Page 57 of Haunted Nightmares
I pull the front door behind me with a roll of my eyes, making sure it clicks into place before I turn the deadbolt.As if I was going to leave it wide open.
“You could have decided to let us both burn. It wouldn’t be unwarranted, not at this moment, and you’ve always loved the sun.” Moving slowly toward the dining room, I carefully walk through the wreckage as I follow Wraith’s voice. “Perhaps less now, I’d imagine it’s hard to appreciate that enormous ball of fire after it killed you. Then again, you could have developed some sort ofmyjackthat allows you to frolic through a bloody meadow at high noon. I don’t know you anymore, after all.”
Double whammy.Ouch.
I’m actually kind of surprised he said that, bringing up my death because it’s been something he could barely think about let alone speak out loud and pissed off or not, it was a low blow. For both of us, an unnecessary dig and that means this is definitely going to be harder than I prepared myself for.
“I’m not that different,” I say as I stop in the doorway. “If you’d have talked to me the other night instead of?—”
“If you’re going to insist on being here, do be a dear and angle that light. I’ve hit something hard but there’s so much murky blood I can’t see what it is.”
“I’m not here to assist you in dissecting the rest of that troll, Wraith.”
He looks up at me, those black as night eyes connecting with mine, staring intently without blinking. “Then kindly get the fuck out of my house.”
“Your house?”Gods, he is really pissing me off.“I thought this wasourhouse.”
Without skipping a beat, one barely there eyebrow lifts and an empty grin touches Wraith’s lips. “I shared this house with my mate, the female created to be my fated one and since you are nothing more to me than a walking nightmare with a very tight cunt, I do believe this is solelymy house.”
Wonderful.
He’s an even bigger asshole than he was before.
And that definitely means he’s going to keep playing on these little details and big moments, searching for what he’ll consider technicalities so he doesn’t have to let me explain. He’ll use them to push me away just like he tried to before.
Too bad for him, I’m not going anywhere. I wasn’t then and I sure as hell am not now, not when I know how much he needs me, or how deep our love really is. That’s not something I can’t walk away from.
“You need to let me explain.” I clench my jaw and grit my teeth as I march over to the table. “If you’d just listen to me then we could get past all of this bullshit and get on with the rest of our life.”
“My days are numbered.” Wraith watches me reach up and yank the surgical lamp in the direction of his hands before he goes back to digging around inside the rapidly decaying troll.
“They don’t have to be.”
“I respectfully disagree.”
“In the ten minutes I’ve been here, you’ve been nothing but disrespectful. Why stop now?”
He pulls a palm with three fingers attached to it from the troll’s stomach, the hand about the size of mine when it was intact but it doesn’t look feminine. No, I would bet it belonged to a male, possibly a young one and the manicure says he had money. Could be a noble or related to one. But before I can say any of that, or comment about the gaudy ring on the middle finger, Wraith plops it, along with the bits of entrails it’s wrapped in, on the table right in front of me.
Murky, brown blood splatters on the front of my dress, dots of the near toxic liquid sprayed in a disgusting design. The smell, my gods, the smell is worse than anything I’ve ever experienced before, and I have a feeling I’ll be wearing that scent for the rest of time because I doubt there’s a chemical strong enough to get it out of fabric or off my skin.
Scowling, I watch as he goes back to working practically elbows deep inside the leathery hitman but decide to stay calm and see if I can entice Wraith into listening to me. “I have some of the answers you’re looking for.” He pauses briefly but doesn’t acknowledge me. “About the troll. Why he’s here, how he got here. Why they aren’t extinct.”
“I do not need your help.”
“Not even with why his tongue was removed?”
Another pause, the scalpel poised for another incision. “No.”
“Fine.” I shrug and tilt the light again. “Suit yourself. I’m sure you’ll get your answers once you hit the slimy little bastard’s prostate.”
There it is.
The tiniest hint of a genuine smile, the one Wraith only ever showed to me, the one he claimed he never wore on his face before we were together. This smile, I lived for it, to put it on his handsome face and keep it there as long as I could. Good gods, and if he laughed? My mate has the best laugh, the real one thatcomes from actual humor and not the sadistic or evil shit he finds funny.
But just as quickly as it appeared, it’s gone.
It left me staring, though.
