Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 136: Cursed

Chapter 136: Cursed

"Are you afraid of me, Mia?"

"Of course not," Mia said shortly, but she realized as soon as she said it that it was a lie. When the kiss had begun, she’d understood instinctively that, somehow, kissing her had brought him a kind of peace and assurance, and she’d wanted to give him that. But when she’d heard him whisper that he wanted and needed her, and now that her heart had taken that kiss as an urgent demand to give him much, much more, she was terrified. Because she wanted to do exactly that. She wanted to feel his strong hands rushing over her naked skin and his body driving into hers. She wanted him to touch and do things to her, she wanted...

Mia went still as she realized how much she wanted to be touched by him. But In the moments she’d been silent, Neil had evidently replaced his passion with anger, because his voice was no longer gentle or kind, it was cool, clipped, and hard as he said, "If you aren’t afraid, then what’s bothering you? Or is it that you can give an escaped convict a little empty sympathy, but you don’t want him too close because you are disgusted by his touch, Is that it?"

Mia nearly stamped her foot in frustration at his narrow logic and her own stupidity for letting things go this far. "It’s nothing like revulsion if that’s what you mean."

His voice became a bored drawl as he asked, "Then what is it, or shouldn’t I ask?"

"You shouldn’t need to ask!" she said, raking her fringe off her forehead as she looked around the living room little wildly for something to do, some way to restore order to her mind and heart that had suddenly become alarmingly out of her control. She needed to keep her hands busy before she’d lost it completely. "I’m not an animal," she began. Her eyes fell on a picture frame on the wall beside her that was a fraction of an inch crooked and she turned around to fix it.

"And you think I am? An animal? Is that it?"

Trapped by his questions and his closeness, she glanced over her shoulder and noticed a cushion on the floor. "I think..." she told him flatly as she walked over to the cushion to pick it up, "that you’re a man who has been locked away from women for five long years."

"That’s right, I am. So what?"

She placed the cushion at a vertical angle against the arm of the sofa and began to feel more relaxed, now that there was distance between them. She gazed at his face and actually managed an impersonal little smile at him across the length of the sofa as she said, "I can understand that, to you, any woman would be like a..."

His dark brows snapped together over ominous gray eyes, and she trailed off uneasily, then she hastily bent and began rearranging the other pillows into a more artistic display. She didn’t know how to phrase her words in a way it wouldn’t be offensive but she tried to continue with her explanation. "To you, after being in prison for so long, any woman would be like a...a banquet to a starving man. Any woman," she emphasized. "I mean, I didn’t mind letting you kiss me if that made you feel, well, better. But you see..."

Neil suddenly felt humiliated by her words, and furious at the discovery that she regarded him as some animal to whom she’d been tossing a crumb of human feeling, a sex-starved beggar to whom she was reluctantly willing to give a little kiss. And with those thoughts, his pride and ego took a big hit.

"How generous you are, Miss Harrison," he jeered, ignoring the way the color drained out of her cheeks as he continued with deliberate brutality. "You’ve sacrificed your precious little self twice to me. But regardless of your opinion, even an animal like myself is capable of some sort of restraint. In short, Mia, you may think you’re irresistible but you’re completely resistible and undesirable to this particular man, sex-starved though I may be."

His anger was palpable, terrifying, and completely incomprehensible to Mia in her agitated state. She stepped back, wrapping her arms around herself as if to fend off the hurt he was deliberately inflicting on her raw emotions.

Neil read her every reaction in her expressive eyes, and satisfied that he’d done the utmost possible damage, he turned on his heel and walked over to the cabinet beside the television, where he began looking over papers he’d kept there the last time he came to the cabin to occupy his time.

Mia knew she’d just been discarded like a used piece of tissue and summarily dismissed, but her ravaged pride rebelled at the thought of creeping into her bedroom like a wounded rabbit and crying because of his insult. She refused to shed even one tear or show any fluster. She decided and walked over to the table behind him and began straightening the papers on it. But his frigid command made her lurch upright. "Go to bed! What do you think you are by cleaning the house, some sort of compulsive housewife?"

The papers slid out of her hand, they scattered to the floor and she glared at him, but she did as he told her. She turned on her heels and walked upstairs toward her room.

From the corner of his eye, Neil watched her retreat, noticing the stubborn lift of her chin and the proud grace of her walk, and with the skill he’d perfected of blocking out his emotions and people when he was a boy, he turned away and coldly dismissed her completely from his mind. He concentrated, instead, on the news that Mia had interrupted with her angry outburst. He could have sworn that while he was trying to comfort her, the reporter had said something about Kai.

Sitting down on the sofa, he frowned at the television screen. He wished he had just focused on the news than her earlier. She had completely ruined not just his mood, but his news time. In two hours or so, there would be a late-night news update or at least a recap. Since he couldn’t use cellphones here, he was left with waiting on news.

Propping his feet on the coffee table, Neil leaned back, prepared to wait for that while making sure he blocked out every thought of Mia. Instead, he let himself think about Kai. The boy’s face with his daredevil grin took shape in his mind, and a faint smile touched his lips as he thought of him.

In all these years, there were only two men who he had come to regard as true friends almost brothers. One of them was Liam and the other was now Kai, who he was now worried about.

Just before midnight, as Neil hoped, they reshowed the same news along with a brief video that Neil had already seen earlier in the day. Then he waited until the reporter spoke about Kai.

"Kai Martinez who was recaptured after his escape with Neil Wayner was taken for questioning, where he attempted a second escape. Two guards were assaulted before he was finally recaptured and subdued. He has been taken to the prison infirmary, where he is listed in critical condition. No additional details as to the nature and extent of his injuries are available as yet."

Neil’s whole body turned cold with shock and rage, his stomach heaved, and he leaned his head back, fighting down the urge to vomit at the thought of the young man being in critical condition because of him. He had warned Kai not to attempt anything stupid, but the boy had obviously proved to Neil that he was indeed inspired by anything Neil did. And he proved that by attempting an escape. Neil stared at the ceiling high above, swallowing convulsively as memories of Kai’s grinning, optimistic face and foolish jokes flashed across his mind.

Long after the News had ended, Neil remained where he was, so filled with torment and despair that he couldn’t summon the energy to get up and go to his room. The determination to escape and survive that had kept him sane for the last five years was slowly draining away. It seemed as if death had been at his side or stalking him from behind forever, and he was suddenly tired of running from it.

First his parents had died, then his sanity, and then came many lives he had killed. If Kai died, there was no way to blame anyone except himself for it. He was to blame for everything.

Sitting there, Neil actually felt as if there were some sort of macabre curse attached to him that sent anyone he cared about to an early death. Even through his despair, Neil realized thoughts like that were dangerous, unbalanced, insane. But then he felt as if his hold on sanity was becoming very, very fragile. Very soon, he would lose it.