Page 20 of Shattered Empire (Shattered World)

Matthias entered me with zero hesitation and tenderness. I cried out at the force of his aggressive thrust, but he didn’t stop, and I didn’t want him to.

He was savage and unrestrained as he thrust in and out of my wet heat, filling me wholly and completely.

His hand buried itself in my hair and pulled, eliciting a whimper from my lips as my back was forcibly bowed, the move pushing him deeper inside me.

“Matthias.” I cried out his name as the sharp pain of his unrelenting thrusts drove through me harder and rougher. Could a pussy be bruised? Was that a thing? If it was, I was sure as hell going to have one tomorrow. “I want to feel all of you.”

The pain had begun to fade into a steep euphoria. Unadulterated desire clenched inside me, the coil in my belly tightening more and more.

His free hand snaked around to my throat, cutting off my air as he used me for his own pleasure. I wanted him to use me to work off the devil lurking underneath his skin. The one he often tried to hide.

He’d once told me I didn’t need a knight in shining armor.

He was right.

I needed a monster, and as the sharp edges of bliss rolled through my veins, so potent I could barely think, I knew he was right.

Rest for me was fitful that night as I lay in the bed Matthias and I had truly bonded in. It was the place he and I both put everything on the table. Like the day he told me that I never needed a prince charming. That a monster would do.

He was my monster.

A monster I would do anything to get back. Every night was the same. Visions of him dancing through my dreams. Memories of our time together. Each time I woke with my hand between my legs, I wondered if there would ever be anyone else, or if I was doomed to lust after a man buried six feet under.

A soft reminiscent sigh fell from my lips as I pushed away the fading desire left by my dreams and readied myself for the day. There were several files that still needed to be decrypted, but Mark had made headway on hacking into the Wells Fargo mainframe to find out the owner of the mysterious bank account number.

Bank account numbers were assigned based on availability and branch locations. The sixteen-digit account number originated at a branch based in Boston. A creeping sensation slithered up my spine when he informed me of the account’s origins. There was only one person I knew who would have a bank account that originated in that city.

My grandfather.

Libby had done her research into Seamus McDonough not long after she had encountered him with Elias. The dates go back nearly a year. Right after I ran away. Her notes stated that she suspected we were somehow related.

The most disturbing part?

My sister had managed to link him back to my mother’s abduction.

Unable to acquire Katherine Moore’s case number. Managed to hack crime scene photos, but the evidence has obvious signs of tampering, as does the coroner’s report. There are things that aren’t lining up, and they all lead back to the man with the silver cross cane. Detective on case

Full stop.

It was her final note on the subject, and it wasn’t even finished.

“Have we gotten any packages in from the Portland police?” I asked Maksim. He was usually the one who dealt with deliveries.

“Nyet,” he answered in Russian. They had taken to saying small words in Russian here and there to assist me in learning the language. A small step, Vas had said, to help me connect with the men and women I commanded.

Not that all of them spoke Russian. There were more than a few Italians and Greeks in the mix, too.

“Spasiba,” I murmured, dejected at still not having the shipment the woman promised me. It had been nearly three weeks since she told me she would send the documents, and there was nothing. When I tried calling the precinct again, they told me she wasn’t in. Vacation or something like that.

I was calling bullshit.

“What did you order?” Vas queried, his eyes not moving from his cell phone as Maksim drove through the compound and away from the administration building.

“Case file and evidence from my mother’s murder,” I admitted with a sigh. “She was supposed to send it three weeks ago, and now she’s on vacation.”

“Stinks of something foul.”

I nodded my head in agreement.

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