Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58747 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58747 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
“Don’t. Touch. Me.”
More tears glaze her eyes. “Oh, Logan. I had no idea. I should have been there. I would have been there. It kills me that I wasn’t there when you needed me.”
Her eyes move back up to the ruined half of my face but she doesn’t wince this time and she doesn’t look at me with pity, either. Her eyes are full of…of some sort of feeling. She’s looking at me with a familiarity beyond that of just submission or the excitement I’ve seen her exhibit in our sexual discovery during our time together.
She’s looking at me like…like she knows me. She’s looking at me just like she used to. But she can’t be. Not now when I’m a—
I shake away the thoughts and turn away from her again. I can’t bear to have her eyes on me anymore. It’s too much, too soon. Especially when she still thinks her father and her precious Adam are innocent. I know she does.
She wants to believe everyone in the world is good.
But at least now I finally know she is as innocent as I think I always secretly hoped she was, even if I lost all my own naiveté long ago and told myself no one is innocent. I think maybe I’ve stumbled across the one person in the city, maybe the whole fucking world, who still is.
The same innocence that allowed her to open to me like a blossoming flower is what keeps her from being able to believe her father and Adam are the monsters I know them to be.
It stings, no it fucking hurts like an ax to the chest that now that I’ve finally told her the truth, she doesn’t believe me. That her loyalty to them is so steadfast.
But she hasn’t turned away from me either. Not even when faced with…my face.
“Logan,” she starts but I shake my head in one decisive no.
The time for words is done.
“Come with me.” I reach out my hand. It’s true I’ve been a bastard. I’ve locked her away in a tower and chased her through the labyrinth. I’ve scared her and thrilled her and showed her parts of herself she never even knew existed. And now I’ve revealed myself to her. Her old friend, deformed inside and out.
But now I give her a choice. A proffered hand. To take or leave.
Will the girl of my dreams take it? Her perfect bronzed skin glows in the firelight. The princess who was always far too good for me even before I became the Beast lurking under the bed in the stories.
But Daphne, being Daphne, clasps my hand almost the moment I extend it.
I don’t give her a chance to second-guess herself. I wrap my fingers around hers, engulfing her small hand in my huge one, and head for the stairs.
I sweep up the stairs, only slowing when Daphne calls out, “wait, Be— I mean, Logan, I can’t go as fast as you. My legs aren’t as long.”
I slow down but my impatience is bristling. I won’t believe she truly means it until— I shake my head. I just need to reestablish a sense of order. For both our sakes.
I take her to the one place she’s never been.
My bedroom.
It’s pitch black inside and I release her hand, not flipping on the light but walking over to the lamp on the nightstand. I click it on and the room is cast in dim light.
“Why are the curtains drawn?” she asks, coming in and turning around slowly.
“No more questions,” I bristle. She’s looking at all my things as if hunting for clues. She won’t find many. My room is all but bare. There are some books on my nightstand. My laptop on the desk in the corner.
She opens her mouth like she’s going to ask another question anyway but I beat her to the punch. “On the bed.”
For a second, she just stands there before me, the perfect specimen of woman.
But more than that, she is my Daphne. The beautiful girl I watched blossom into a woman before my eyes back when I was a post doc student working for her father. I didn’t notice her much until she turned eighteen. There was a dance—a ball, I guess those pretentious fucks call it. But she was there and suddenly Dr. Laurel’s kid daughter was all grown up, glowing and gorgeous and all woman. She’s only grown more beautiful over the years, but even back then, she was heart stopping.
Afterwards, I’d come across her in the study carrels of the lab, head bent over, glasses slipping down her nose as she poured over the latest research reports, determined to help her father save her mom. She was always alone. Her father certainly had no time for her, other than for her help with his research.