Dark Encounters

“Gray.” I said dully. A wary way of acknowledging his intrusion into my path.

“Baby Girl.” He dipped his head in greeting. So still, he’d almost appeared a statue before that moment.

Just like he might have months ago.

Before he destroyed me.

“What do you want, Gray?”

He frowned. “Jackson. You’ve never call me Gray.”

“Well, I’ve learned since then that your heart is as gray as the charred ash in the bottom of a mantle just before a maid takes it out.”

He flinched. “You would think so.”

He visibly paled. “I didn’t come here to fight with you.”

“No? Just to kill me?” I asked acidly. Knowing I was trying to be defiant while barely clad in an oversized chemise stolen from a wealthy matron’s fence. Where her undergarments had been drying. Now they flowed around my small frame. Making plain that she was surely more substantial than I was.

Most people are.

By now I was half-st