Page 41 of Princes of Carnage

My pulse stutters, coming to a halt for a second before picking up again, racing out of control as I stare up at Nico.

He could have killed me.

He should have killed me.

But for some reason, he didn’t.

He looks down at me from his vantage point above me, his bare, tattooed chest rising and falling with each heavy breath. A sheen of sweat gleams on his skin, and his dark hair is messy and wild.

“I’m not going to kill you, wife,” he says, his voice rough. “So decide what you’re going to do with that.”

I don’t answer. I don’t move or say anything for a long moment, locked in place by the shock of what he just did. Of what he didn’t do. He doesn’t look away from me, and the heat that I saw in his eyes while he was beneath me with the knife pressed to his throat has only grown, as if the fight we just had stoked that fire deep inside him and it’s burning outward now.

We stare at each other for what feels like long minutes, neither of us breaking eye contact. It drags out, the tension building between us until it’s so thick that I could choke on it.

I feel trapped, caught in that gaze, and I spare a second to wonder if Nico feels the same. If he wants to wrench his eyes away like I do but is quickly finding out that he can’t. As if we’re two trains on the same track, barreling toward each other with no chance of stopping or turning away.

As if he can read my mind, Nico suddenly moves again, dropping his head and crushing his mouth to mine, kissing me hard.

I have just enough breath to gasp in surprise, and then something explodes between us. Something hot and sharp and spiky, but too intoxicating to back away from.

Nico kisses the same way he fights, hard and intense, never backing down. He kisses like he wants to bruise my lips, like he wants to draw blood the same way my blade did when it nicked him.

In the back of my mind, I know I could go for the knife again. Nico is well and truly preoccupied with kissing me, and I could grab the hilt of the knife and have it at his throat again before he even realized what I was doing.

But for some reason… I don’t.

Instead, I go with what my body wants right now. What the near frantic pounding of my heart is driving me to do.

I wrap my arms around him, my hands roaming over the spread of his shoulders and the expanse of his back. His muscles tense and release under my palms, and when I drag my nails down his back, he groans, returning the sensation by nipping at my bottom lip—hard.

That drags a deep, almost guttural sound out of me, something primal that I have no control over. My lips part, and Nico’s tongue plunges in. This is different from the other kisses he’s taken. More intense, more intentional. This kiss is like a claim, but also like he can’t get enough. Like he’s caught up in the same wave of desperate need that I’m currently drowning in.

We trade stinging bites amidst the kisses, snatching harsh, shallow breaths between the moments when our lips are practically attacking each other. Our hands grope wildly, with me digging my nails into his muscles, clutching at his arms, and him grabbing my hips and yanking me closer against him.

There’s something about it that’s just barely this side of fighting, so rough and violent that it’s like we’re still grappling with each other for the knife.

Nico gets a hand at my chest and squeezes one of my breasts roughly, making me suck in a ragged hiss. It hurts, but it feels good at the same time, walking that line between too much and still not enough.

He thumbs my nipple roughly, pressing down on the peaked bud and grinding the pad of his thumb against it. When I arch up into him, his hips meet mine, and his cock throbs against me.

My body answers that reaction, and I can already tell that I’m starting to get wet from the way he’s touching me.

Shock ripples through me at that realization.

No one has ever been able to get me off, except for the man at the club. Phantom, whose face I’ve never seen, but who knows how to play me and my body like a fine instrument until I’m left shaking in a puddle of need.

Nico is different from Phantom, but he’s also a whole lot different from Emmett too. What he’s doing is nothing like the soft, awkward kisses Emmett and I shared in the back office, leaving me feeling nothing but regret tinged with guilt.

Nico’s kisses and touches are spreading fire through me.

“Fuck,” he groans. He pulls back, letting me drop to the mattress with a slight bounce. “Your tits feel good.” He grabs the other one, holding them both in his hands, squeezing until I’m writhing on the bed.

“Nico,” I pant. “You—”

Before I can get anything more coherent out, he’s tearing my shirt off, leaving me dazed for a second. My whole upper half is bare for him now, and his eyes roam over my skin, taking it all in with a gaze that seems to burn hotter than the sun.

He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he lunges at me, his mouth going right to my chest. It’s hot as he presses open-mouthed kisses to my tits, biting the mounds of them and then the nipples, really setting his teeth into the pebbled buds.

---