Read Online Beyond the Shadows by Cassidy Hunter - Free Book Online Page B

her as effortlessly as he would have a child, and held her against his warm, solid chest, his arms huge and comforting around her. “ Shhh , baby, hush now.” His voice a murmuring, calm island in the sea of her distress, he carried her from the prison.
    She didn’t look back.

Chapter Thirteen
     
    She lay in her bed, staring sightlessly at the wall. The endgame was here. Time to work. Her feelings for Kai didn’t matter. All that mattered was sticking with the plan. She realized she’d been afraid this entire time, deep down, that Constantine was dead. To see him, to really see him, was almost too much. Overwhelming emotions clashed and clawed, ripping her apart.
    “Did you give her something?” Kai murmured.
    “Yes,” Teddy answered, her tone showing that she was trying hard not to voice her disapproval and failing dismally.
    “Teddy. She’ll be fine. I shouldn’t have taken her to holding—”
    “Most certainly not ,” Teddy snapped.
    Her response caused Sarah to smile weakly, her face losing some of its numbness. She turned slowly to her back. “I’m sorry. I’m being a baby. Seeing them just… I thought I wanted to see what was wrong when I heard them fighting, but…those poor, poor men.”
    The mattress dipped as Kai lowered his big body to sit beside her. In his eyes was relief, she thought. Relief, maybe, that she’d behaved in a way he thought she should. The way an innocent woman would. That she’d wanted to see the prisoners in the first place had thrown him. Maybe he was relieved his suspicions were proving false.
    I’m so sorry, Kai.
    Oh God, how he would hate her.
    “Sarah, every single one of those men deserves to be there. They’ve done terrible things like—”
    “Like things we won’t discuss right now,” Teddy snapped, her hands on her wide hips.
    Another time Kai might have told her to mind her own business, but he just flashed a quick grin and let the subject drop. “How do you feel?” He scraped Sarah’s hair back from her forehead, nearly bringing to the surface the tears that were never well hidden these days.
    “Embarrassed.”
    “No need.”
    “Certainly not,” Teddy said again, her voice as sharp as shards of glass. “If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s—”
    “Enough, woman!” Kai sent Teddy a glare that had her pale and scampering for the door.
    “You shouldn’t scare her,” Sarah said, knowing her admonishments would be accepted in his present state of mind.
    His grin took ten years off his face. “I know.”
    She almost gave herself over to him in that moment, almost talked herself into trusting him, but the thought of Constantine remaining forever imprisoned was enough to make her come to her senses. He’d never have ended up there in the first place, if not for her. She had to make it right.
    But Kai…
    She lifted her hand, white fingers looking cold against the sun-kissed bronze of his face. When had she let herself become so soft? Heartache was going to become a well-known acquaintance, she knew it. It was going to get worse before it got better, if it ever did.
    “My path has been set,” she whispered. “I can’t change it now.”
    “What?”
    She shook her head and closed her eyes, caressing his face with sensitive fingertips. “Nothing.”
    He didn’t push, for which she was grateful.
    “Sarah.”
    She opened her eyes. In his voice was a complete tenderness she’d never thought to gain from him, wasn’t even sure he was capable of. She couldn’t bear it.
    She sat up and sank her fists into his thick hair, pulling his mouth toward hers. “Just fuck me, Kai.”
    Surprise lifted his eyebrows for a second before his lips smashed against hers. He wrapped his arms around her and dragged her against him, then slanted his mouth against hers as he took control.
    She pulled away, long enough to blurt, “And I want it hard. Make me feel it, Kai.” As if there were any other way with him.
    But after the scene in the prison, he’d been