Tangled Web: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 6) by Giulia Lagomarsino (an ebook reader txt) 📕

nowhere, he had a forty-five minute drive to get to the ‘big city’, as we all like to call it.”

I listened in for a second…she was still breathing hard, but she seemed to be attempting to calm herself down.

“So, while my dad was gone, the sirens in town went off, telling us there was a fucking tornado warning. Well, we couldn’t go into the basement because it was flooded, so Ma brought out this game of Parcheesi, which is like the oldest game on the face of the earth. So, we all sat down in the living room and played fucking Parcheesi while there was a tornado outside.”

“Did the tornado hit?” she asked shakily.

“Nah, not even sure there was a tornado. It was windy as hell, but no damage to the property. But it’s one of my happiest memories, just me and my brothers playing Parcheesi on the ground while Ma was watching the storm outside.”

She huffed out a weird laugh that sounded like she was trying to laugh, but still too terrified to actually make the normal sounds. I reached over and held out my hand to her. It took a few seconds, but eventually, she put a shaky hand in mine and held on tight. She didn’t seem like she was ready to move yet, so I just sat there with her. It seemed like we sat there for a good fifteen minutes before she finally spoke.

“My dad wasn’t a good man,” she said quietly. “He was when I was younger, but then some stuff happened and…after my mom died, he turned violent.” She was quiet for a minute, and then she whispered, “I hate the dark.”

“You’ve been alone in the dark before. What happened this time?”

She dragged in a long, rattled breath. “The last time I saw my dad, he was drunk and he cut himself on a bottle of whiskey. I had to sew him up, and I accidentally stabbed him with the needle. He lost it and started beating me. I thought for sure I was going to die that night.”

“What happened?”

“My friend, Matthew, stopped him. He heard me screaming and he ran over to our house and picked up a skillet, hit him over the head, and we ran. By the time we came back the next day, he was gone. I never saw him again.”

“He just disappeared?”

“I guess. The police looked for him, but they never could find him. They thought maybe he stumbled off somewhere and died, but his body never showed up. About six months later, he wrote to me, telling me how sorry he was. And that was the last time I heard from him.”

As terrified as I was by this woman, I couldn’t believe that her father would actually beat on her like that. I’d heard stories of it happening to other kids, but I’d never witnessed the fallout of it. And just the fact that he survived made my skin crawl. I wished the fucker had died. But since he hadn’t, I was going to find him when I got back to my apartment. I would make sure that he was nowhere near her ever again, because I never wanted to see her curled up in a ball, terrified of the dark.

I finally got her to come downstairs with me and we closed the doors to the living room to save heat. She seemed to calm down and forget about her earlier freak out, because now she was acting like her old self, a smile on her face as she not-so-gently sewed up the cut on the back of my head. And the whole time she chattered on, I was at war with myself, trying to figure out if she was a psychopath or not. What serial killer was afraid of the dark? Wasn’t that like a rule or something, that serial killers lived for the darkness?

“There, all done,” she said proudly.

She held up two mirrors so I could see her handiwork. I grimaced when I saw that she had shaved the back of my head as close to the cut as possible. I looked like an idiot now.

When she saw my grimace, she laughed. “Relax. We can take you into town to have your hair cut.”

“I liked it the way it was,” I grumbled.

“And it will grow out again.”

She came around beside me and sat down, staring at the fire. After a minute, she laid her head on my shoulder and linked our fingers together. I stared down at our joined hands and frowned. Why did this feel so right? Why did I want her so much? No, not just want her, need her. When I saw her huddled in the corner, absolutely terrified, it felt like my heart was going to flop out of my chest and fall dead on the floor. I hated seeing that, and I would do anything to prevent that from happening again. Serial killer or not, she was getting under my skin, so deep that I knew I couldn’t just get out.

“How’s the head?”

I grunted in response, not wanting to admit that it hurt.

She let go of my hand and climbed on top of my lap, her fingers running through my hair, but careful not to touch my cut. “I can make it better for you.”

I grunted again, not wanting to admit that I wanted her. Her fingertips slowly slid up my chest, then back down, resting just above the waistband of my jeans. Her eyes glimmered as she watched me.

“I can make it all better,” she whispered, nipping at my ear.

My cock grew hard. God, this woman just had me so fucking confused. One minute, I was sure she was trying to kill me, and the next, I just wanted her to ride my cock, make me explode inside her. She was such a vixen. So fucking sexy. She slowly leaned forward, brushing her lips against mine. I swallowed hard, tasting that sweetness on her lips and wanting