Body Tox (The Bodies duet #1)

Chapter 10

N umb. Walking outside my room to find my girlfriend’s dead body was like having my skin ripped off. I hadn’t felt this way since my mother was tortured.

I screamed. I know I did, but it was like I was underwater. Her skin was cold, too cold. Her beautiful, ebony skin, usually flushed with my intense efforts, and the warmth of her body on mine was gone.

My father waved his arms in my face. I saw him shouting at someone in a black jacket. I saw it all, but I felt nothing. It was almost like when I killed. When the heat in someone’s body left them, the coloring drained away from the skin, and the soul’s light was just…gone.

Was this payment for being a killer?

My hand itched for my blade. There had to be a reason she was dead. Pulling in a deep breath, I settled into the numb. Yes, there was chaos around me. The maid was shrieking, my father was barking orders, and the staff was shuffling around, but all of that disappeared as I zeroed in on the environment.

There was no blood, bruising, or marks on her body. There were only water splashes on the floor. I followed the trail of droplets, finding a halfway-empty water bottle. It didn’t have any labels on it, and it wasn’t the brand my father stocked in the kitchens.

I frowned, spinning the bottle in my hand.

“I’ll clean that up for you, Miss. Svenson.”

The bottle was swiped from my hand.

I glowered, looking up, ready to shank the staff with my heel, but the hazel eyes that met mine were not my staff.

“You,” I seethed, jumping up and lunging at the asshole.

In my gut, I knew it was him.

He’d done this.

“Echo, what on earth…why would you attack your personal protector? Unhand him, young lady.”

I ignored my father, trying to claw the fucking gorgeous eyes from the traitor’s head.

“Fuck you,” I screamed.

He wasn’t fighting me. Every move he made was dodging and blocking my assault. That made me even angrier.

“Fight me, you fucking asshole!”

Again, he only dodged me. I felt myself being torn away from the bastard. Mutilated staff members from my rebuttals and my father’s bodyguards ripped me off him like a cat on a mouse.

I’d tear him to shreds when I had the chance.

“Echo Thea Svenson. I understand you are hurting. I understand your pain and confusion about your loss, but no way in hell are you going to harm this man. I just hired him, for Christ’s sake.”

He pointed at me like I was the devil, and maybe I was.

“You make having a bodyguard impossible. You leave me no choice but to ship you off to the corrective housing facility. Maybe there, they can better teach you to be a goddamn adult!”

I froze. My body was still being hauled off down the hall, but my ears held on to every word from my father.

Corrective housing…aka an asylum. My father wanted to put me in a ‘nuthouse.’

I stopped fussing long enough for the staff to stick me back in my room and shut my door.

I felt like a teenager being locked away for bad behavior.

I growled. My anger at being away from my dear Cali burned a hole deeper in my heart.

Her beauty and her fucking body were everything to me. I didn’t love her. I never loved anyone, but we were good for each other. She was a good friend to talk to and the best sex partner, with a magical tongue.

What was I supposed to do now…

I wallowed on my bed, going from crying and ruining my makeup to angrily swiping through my phone to watch Cali making me choke on her tongue again and again.

I didn’t know you could be so sexually frustrated when someone fucking died.

What was wrong with me? Did I even care that Cali was dead, or just that I lost my sex partner?

I hadn’t fucked anyone but Cali, not since Alex…

God help me, the thought of that asshole made me raving mad all over again. I kicked my bed stool, knocking it across the room into the door.

“Ya know, your dad may consider not sending you to ‘Looneyville’ if you stop acting like a spoiled brat who lost her favorite toy.” The husky words were spoken right outside my door.

I ran to the wood and smashed it with my fists, the lock on the outside effectively keeping me prisoner here.

“Who do you think you are, huh?” I wailed, punching the door harder and harder until it splintered.

I saw his face through the slivered crack and added my feet to the mix to kick it down.

“Or not. Maybe you belong there.” He shrugged, and I screamed at him.

His stupid body was keeping the door’s frame intact. He turned to face me, and his piercing eyes looked wild.

“I am trying to look good at my job, Little Wraith, so would you be so kind as to throw your bitch fit when I leave? Destroying furniture is not really helping me get the best of reviews.”

I smiled at his smug face.

“Sure thing,” I agreed.

Walking over to my vanity, I shoved the mirror backward, the thing zipping down the wall with a thump.

The metal felt light with my amped anger coursing through me. I pulled it over to the door and picked it up.

“Hey, oh mighty protector?” I said sweetly, holding the desk at my chest level.

He turned around to stare at me again through the crack, and I put all my pain and anger into my throw as I spun around and screamed, “Fuck you!”

The metal desk impaled the splintered wood, knocking through the damaged area and into my new ‘bodyguard.’ I pushed my arm out and unlocked the deadbolt from the other side, ignoring the scratches coating my arm from my war and shoving his thick, stupid body out of the way.

He lay there on the ground. The vanity was on the other side of the hallway, having smashed some dumbass picture off the wall and leaving this ass-weed in a storm of broken glass and wood splinters.

I smiled down at his unconscious body.

“Maybe I do belong there, sweetheart,” I said, tapping his still form with the top of my heel. “But I’d like to see you try to put me there, bitch.”