Page 48 of Riordan's Revenge

Riordan watched me. “He’s going to burn down the Four Milers’ buildings.”

“Exactly.”

It was so much bigger than taking a predator off the streets. While my brothers were celebrating Bronson’s imminent demise, I saw a different side. Jamieson wasn’t wrong. Arran was bringing a war. It would be dangerous to associate with him.

“Then there’s you, facing your fear head-on with a plan to take revenge on Bronson for everything he did to those women.”

I lifted my gaze to Riordan. “It has to be me. Or at least I need to play a part. I was next on his list. Even despite that, a woman ending his life is divine justice, and your sisters won’t want the honours.”

For a long moment, he held the eye contact. I didn’t know what he saw, but I knew the effect it had on me. The spark of electricity in my chest. How he quickened my breathing and made me feel like I was about to run for my life.

Riordan claimed he wasn’t going to try to control me, but I had an overflow of invested men who would do anything to protect me. I loved my family, but they needed to back the hell off. Whatever Riordan said next would either kill or cure me.

“Then we’d better pack up and go.”

Chapter 16

Riordan

Cassie stared at me, her lips apart and desire right there in her eyes. Then she briefly shuttered them. “Thank fuck ye said that.”

“You expected different?”

“Maybe I just couldn’t see a way to get my third soft kiss if I was mad at ye, too.”

Heat swarmed me.

I pointed at the back of the couch. “Sit there.”

“Yes, boss.”

Dutifully, she perched on the sofa back. I moved in on her. Parted her knees to get closer and dropped my mouth to her waiting one. We started slow, Cassie anticipating me. She’d learned the way I kissed her and was giving it back. An angle to her head, our faces meeting perfectly, closed eyes and soft, shared breaths.

Lightly, her fingers ghosted up my side. Fire trailed in their wake. I stifled a groan of need. Without breaking the kiss, I captured her wrists and held them behind her back.

It changed her posture so her chest was out and her shoulders back. Heat drowned me. It would be so easy to tie her up like this then strip her and fuck her. The natural next step and the path our energy was leading us to.

Had to stop. With a growl, I kissed her once more but lightly and shifted back.

No part of me liked my actions.

“Three,” she breathed, counting for me because I’d lost the ability.

“We should go.”

“We should spend a week just doing more of that.”

I wanted nothing but what she described. I held my gaze on her, on a knife’s edge of going back in for more.

Cassie pressed her fingertips to her mouth. “There’s something else I need to do first. It’s regarding what Tyler told me.”

At whatever expression I’d taken on, she grinned. “It’s not what you’re thinking. I asked him to help me find someone, and he found that information.”

I considered that. What felt like forever ago, in her room in the warehouse, Cassie had confided that she’d never known her mother and that she was an orphan. She didn’t even know her birthday because the woman had concealed it. The weight of Tyler’s information had to be heavy on her. It was a fucking relief to me, though for a very different reason.

“Your mother?”

She huffed out a breath. “Stop mind reading me.”

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