Page 37 of The Collector's Temptation

“You know who I am?” I surmised airily. “Good. Then you’ll know who to curse in hell when you get there.”

Kerrigan whimpered, distracting me long enough for the asshole to grab a knife and charge at me. But I was faster and a fuck of a lot more skilled. I captured his wrist and snapped the bone, catching the weapon when he dropped it. “I was thinking about sending you with a message to Sterling, but I’ll find another way.”

I shoved the knife into his gut, twisting the blade so blood began to pour from the wound. Then I yanked it out and swiped across his throat, making sure to hit an artery so he practically bled out before he hit the floor.

“Funny how no one ever suspects the suave Frenchman to be a stone-cold killer,” Damiano said with a snorted laugh.

My eyes were glued to Kerrigan, so I barely heard him when he excused himself to start cleaning up the mess.

“Kerrigan,” I rasped, filled with both dread and relief. She was safe.

But the fear I saw in her pretty green eyes ripped my heart to shreds.

13

KERRIGAN

Iwas shaking. Not from fear. At least, not the kind I’d ever experienced before.

This was something different. Deeper.

Maybe terror mixed with relief.

The danger had passed. I was safe. I had survived my kidnapping. But my heart hadn’t caught up yet. It still thundered in my chest, pounding against my ribs as though it was trying to escape what I’d just witnessed.

The world around me was a blur of gunfire and shouting. But through it all, there was one constant—Aston.

He stood halfway across the room from me like a dark avenging angel, his chest rising and falling beneath a black shirt that clung to him like a second skin, blood smeared across his forearm.

I didn’t know if I should be grateful to see him. Or afraid.

I had just witnessed the man I loved savagely taking out every last one of my captors. I should’ve been screaming at the violence, but even with what I’d learned about him and the brutality I had seen, Aston somehow still represented safety to me.

His breathing was ragged, his eyes wild. And the second his gaze locked with mine, his shoulders dropped like someone had cut the strings holding him together. “Putain.”

Hearing him rasp one of his favorite French curse words was so familiar that it brought tears to my eyes.

My feet moved before my mind caught up, and I ran to Aston.

The zip ties around my wrists bit into my skin, my balance off from how long I’d been restrained. But it didn’t matter. I stumbled into him with all the strength I had left, burying my face against his chest. His spicy scent was tinged with sweat and gunpowder as I dragged it into my lungs.

“You’re safe now,ma petite miette,” he murmured, pressing his lips to my hair. “No one will ever hurt you again.”

My entire body trembled as he wrapped his arms around me, one hand cradling the back of my head while the other splayed protectively over my spine. As his palm stroked down, it was blocked by my bound wrists. “Merde.”

He used his knife to quickly free my hands. My arms dropped forward, and I gasped as the blood rushed back into my fingers with a pins-and-needles burn.

After sheathing the blade, Aston caught my wrists gently and rubbed them with his thumbs, cradling them as though they were made of porcelain. He looked up at me with something like anguish in his eyes.

The tremors in my limbs began to subside, but another kind of shaking took their place. It was an inner reckoning.

As relieved as I was to be in Aston’s arms, I couldn’t unsee what he’d done. And even though I could rationalize his violence because it was in defense of me, I couldn’t unlearn what I now knew to be true about him. The secrets he’d kept from me.

I tilted my head back to look at him. There was blood on his temple, and his jaw was clenched tight. His eyes were still wild and predator sharp.

He was terrifying. And he was mine, the same way I was irrevocably his.

“Aston…”

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