by Sybil Bartel
His sexy voice rumbled in my ear and made goose bumps race up my neck and down my arms.
He skimmed a hand down the bumps on my arm. “What caused this?”
“Your voice.” And his scent, and his arms, and his desire pressing into my back—all of it.
He chuckled. The deep and melodic sound was as rich as it was unexpected.
A smile broke out across my face. “I like your laugh,” I whispered.
His lips touched my shoulder. “I’d like to hear yours.”
My smile disappeared. “Maybe.” One day. If we had any days beyond this one.
“Why does that make you sad?”
“Who says I’m sad?”
“I heard it in your voice just now.” He laced his fingers with mine.
“You know this isn’t going to last.” I had to keep saying it to remind myself.
He lifted our combined hands and brought them to my chest as he trailed slow kisses across my neck until he reached my ear. “Right now, there’s only one reason.”
I could think of a dozen. None of them good. “Only one?”
“Yes.”
Curiosity got the better of me. “What?”
“If you walk away.”
“You don’t do repeats. By definition of your life, this is already over.”
“We already talked about this.” With a slow grind, he pressed his hips into mine. “This is just beginning, sweetheart.” He lifted my thigh and the head of his cock slid through my wetness, then he sank inside me.
The moan crawled up my throat and filled the quiet of his bedroom.
“Hunter, down.” The dog jumped off the bed as he thrust and hit my G-spot. “You like that?” he murmured, his lips against my ear.
I didn’t just like it. “Yes.” I bit my tongue to keep from letting any more traitorous words spill out of my mouth.
He moved our intertwined hands to my nipple and used my palm to tease one then the other to an aching hardness as his shallow strokes teased my pussy. “Arch back into me, love. Let me in.”
Oh God. “Please, don’t,” I begged. I didn’t want him calling me love.
The storm shutters rattled as his hands wrapped around my hips. “Don’t what?” With agonizing slowness, he stroked deep into me.
“Call me that.” I gripped a handful of the sheets and grunted. “Harder.” I pushed back into him.
Controlling my hips, he gave me a slow grind. “Tell me why.” His mouth closed over my neck and sucked.
My eyes fluttered shut. Gaining purchase against the mattress with my feet, I pushed against him.
He rolled to his back.
I landed on his chest and shoved down on his cock. “I said harder.”
He lifted me off him and tossed me on my back. Before I could blink, he was on top of me. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
My heart beat frantically. “Fucking you.” This was fucking, not love. He didn’t get to call me that.
His body went perfectly still. His intense stare relentless, his expression gave nothing away. “That wasn’t fucking.”
“Yes it was.” I raised my hips to meet his.
He shoved them back down. “I can’t make love to you?”
“I don’t make love.” Thick and bitter, the words stuck in my throat.
His mouth landed on mine. Slower than the torturous ecstasy of his cock sliding in and out of my body, he stroked his tongue through the heat of my mouth. Alpha, dominant, he didn’t kiss me. He slipped his hands into my hair and showed me what I’d always been missing.
He wasn’t ruthless.
He was cruel.
Kissing me passionately, consuming my mouth like he was touching my soul, he stole more from me than Viktor ever had.
My arms at my sides, I fought not to kiss him back. I fought so hard, even though I wanted to give in to him. I wanted nothing more than to do what he’d said we’d been doing, but I was terrified of jumping off that cliff.
As if he knew my thoughts, as if he knew exactly what I needed, he pushed me to the edge. His hands gripped tighter, his hips ground harder, but his kiss turned heartbreakingly gentle as he moaned into my mouth.
My resistance flew away like a bird taking flight. My traitorous body bowed off the bed, and I gave in to play with my demons. I kissed him back.
His cock slid back into my body.
The tremor started in my core and radiated. My pussy clenched, my legs shook, and every inch of my body convulsed in orgasm.
He pumped hot cum inside me.
I made love to her.
His scent all over me, his lips raining kisses on my mouth, my throat, my neck, he rocked deep inside me, spreading his seed. “That”—his voice washed over me like a drug—“was making love.”
I didn’t have words. I had nothing. I untangled my arms from his neck.
He pulled out.
An emptiness, so profound it hurt, settled in my chest. I turned my head.
His arms slipped around me, and he whispered, “I’m not letting you go.” He pulled my back to his chest and snaked an arm under my head. “Sleep.”
Sleep? Sleep wouldn’t fix this. I’d lost. Everything.
“Stop,” he quietly commanded.
“I’m not doing anything.” It hurt to speak.
“You’re fighting against this.”
It hurt to breathe. “I have no fight left.” I had nothing. Except yearning.
Thick fingers stroked through his seed as it leaked out of me. “You don’t need it with me.”
It hurt to feel his gentle caress. “Don’t.”
He drew his fingers through the mess on my thighs then pressed his release back inside me. “Don’t what?”
He was crushing my heart. “Give me false hope.”
“Don’t doubt me.” He sunk two fingers inside me and stroked. “Are you sore?”
