Page 26 of The Mafia Assassin's Redemption
My hissed words fill the air.
He unfolds himself and stands up, stealing more space than he should. With the darkness of my apartment, he’s a shadowed patch of dark matter. A black hole. Sucking at me, drawing me near. His black curls are like a paintbrush stroke. The broad shoulders that should be comforting send a shiver of dread through me.
My eyes drop to his hand to find the sleek outline of a gun.
Thegun.
The one he took from the man he killed.
Fuck.
He creeps toward me, and I whip around, fumbling with the door lock.
“Don’t even think about it, Harry. While you took your sweet time wandering the streets and putting yourself in pointless danger, I was letting Salvatore know his friend’s dead in a community garden?—”
“So, what… do you want me to melt at your freaking feet, or are you here to finish the job you didn’t back in Dublin?”
“—and since we’re getting married, I’m taking an attack on you as an attack on me.” Quinn ignores me and finishes his sentence, his voice flat and low and somehow threatening with its utter lack of emotion. Just that Irish lilt to knock a girl sideways.
That and his hotness. Even now, his mouth a grim line, he’s easily the hottest man I’ve ever laid eyes on.
Good looks mean nothing, of course. Beneath that layer of pretty is an ugliness that mirrors his charred soul. I know it. I’ve seen it.
If I hadn’t run at ten, he’d have killed me too.
“And?” I glare, my fingers on the brass lock.
“And,” he says, closing the space between us.He reaches his hand out, and using the muzzle of the gun… the silencer… he traces a line over my temple like he’s brushing back my hair. Fear and hate spike. “And I think he listened.”
He leans in and smiles, and dear God, this man is good-looking. Too good-looking for his own good.
And mine.
My mouth suddenly feels like it’s filled with sand, cotton, and Saltines.
“But the thing is, it takes time to call off hits and scares. So someone else with a happy trigger finger might be out there right now, looking for you, waiting to collect.”
“What about in here?” I struggle to keep my voice calm, but his delicious scent wafts around my nose, making me dizzy. I clench my hand around the door handle to keep myself steady.
“My trigger finger’s never happy. It just does what it needs to do.”
I nod, my pulse thundering a beat in my temples as he runs the muzzle down my throat to the opening of my coat and my shirt. “Like when it kills innocent people?”
He mutters something I don’t catch and leans in close, so close my heart damn near explodes out of my chest. He uses his tongue to trace my bottom lip. It’s an electrifying moment. My skin tingles, my mouth aching for more of a taste.
“I know who you are, Quinn—” I manage to croak out.
“Torin.”
I swallow hard. “Torin.”
“And what’s that?”
“The man who killed my family.”
“And despite all the hatred you have for me, you liked what I just did to you.”
My head spins slowly at his close proximity, at his scent—warm, spicy wood, amber with a touch of citrus. Intimate and fresh, full of sin and indulgence, topped off with a sprinkling ofremorse… it all invades my senses and weaves stories and creates worlds that I don’t think are really there, worlds where he’s the hero when I know he’s only ever been the villain.
