Preston’s lashes lower over coal-black eyes. His pink upper lip curls as he rounds on her.
Billie just watches him.
Her eyes are dead… or they should be, because that’s how she feels inside… but then she feels the warmth of a tear run down her cheek.
She doesn’t so much as swat at the tear.
It’s too late to try and hide it. He’s seen it—his gaze shifts to her cheek for a mere millisecond before he comes to a stop in front of her.
Her back presses a tad harder against the refrigerator as his hand presses against it, right next to her head. “So,” he repeats, towering over her, “why don’t you start telling me the truth, Billie? You owe me that.”
Billie’s lips twitch with a smirk.
Liquid courage? Pushing him away? She doesn’t know anymore.
And yet—
She smirks. “I don’t owe you shit, you rich entitled—”
It happens too fast for her to see it coming. But in a blink, his hand pulls back from the fridge, clenches into a fist, then smashes right into that same spot, right next her head.
Billie flinches. “What the fu—”
“You owe me everything!” he shouts down at her.
In this moment, his want to break her, it was more than a passing craving, a fleeting urge. Rather it was surging up inside of him, blood boiling and crashing like furious waves, an all-consuming need.
She could read it in his blazing eyes.
He adds darkly, “And I owe you everything I fucking have, you selfish bitch, you good-for-nothing alky.”
Her eyes widen, turn wild with the same rage that snarls her lips. If he braces himself for rotten, rancid words aimed his way, then he braces himself wrong.
Billie jerks her head forward—not with a headbutt, with a spit.
She spits right at him, and the gloss of it catches his cheek.
Preston’s lashes lower, his eyes shut.
He’s still for a beat, a statue with a fist pushing into the refrigerator door, his other hand fisted at his side, and a wad of spit on his cheek.
He lifts his hand.
Slowly, he opens his eyes—and looks right into her fucking soul with the kinda promises, the kinda threats that only the devil can make.
This time, she can’t fight her tremble. It runs up her spine, but she lifts her chin and meets his stare dead-on.
Bring it.
Instead, he touches his fingers to the spit… He wipes it away in one swift move, then brings it to his mouth.
Their eyes stay locked.
Her jaw tenses—
And he licks his fingertips.
Billie and Preston have had fights before. Some real nasty shit. Wouldn’t be a lie to say she’s hit him with a vase or two before. Or tried to clip him with her truck.
Some real nasty shit, she’s never denied that.
But never… never before… has she been afraid of him.
Not like this.
She swallows, hard. A lump in her throat, swelling. Tears in her defiant eyes, flowing.
Billie flinches with a yelp—
Preston snatches her by the neck.
With one hand, he pins her against the refrigerator. His body shoves against hers, his other hand grabbing the meat of her thigh, hard. Her skin screams in protest, but before she can utter a word, he’s hiking her leg over his hip and crashing his mouth down on hers.
Her shout is muffled, almost silenced, by his mouth. A kiss that tastes of her tears and his rage—of their poison.
A poison she’s so fucking addicted to.
Teeth aching, and the back of her head pulsating against the hard, dented refrigerator, Billie hits out at him. One hard fist to the side of his head.
It doesn’t stop him. He only shoves her up the cold door, off the floor, and his mouth twists against hers.
“I fucking hate you,” he growls and—hand abandoning her thigh—reaches down for her pajama shorts. With a single tug, he rips them apart, between her legs, right at her core.
And jolts of electricity fire through her.
Billie gasps something breathy into his mouth.
Tell me again.
Tell me how much you hate me.
Tell me anything but love.
From the author of the DARK FAE comes this *dark slasher romance* in vein of our beloved 90s Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
This small town has a bit of a problem… a serial killer problem.
What looks like a sleepy drifter town is anything but. Dosserport has murder in the waters and secrets the air.
Here no one is safe when a masked killer starts terrorising the town.
Blood Hood is coming after them: Billie—from the wrong side of the tracks—and her friends… The ones who have a deadly secret of their own, one they kept for seven years… a dark secret that Blood Hood seems to know all about.
One by one, Blood Hood hunts them down to avenge the murder that started it all.
But just as Billie finds herself running from Blood Hood, she runs from the love of her life and ex, Preston.
With slashed-up bodies piling up all over, Billie flees more than a masked killer… Preston hunts her to every corner of Dosserport, intent on stealing her back… whatever it takes.
Love is meant to flourish. Poison corrupts.
Poison is all I know.
We are all villains here….
Quinn Blackbird 