Page 107 of Tide of Treason
Whipped little shit.
Fine. Tie a collar around my neck and slap initials on it; I’d still follow those hips anywhere. I wasn’t even ashamed of it anymore.
She called it sacrilege. I called it honesty. We agreed to disagree somewhere around seventy-five miles per hour on thehighway, her protest melting under the Chevelle’s roar and the wind stealing every word from her pretty mouth. Honest, except for one thing. Because if this vote came down to a tie, I’d be dead with a gun in my hand and a fifty-fifty chance of painting the walls red. Russian roulette. Cartel style. Six chambers, one clip, one shot. Pass it back and forth until somebody’s luck leaks out their ear.
Sergius wanted tradition. I wanted to raze it all to the fucking ground. We’d settled on theatre, a compromise that left my skin crawling and my trigger finger itching.
Rafael, ever the voice of reason, had given it his best shot. Told me it was madness, I’d finally gone too far, crossed some invisible line that only lunatics and martyrs blew past with a smile. I smoked half a pack and chewed through the filter on the last one, letting the idea of that single bullet get familiar in my chest.
Tell Kayla? Not a fucking chance. How could you explain that kind of suicidal madness to someone you wanted alive more than yourself? You didn’t. You kissed her harder, fucked her deeper, memorised the way she looked in your sheets, in your arms, underneath you, above you—whichever way you can get it. One final time, if it comes to that.
That night, the scent of frankincense still clung to my lungs, a ghost from the church clashing with the sweat on my sheets. It followed me all the way from the hollow gold altar to the godless creak of my bedframe. Her whimper hit me like opium when I bit her bottom lip and sucked it swollen. Couldn’t help myself. My hands wouldn’t stay still; they mapped her back, splayed over her ass, then between us, whereI gripped one of her tits in my palm and licked a languid stripe across the other. I sucked, maybe a little mean, just to hear her hiss. Then softer, to apologise the only way I knew how.
“You’re unreal,” I muttered, stilling mid-thrust to stare.
Kayla blinked up at me, all fucked-out elegance and bedroom heat. A flush spread across her cheeks. Fascinated, I brushed my thumb over that heat on her face, trying to figure out what the fuck I was looking at. Swore this woman didn’t blush—not for anyone—but there it was. My chest constricted, tight and possessive.
“I’m too big for this pussy to lie. She gave you up. Told me everything.”
A glare cut through the haze in her eyes. “She hates you.”
“Does she?” I slid deeper, felt her clamp, felt herneed. “Then why’s she sucking me in like she never wants me to leave?”
She tried to pull back, and I chased her mouth, nipped that lip, sucked it. Watched her eyes roll back when I drove in hard enough to make the bed frame groan.
“You feel so good,” she panted, tongue tangling with mine, all hungry and pissed about it.
“Say it again.”
“I hate you.”
“Again.”
The words fell softer. “I missed you.”
Jesus. I felt that one in my sternum. Flipping her onto her side, I bent her leg with my palm dug in underneath to keep it snug. She was warm and gasping, eyelashes flutteringwhen I pushed in slow enough to hear the air hitch in her throat.
“Yeah, keep her right here.” My teeth clenched. “Tucked in safe. Full of me. That’s how I want her.”
She moaned something smart under her breath—probably “go to hell,” but she said it to my neck, so I pretended it was “don’t stop.”
City air sneaked in through a crack in the window, chilling the sweat on my back and heightening every scrape of skin on skin. I was fucking her hard and unhurried, mean in the way I drew it out. She fit perfectly between the ink on my shoulder and the bruising grip I had on her thigh. It always caught me off-guard how small Kayla was, right until I sank in so far her body quaked. Then she’d rock her hips back, implying she could take it, shewould.
“Jesus, baby, you make me so fucking dumb.” My chest felt loaded with shit I couldn’t label, and with my cock so deep, I couldn’t hide a single lie.
Her hiss burned the air, hands tunneling into my hair and tugging. There was a split-second when I wanted to flatten her under me, press that softness into the mattress until it bruised, mark her up with everything I was too broken to say. And yet, a greedier instinct bared its teeth, already plotting to drag her back for another round. Then another. The kind of hunger that didn’t fade, no matter how many times you fed it.
Still salty over that vibrator comment, though. I definitely hadn’t spent the last two weeks hard as a fuckin’ crowbar thinking about her little pink toy doing my job. Mychest had gone hot and tight and petty. I’d craved throwing it out the window—Niccolò first. Or taping a photo of my dick to it so she remembered who taught her to come in the first place.
“Touch your tits,” I said, jaw ticking.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” I didn’t bother repeating myself for people who already understood. “Since you’re so fond of that silicone junk, let’s see if your hands can do a better job.”
She was winding up for one of her smartass comebacks, but I wasn’t interested in verbal foreplay. My palm closed around her throat, thumb skating over her pulse. Some men talked; I preferred to choke the answer out of her.
“Don’t care. You keep playing with a battery-powered substitute, but I’m right here, Kayla. Flesh, blood, and yours. Let me see you milk those pretty tits for me.”
