Page 52 of Underground Prince

I wanted all of him—his breath, skin and blood to mix with mine. I wanted his eyes to only see me, his hands to only take me, his nails to tear and his teeth to bite, and his voice to only yell my name.

My hands, tangled in his hair, swept down, unbuttoning, demanding, finding—

He broke off.

Gasping, remembering how to breathe, I stabilized myself on the counter.

Theo tore his blazer off, throwing it onto the floor. I was ready to grab onto him again, but he stopped me by putting his gun in my face.

“Smell it.”

“Theo,” I said, still fighting for air. I pushed uselessly against his hand. He held the weapon sideways so it wasn’t pointed at me but I wanted it away from my proximity regardless. “What is with you waving that thing around?”

“I know you caught the scent,” he said, pushing the metal closer to my nose. “It smells acrid, doesn’t it? Burned, blackened. Used.”

“Yes. Yes,” I repeated when he still didn’t move it away.

“And you know why.”

I gripped his wrist, but I was no longer pushing at him. Instead, I met his eyes over the metal. “Because it was fired recently.”

“Yes.”

“Tonight.”

“Yes, Scarlet.”

“Approximately twenty minutes ago,” I said. “Before you walked through the door and I noticed the cuts on your knuckles.”

His fingers went slack around the gun, allowing me to take it from him, to hold it in both my hands and feel the sting of cold steel.

“You still want me?” he asked. “You still want near this life?”

“Are you a killer?”

He cocked his head. “Is that what you need me to admit to in order to never look back?”

I set my lips into a firm line. “I don’t run.”

“You’re too good for this.” He took the gun from me, setting it aside. “You may not think so but there’s still sincerity. Here.” He traced under my eye. “Here.” He brushed his thumb across my lips. “I am not sincere. I am not good.”

“They’re afraid of you out there,” I said. “That’s why I silenced the room, why they all turned to stare. We froze them. Because they heard me joking with you.”

The casual sadness of his expression lightened for a moment. “No one has ever had the balls to rib me in public.”

“Because you’re armed and dangerous?”

He made a sound, a slight guffaw, in the back of his throat. “It’s so much more than that.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know you very well. You could be an assassin. An ice-cold hit man. A drug lord, I don’t know.” He tensed underneath my grip, but I held him still. “Thing is, you don’t know me any better. But what you do know, and what I’m sure of, is we have something.” I ran a finger down from his collarbone to the tip of his belt. “Something curious.”

He caught my wrist with a snap, but he said with a smile, “So you want to use me? Is that it?”

“It’s so much more than that,” I parroted back to him, but grew serious. “Almost two years ago…”

I couldn’t finish. My voice cut off and there was a sudden fist in my throat, squeezing.

“Scarlet,” he prompted.

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