Bind and Keep Me, Book 2 Read Free

detail as they came into sight. I was a robot with my gaze ratcheting along on cogwheel teeth.
Jerk.
A man’s body facing away from me. Naked.
Jerk.
His back.
Jump
again to see her head beyond his. They lay as if spooning. Her auburn hair trailed over the sheet that was pulled up to her cheek.
    A memory triggered. Me and Jodie, in bed, cuddling. Her sensuous warmth against my skin. Her scent. Our murmured exchange of lovers’ pretty words and soft kisses. And, as always, my amazement that we suited each other so well, and that she loved me.
    I could hear quiet wet breathing like someone sucking air in past phlegm.
    My legs were distant from me and stiff as I approached the bed and looked down. My body wasn’t mine. I was ten thousand feet up, and the bed was down there, far, far away. This was not,
could not,
be real.
    The man breathed stertorous and harsh, like a dinosaur inhaling swamp. He was making the sounds. She… I stretched out a hand to move aside some of her hair. The ice cold of her ear and her cheek froze me also. Slowly, I shifted the sheet downward. Loops of her hair clung to the sheet, uncurling. Then I saw her neck, her blue-white neck.
    No. Fuck, no. A gasp tore like a red wound from my mouth, ripping a hole in my soul. “No.” Tremors took my arm until I had to draw it back before I knocked against the man.
    I stared. He breathed through open mouth. She was cold and still. Her hands were tied up to the headboard. A ligature of rope was wrapped loosely about her neck.
    I knew fifty ways to kill him but all I could think of was crushing his face into a red smear on the white sheet.
    “Bastard,” I grated out, gripping a hunk of his hair in my hand. His eyes popped open. Mine fixed on his. I wasn’t missing a second of this. My other fist drew back to my ear—there all by itself, it seemed—ready to unleash hurt on him.
    His pupils were huge and dilated. Drugs? On the bedside table lay a syringe with no needle, a small glass bottle, and a ripped-open packet.
    “No,” he croaked, half-turning his head to look up at me. “Nooo.”
    As I stared into his dark eyes, he coughed, his hands stirred feebly under the sheet, and vomit bubbled from his mouth, welling up like a disgusting fountain.
    Logic arrived, late but welcome, and through the rage, I recognized how poorly he defended himself, how much danger he was in from inhaling his vomit. I moved my hand higher in his hair so the vomit wouldn’t spill on me.
    “If you cough,” I told him calmly, as if this was merely some science experiment. “You might get some air. If not, well, I suppose you might drown in your own foul stench. I can’t think of a better way for you to die.” I narrowed my eyes, lowered my face a little, and I spoke through gritted teeth. “Die you evil fucking bastard. Choke on that shit.”
    It took a few minutes…of watching him breathe in and out through the sludge in his mouth. Watching him die. Whatever he’d taken, whatever drug, it had slowed his reflexes and his brain and he’d lost all idea of self-preservation. As the last dribble of air sighed out and his body relaxed into death, I added a eulogy.
    “I hope you knew what I did to you, you piece of filth. You killed Jodie.” I had to halt for a moment. I was so empty inside, so raw, like someone had scraped out my insides. My next words, I whispered hoarsely, “My beautiful, beautiful Jodie.”
    Tears had blurred my vision by then, and the first of them spilled and ran down my face. But I wiped them away, sniffed them back, and made them stop. I had to take care of her now. I could grieve later. I wasn’t leaving her in this fucker’s embrace. I stepped carefully around the foot of the bed to her side, and bent to move the hair from her face.
    “It’s not her,” someone said quietly, shakily.
    The earth tilted. My heart lost a few beats forevermore. I turned, searching the room. “What?”
    “It’s not Jodie.” Beyond the two red leather sofas,