the lion’s den and there’s no way I’m ever going to let her out. When I locked eyes on Ayvah, something triggered inside me. A raw possession, an instinct I’ve only ever felt toward my family, and something else. Something my mother used to talk about and that I always thought was a myth. Something that Rayne and Everett have been telling me I’ll feel someday but I was in denial that it would ever happen.
Ayvah both settles and aggravates the monster within. The question is, can she handle everything I’m going to throw at her?
Her lip quivers under my observation, my face so close to hers that her breath whispers across my cheeks. There’s something soothing about having her body pressed beneath mine and it’s almost enough to put out the flames burning in my chest. “I… I’m… I don’t understand what’s happening, Storm. Twenty-four hours ago I was just a girl whose family didn’t love them, and now you’re barking orders at me, and touching me like I’m… important. But I’m not. I’m not important. That’s pretty freaking clear by the fact my family gave me away to a fate I don’t even want to begin thinking about.”
A growl claws from my chest and one of my hands moves to her throat, gripping her delicate neck just enough that she understands how serious I am about the words that are about to come out of my mouth. “Baby girl, I want you to listen to me, and I want you to listen well. Your family is trash. They don’t deserve to breathe the same air as you. What you did today was reckless, and stupid, and so fucking irresponsible I don’t know what to do with you. And if I ever hear you speak about yourself in any other light than a positive one, you will not like the consequences, do we understand each other?”
Ayvah stares up at me like I’ve lost my mind, and honestly, I may have. There isn’t a rational thought going through my mind right now. Instead the monster within is chomping at the bit to get out and devour the woman beneath me. “Why do you care?” she asks.
The question almost knocks me off kilter, because I haven’t really allowed myself to consider that. I’ve been so focused on making sure she’s safe and getting us out of tense situations that I haven’t taken the time to think through why. “Because you’re mine, baby girl, and I’ll burn the fucking world to the ground before I’ll let anything happen to you.”
