Feathers and Thorne Series Books 1 - 3: The Complete Collection

Chapter Fourteen

Isabella

“A little closer,” Carter mutters, his voice less threatening than it ever was before. My stomach flips when he caresses my back, nudging me into my tiny apartment. I step forward at his request. “There you go. Much better.”

I stay plastered to the floor tile of my living room, Carter taking my shoes and tossing them aside, out of sight, while he retreats into the hallway of a kitchen. I could run. He did just murder someone, but the mystery shrouding this man is the same reason why I stay put.

“Not bad,” Carter says, poking through my cabinets where he looks over everything he had someone stock in there after breaking into my apartment. “You like chips, right? There are lots of them here.”

My hands tremble at my hips. “Fuck, Carter. I just watched you shoot someone, and you want to talk about chips? This isn’t normal, Carter. Please, just leave me alone. Why can’t you just leave me—”

“Easy,” he grates, his jaw locked. “You came to that office yourself, dove. I didn’t follow you there.”

“You follow me everywhere else, so what does it matter, really?”

He leans on the countertop, closing the cabinet doors slowly as they hang in the peripherals of importance right now. He’s trying to distract me, maybe even trying to parade around as normal, but it’s a face that I see through.

He’s charming, so most people would ignore his sins.

His downfall? He’s too charming.

“You’re observant,” Carter says with a sorrowful sigh. “I like that. But given our predicament tonight, that trait works against us both.”

Finally, I think. We get to address the massive purple elephant in the room.

“So, what now?” I pull my hair back, my scalp oily and my hair knotted in most places. “Are you going to kill me, too, Carter Blackthorne?”

His eyes flicker a shade darker when I pronounce his full name, the sight of him so under pressure a little distracting to me. He’s a well-put-together masterpiece, built to perfection, and to see him slightly unraveled is something that blows through me like firecrackers in my blood vessels.

“No, I have no intention of killing you,” he purrs at last.

I grimace at the pause he took before replying with that answer. “So, why are you still here?”

He shrugs, the sight so smooth and casual, as though we both know he is just as stiff and uneasy as I am right now. “I wanted to make sure you were okay, little dove. That’s it.”

“Or that I wouldn’t call the police?”

We both eye the old landline phone on the wall that came with this raggedy apartment. It replaces the fact that I don’t have a cell phone, but it only beeps when the phone is pulled from the housing. Otherwise, it takes no incoming or outgoing calls.

But he doesn’t know that.

“If I were the type of man to fear the police, then I wouldn’t be so blatant with my actions. And if I thought there was any chance you would pick up that phone, turn me in, and ruin my streak of avoiding jail time, then I would have agreed with Frances’ suggestion earlier.”

I shiver at the mere thought. “So, what do you want, Carter? What keeps you here still? I can’t go to the police even if I wanted to. You know I took money from Jacob; it would only incriminate me, and I cannot go to jail. I have to look after my father, so there you go. Problem solved.”

He looks sharply at me, his brow raised with my explanation. He walks through the living room, hovering over me, his eyes the coldest shade of cerulean I’ve ever seen.

“That’s not the problem anymore,” he says, bringing his hand to my cheek where he brushes my warm skin with his. “You’re shaking, dove.”

I swallow. “I’m scared, Carter.”

“Understandable,” he whispers, pulling his fingers through my hair.

I watch him fight himself from doing more than that, eventually letting his hand fall to his front pocket, his eyes pacing back and forth over my features.

“You’ve been hurt before. You don’t trust people very much. I can see that, Isabella. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.” He takes a step back at last, and I breathe the air that isn’t the warm liquor scent of his cologne. “The man who died in that office was a bad man. I only kill bad men, Isabella. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

I desperately want to believe that. “You only kill bad people, Carter?”

He nods, exceptionally needing that explanation to work. “That’s right, dove. They’re crooks, thieves, rapists, murderers—”

“Then who kills you?”

“No one kills me,” he snaps, gulping down his ferocity. “I’m not like them.”

“You have to be,” I retort. “You have personal drivers and custom suits and enough money to throw at Jacob Lacey to keep him off my back, Carter.”

“Since when did success in this city automatically mean crime?”

“Since the moment you walked into Jacob’s office at night on a Friday. If your work was safe, you would do it in the daytime.”

He leans in, his nose brushing mine. “You think I fear the daytime, dove?”

I watch him so closely that I can count the faint number of times he blinks, the brief millisecond of his beautiful eyes disappearing from sight achingly abundant. “I don’t think you fear anything, Carter Blackthorne.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” he says, his eyes drifting down to my lips that quiver in the slightest when he focuses on them. “There is one thing, though. Just one thing that makes me so damn hesitant.”

“What would that be?”

“If I were to kiss you,” he hums with an even glare, “would you kiss me back, or would you slap me?”

He asks a question that I don’t know the answer to. He has done some odd things to get my attention, but he has my attention, nonetheless. Breaking into my apartment, asking about my father, and shooting a man he claims is a criminal all linger in my mind.

Does a single kiss really bed down his hunger for me? I don’t know.

“You saved me from Jacob and William Lacey. I owe you more than a kiss, I know that, but I’ve never met someone like you, Carter.”

“Like me? Elaborate.”

“That’s just it,” I breathe, fighting the urge to collapse under his pressuring aura. “I can’t elaborate, Carter. You’re not real; you can’t be. That’s the only explanation. You move more money than I’ll ever make in a lifetime just to pay off my debt to Jacob, and you kill criminals in the mayor’s office and… and…” I hiccup, overwhelmed now more than ever.

“And what, dove?”

I throw up my hands, my head spinning. “You park on the sidewalk and avoid getting a ticket.”

His smile only solidifies his enjoyment of this assessment. “Very observant indeed.”