“A little.” Incredibly, amazingly sore, but I didn’t care. I wanted every orgasm he was willing to give me. He didn’t torture my body to coax out my pleasure. He stroked and caressed and hit every spot as if he simply wanted to make me feel good.
“Do you want to come again?”
My pussy contracted around his fingers. Viktor had never wanted to give me pleasure. I knew that now. He wanted control.
Dane nipped the flesh on my neck just under my ear. “It’s a simple question, love.”
My body tensed at the term of endearment.
His fingers in my pussy and his thumb on my clit stilled. “Is it the word or the idea?”
I didn’t pretend to not know what he was talking about. I was quickly learning he had a sixth sense. “You don’t know me.” It was the simplest way I knew how to answer without giving myself away. Viktor had never said that word to me. Not once. I didn’t believe in love. I couldn’t. Love was a luxury for little girls and fairy tales, not ruthless killers and abusive gun traffickers.
His lips touched my temple. “How many men have you been with?”
I weighed the embarrassment and vulnerability against the risk of not telling the truth. In the end, I was a fool for wanting more with this man. “Three… including you,” I whispered.
His fingers began to stroke in a slow pace. “Do you know why I want to make you come?” Every gentle thrust hit my G-spot as his thumb rubbed sweet circles around my clit.
My hips moved with his strokes. “No,” I breathed.
“Because every orgasm is a step further away from him and closer to me.” He pressed down hard with his thumb.
I cried out in desperate need.
“And you’re beautiful when you let go.” He stroked against my G-spot. “Come.”
I fell apart.
A thousand points of pressure erupted from my core and spread across my body like an electrical current. Tingling, shaking, pleasure-pain, I didn’t have words for the feeling of simultaneously soaring and plummeting.
One arm across my chest, the other slowly stroking through my aftershocks, he wrecked me furthe
r. “That’s what it feels like, beautiful.” He kissed my neck, my cheek. “That’s how a man should make you feel.”
I turned my head away as a tear slid down my face, but nothing escaped him.
Tender kisses fell on my head. “I’ll take those too, love.” He gently pulled his fingers out of me then cupped me with a soft caress. “Now sleep.”
I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to waste a minute of the time I had with him. Despite what he said, tomorrow was coming and Viktor wasn’t going to let either of us walk away.
He brushed my hair from my face. “You’re safe. Close your eyes.”
He was everything Viktor wasn’t. “We should talk about tomorrow.”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“He’s going to do something.” And it would be bad. “You don’t know him. He won’t show up without backup.”
“I’m aware,” he replied calmly.
“You can’t go alone.” It would be suicide.
“I’m not.”
“Who’s going with you?” I didn’t expect him to tell me, but I asked anyway.
He changed the subject. “Tell me about his house.”
I stiffened. If that was his plan, he was screwed. “It’s a fortress. You won’t get close to him there.”
He stroked my arm. “What kind of security does he have?”
“Every kind you can think of.”
His fingers sifted through my hair. “Yet you walked away.”
Even the minimalist of touch from him felt incredible. “He was distracted by the storm. He and Peter were discussing a shipment and how they couldn’t afford the storm to delay it, and I called a cab.”
“How did the cab get in through the front gate?”
My cheeks heated. “I promised the front guard a favor.” I never intended to keep it, but he didn’t know that. “I said I needed to get supplies before the power went out.”
“There aren’t backup generators?”
“Of course there are.”
He was silent a beat. “It seems unlikely that you were able to bribe one guard and walk out.”
I exhaled. “It was a… rough morning.” They’d all seen what he did to me at breakfast. They’d all heard what happened after. Viktor had made sure of it. He’d told me to scream. After that, none of the guards would make eye contact. “No one wanted to deal with me.”
He rolled me to my back and looked down at me. His expression was tightly controlled, but his jaw ticked. “What did he do?”
I wanted to feel the soft skin of his full lips under my fingers and trace the hard edge of his jaw, but I didn’t touch him. “Nothing he hadn’t done before.”
His nostrils flared. “Tell me.”
I never told anyone what Viktor did to me. I didn’t have friends anymore. I barely even spoke with my mother, not that she would’ve believed me or wanted to hear it if I did tell her. She thought the sun set and rose with Viktor and she hung on his every word. So I’d been putting in my time with Viktor until my five years was up, then I’d planned on starting a new life. But that time had come and gone last week.
I pushed what had happened this morning down deep. “It’s not important. I’m fine.”
“You’re underweight, you have fading bruises on the inside of your thighs, one of your knees is skinned and the dark circles under your eyes say you sleep less than me.”
I touched his ribs by his knife wound then traced the outer edge of the burn mark on his shoulder that he’d said was a bullet graze. There were three other scars on his chest and two on his shoulder that looked like they were from bullet wounds. Two thin lines of scars on the other side of his ribs looked similar to the smattering of thin scars on his thigh. “You are not unscathed.”
“No one beat me.”
“Viktor didn’t beat me.” Not exactly.
“Tell me what he did,” he demanded.
I couldn’t explain it, but his dominance made me feel secure. I relented. “He dragged me out of bed.” By my hair. Naked. “And made me sit at his feet while he ate breakfast.” In front of his guards.
