Pepper held herself very still, looking down at Wyatt’s sleeping face. He was beautiful. So beautiful. Everything about him. The home he’d made for their daughters. His grandmother. His sexy body and cocky grin. The rough way he dragged her to him, the tenderness in his eyes after sex, or when her mouth was on him. She loved that look, the way he watched her as she pleasured him. She loved the way he wanted to see her face when he gave her multiple orgasms and the way he wanted her to say his name. She just plain loved him.
The terrible weight that had been stomping on her chest ever since she’d killed the soldier using what she was, what they’d created in her, threatened to crush her. She had known the moment she’d first laid eyes on Wyatt, out there, in the swamp, when she should have been running for her life away from the compound with Ginger – when she should have been taking care of Ginger. She’d turned back and watched him casually beat the crap out of the guard. He’d looked beautiful then too, an avenging angel.
He’d walked into his grandmother’s parlor, knowing she wasn’t alone. He didn’t care. He wasn’t afraid, and he refused to back down. Pepper had known then. She’d known he was someone special. Someone who deserved far better than she could ever be.
She’d tried to be that woman for him, but as far back as she could remember, she’d been groomed for one thing – to tempt men. To lure them. It was in the way she walked. In the turn of her head. The sound of her voice. She couldn’t stop those years of practice. She’d been taught to use sex as a weapon. She hadn’t known sex could be something special or beautiful between a man and woman. Wyatt had taught her that.
Braden – or Whitney – had forced her body into a terrible, clawing, endless cycle of pure need. Her body turned on her. She worked hard to shield the others, but sometimes she just couldn’t do it. Sometimes the clawing need and the burn between her legs was pure hell. Nothing helped but Wyatt. Only Wyatt.
She hated that he was affected by the vicious, unending cycle. It would never get better. He thought he could handle it, but when the months and the years went by, when he was angry with his friends and with hers, when jealousy got the best of him, he would feel different. He deserved better.
She knew the difference now. She knew women weren’t trained from their teenage years to be sexual weapons. She remembered the men they’d brought in to instruct her. Her face burned. She’d hated it and then had begun to accept it as normal. It wasn’t normal, and she would never be.
And then they had added the venom so she could lure her victim and then dispose of him. He would die, just as the soldier had died, looking at her as if she was the most beautiful, perfect woman in the world.
A sob tore up her chest and lodged in her throat. She hadn’t told Wyatt what she’d done. She couldn’t tell him. She’d forced that soldier into a state of need, of addiction and made him think he loved her above all else. She didn’t want Wyatt to know the worst of her. She couldn’t bear it if he knew the worst of her. She couldn’t bear it if he looked at her with disgust – which eventually would happen. She couldn’t bear it if he walked out on her. All he saw that night was her saving them from certain death. He hadn’t cared how. But he didn’t see the soldier’s face like she did.
She’d never known happiness. She didn’t even know such a thing existed. Or families. But she could give those things to her daughters by leaving. They would never have to be ashamed of their mother and her highly sexual nature. They would never have to learn to kill with an intimate bite that was meant for love, not death.
She couldn’t breathe. No air found its way into her lungs no matter how hard she tried to drag it in. She truly was afraid she might vomit, her stomach roiling and churning, knots so hard she wasn’t certain she could ever get them loose again. Her chest was the worst. A horrible, heavy weight pressing and pressing until she was certain her heart would implode from the sheer pressure.
She had to get out of there. Now. That minute. She couldn’t stay another second or she would break down completely and lose her nerve. He didn’t deserve that either. She turned away from the bed and lifted the small bag she’d packed. She’d kept it under the bed in preparation for him falling asleep. She hadn’t taken much. She didn’t need much.
She had nowhere to go. No skills. No paperwork. She was nothing. She wouldn’t allow Wyatt Fontenot to tie himself to nothing – to trouble that would eventually get him or someone else killed. She loved him too much for that. She loved her daughters and Nonny too much for that.