Cold-Blooded Beautiful Read Online Free PDF Page B

he’d gone, and what he’d done.  A few hours before, when I finished my shift at the hospital, I had built a fire in the stone pit built into the middle of the porch. It was smoldering now, just a few small embers of wood left to help me stay warm.  At eleven, it had started to hail.  Icy cold cascades of marble sized sleet collided hard against the stones, creating a thunderous sound that drowned out even my most horrible thoughts with its echoes.  I was certain that, as soon as he came home, things were going to escalate.  I was positive that everything we had would go up in flames when his obsessive behaviors wouldn’t accept my past.  Kade wanted to go back and change everything, but he couldn’t.  He wanted to right every wrong done to me, and if I told him everything, and I gave him the chance, he’d kill David and my father. I couldn’t let him, not after all the violence that he had to live through in his own life.  For that reason, in the last two months we’ve lived together, I have deflected most of his questions, only giving him a little bit of answers at a time.  I knew it wasn’t going to last long, his patience, but his therapy was going so well and he’d changed so much.  I just didn’t want to cause him any more hurt; he didn’t deserve it.
    Fifteen minutes after the last embers of the fire died out, and there was nothing more than ashes, his figure emerged from the dense evergreen forest that surrounded the house.  Slowly, with his dangerous eyes glaring their venom at me, he made his way up the path to the stone steps of the porch.  Dark strands of wet hair were plastered to his face. His clothing was drenched, sticking icily to his body, and they made a theatrical sound as he moved.
    “Where did you go?” my voice betrayed me, wavering and cracking with insecurity.
    “I went for a run,” he hissed through clenched teeth.  His muscles were taut and granite-like under the wet material of his clothes.  His shirt, completely see-through, with rippling tendons and tissue just underneath, made my mouth dry.
    “You’re going to end up with pneumonia, Kade…” I stood up to reach my hands out to him to try to warm him, but he stepped away.
    “How would you feel, Sam, if everybody knew that fact but you ?  If I hid it from you, along with a whole closet full of bloody secrets.  It makes me feel all bloody warm and cuddly inside when you lie to me, said no one, ever .”
    I opened the patio doors of the house for him to walk inside, and watched in fear, as the warmth wracked shivers up his body so violently that he needed to lean against the wall for help.  “Take off your clothes, Kade.”
    Slumping against the wall, he stood watching me, his soaking clothes pooling a large lake of icy water around his sneakers.  “You’ve gutted me with worry today, and you want to fuck? ”
    Idiot.  I lunged at him, yanked the heavy wet material of his shirt over his head, and began pulling down his running pants, “Yeah, Kade.  I cherish the idea of jabbing an icicle inside my body right now.”  I tried to calm myself by taking a deep breath, but my challenging rage got the better of me, as it seemed to always do when I’m with Kade. “In all your glorious-brilliant-idiocy, did you ever stop to think that maybe I’m stripping you of your clothing because I don’t want you to freeze to death?”  I finally got all of the sopping clothes off and dropped them heavily into the kitchen sink.  I dragged him to the den where a fire was burning and wrapped him in whatever blankets I could find, and tossed a pair of warm flannel pants at him.  I put on a pot of water for tea, and within a few minutes, placed a steaming cup of tea laced with a bit of his favorite brandy in front of him.  “Drink it,” I whispered.
    The hard muscles of his jaw tightened and flexed beneath the skin, as he brought the cup to his lips.  I watched his throat move as he swallowed, and found myself wanting