Dane inhaled sharply. “Clothed?”
Silence my only defense against my shame, I stared at him without answering. I didn’t have to.
Rage cracked his carefully controlled mask. “What did the guards do?” he bit out.
Leered at me and made crude gestures while Viktor wasn’t looking. “Nothing.”
Every muscle in his body tensed. “That’s when you called the cab and bribed the front gate guard?”
“No, that’s when I pulled my suitcase out of the hiding spot I’d found in one of the tunnels and took it to the west exit beyond the front gate and stashed it in the bushes. Then I went back, showered, dressed and called a cab. By the time I walked to the guardhouse, the cab was waiting and I told the gate guard I was going shopping. He said I wasn’t scheduled to go out. I told him he wasn’t scheduled to meet me after dinner in the pool house. He opened the gate and I got in the taxi.”
His chest rose and fell twice. “Tunnels?” he ground out.
Tension I didn’t know I was holding on to released when he didn’t question me about the pool house promise I’d made the gate guard. “They’re all over the property. Viktor told me he had them built to escape if the house ever caught fire, but I know they’re for an escape route if we get raided by the police. He even has one that leads out to the docks. He took me through them when I moved in but forbade me from ever entering them alone. He said they weren’t safe, but they’re reinforced concrete.” They were safer than anything in the house.
“Where does the one you used let out?”
“West of the front gate, there’s what looks like a sprinkler pump housing. Underneath it is a grate. The grate leads to the tunnel.”
“It’s not locked?”
“There’s a combination lock, but Viktor stupidly used his birthday for the combination.” It’d taken me all of two tries to get it open five years ago, after the first time he’d taught me a lesson. I stupidly didn’t leave. I sat on top of the fake sprinkler housing and smoked a pack of cigarettes then went back. When he’d smelled my hair the next day, the first lesson had seemed like child’s play.
Dane cupped my face. “This will be over tomorrow.”
“You can’t promise me that.” He had no idea who he was dealing with. “Even if you could, then what? I don’t have a life to walk into.”
“Is that what you want?”
I evaded any real answer. “Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
“You’re not everyone.” He pulled me back into his arms as if that settled it, as if everything about what was happening was normal.
“Neither are you,” I stupidly countered.
The breath of his tired exhale feathered across my shoulder. “No, I’m not.”
A thousand questions about him, about what he was going to do, about what would happen tomorrow tumbled through my mind. The worst of them being what would happen to me if Viktor got to Dane first. Guilt would destroy me, if Viktor didn’t. I knew this, but something had been in the back of my mind since I’d seen him standing naked in the kitchen.
“Ask your question.” The deep and quiet timbre of his voice interrupted my thoughts.
I could listen to his voice for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. “How did you know I wasn’t asleep?”
“Besides your breathing, I’m not sure you’re ready to hear the answer to that. Ask.”
I briefly wondered what I wouldn’t want to hear, but I had a more pressing question. “What is the tattoo on your back?”
My jaw tensed, but I kept my breathing even. “Wings.”
“What does it mean?”
I’d killed in front of her. I’d covered up evidence. I’d committed a dozen crimes she could sink me with. I’d come inside her. Not once had I hesitated with any of those decisions.
But now I was hesitating.
No one asked me what the ink meant. Not
even the tattoo artist.
I could lie. I could withhold information like she’d withheld what all the fuck Fedorov had done to her. I didn’t owe her shit, but I stupidly wanted to tell her.
Goddamn it.
“They’re kills.”
She turned in my arms and looked up at me with disbelief. “What?”
I wanted to remember this moment. I wanted to remember the scent of her body, filled with my seed, as she lay in my arms. I wanted to remember the look on her face before it turned to fear. I wanted to remember the trust in her body language as she lay in my bed with her head resting on my arm and her white-blond hair floating around me like innocence.
I wanted to remember all of it because I was about to lose it.
“They’re all my kills.” I held her colorless gaze that made me feel like there was still purity in the world and I threw away the tenuous trust I’d built with her. “Every feather represents a life I’ve taken.”
She didn’t blink. “There are hundreds of feathers on your back.”
I inclined my head once. “Two hundred and thirty-seven.”
“You’ve killed two hundred and thirty-seven people?”
“No.” Fuck. “Two hundred and thirty-eight.”
She stared at me. “How many of those were when you were in the military?”
“Does it matter?” She knew the truth of me now.
“I could be carrying your child. I think I deserve to know.”
Every muscle tensed, my expression locked down, my heart rate betraying me, I studied her for a reaction she should’ve had but didn’t. “One hundred and ninety-six,” I admitted.
“How long have you been out of the military?”
“Three years.” Four months, twenty-seven days. I didn’t know why I counted.
Her eyes drifted for a few seconds then came back to me. “That’s a kill a month.”
More. “Yes.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“I get paid for it.” But I didn’t need the money. I had enough for five lifetimes.
“What kinds of people do you… kill?”
“Bad ones.” Not that I was in any position to judge, but I had my parameters.
She stared at me a moment. “Why?”