page7 (1/2)
“Many things el Not the kind that you put on your ht Satan to the gates of hell “Changes us, from year to year But one main event shapes us, defines us Tell me yours, Devlin”
“I didn’t invite you there, love I told you that”
“You want past this gate”—she rubbed herself against him—“you pay the fee”
“I didn’t take you for a whore, love”
Her nails stabbed into skin, sending a shudder jolting through his spine “You won’t play with me, Dev Your soul knehat I was, the ht Tell me How did you lose her?” He closed his eyes He wanted to tell her to go to hell, but he’d only be there waiting for her He’d been there so long he should have forgotten the tiony, but part of the agony of hell was the inability to forget
It was just a handful of sentences In a book or film, they’d be thrown in to make an otherretched bastard a sy to those sentences in his rammed them, broken theee the story after it ritten, a quick redlining and destruction of those ill-advised pages
In real life, speaking those sentences gave people so to talk about in their own blissfully mediocre livesHeard about what happened to that bloke’s fa a station outside Blackall? What a terrible thing
So he’d never said theh his head like a ticker tape on the stockbell
He’d studied business as well as literature, because a good business mind helped run a station But in the end, he’d becohost of the rare woman who’d loved the Outback as much as he had
He couldn’t say the words They represented the chas
His fa back to when his ancestor escaped from Moreton Bay in the nineteenth century and lived with the black fellas long enough to marry into one of the clans, become part of a tribe Some of that blood ran in his veins
Though it wasn’t h to show and cause him any problem in the white-run world, those ties still existed He knew they could offer succor, paths to walk to heal his pain Then there were the bars, with the te bottles Or he could lose himself in the dark corners of the world where opiates could be found
Instead he’d chosen the Outback, for he couldn’t cope with anything that didn’t offer him honesty And the bush told him, every day, that the world was cruel and beautiful both
He’d left the green and fertile fields, the wild one deep into Western Australia What he sought in those lonely, wild areas was inside the woman before him now Beneath the creamy skin and blue eyes, there was that same call
so like the Outback, requiring his full attention so there wasn’t tied into her deeply enough, perhaps he would find permanent oblivion
“They caone Raped and beat my wife to death Killed my son when he tried to do my job Tried to protect her”
Her arive pity, which he could not have borne She lifted his chin, made him look at her
“Give me your soul, Dev,” she murmured “Soht of it for a while” Her lips curled back then, so he could see the sharp canines elongate, becoht on hi so he’d never seen before, except in horror filer of her the s that rose in hiive her whatever it was she wanted They raged through hi she was coht scale of reaction to fear or great ehter His lack of choice at this , not hers He had to have her Take her He’d accept whatever price she demanded No matter what she was
Her hand slid behind him, and the whip dropped to the floor with a heavy thud “Do as you like, bushman I promise you can’t break me”
Obeying mindless, primal need, he tore the swatch of panties fro with his broad head and shoved her down on it, a sword determined to fit into a small scabbard, even if he tore her open the way she was tearing him
She sank her fangs into his throat, filling her mouth with his blood Her cry at his penetration allowed so a drop on her breast right over the red mark he’d e of the bra Yanking it off her with the noise of ripping fabric, he filled his hands with her curves