Page 91 of The Mafia Assassin's Redemption
A sob almost breaks free.
How do you hate someone the way you have for twelve years when they keep saving you? When their touch makes you burn? When they no longer fit the image you clung to for so long?
What the hell do you do with that?
I open what looks like a recessed closet, and I’m shocked to see the stairs. With a deep breath, I head down toinvestigate.
“The basement. Where all the main computer equipment is. Where I keep all my deviant toys.”
At his voice, a shiver of erotic fire moves through my veins. I swallow a gasp.
“You torture women down there?”
I don’t want to turn because with that excitement is fear. Fear at what I’m becoming. Fear for him and that bleakness in his voice.
“Hell no, I take them to the club.”
I turn, follow him back up to the bedroom, drop the things in my arms, and take him in my arms.
He’s so damn handsome. The facial scruff’s grown in. The tattoos peeking out of his T-shirt make my fingers itch to touch them, to trail over them. Feel his heat, the solidness of him.
And my feet squeeze tight in my shoes.
I want…
I want him.
That’s the ugly, beautiful truth.
I want him.
Suddenly, I notice the red spray on his shirt, his neck, blood literally on his hands.
“Not mine.”
I swallow. “T-that man… is he?—?”
“Dead. The fucker’s dead. And yes, I killed him. And I liked it. What a fucking monster you married.” Torin looks at me, eyes glittering and hard, his mouth a grim line. “Maybe that’s why you were such an idiot, kicking a man with a gun to your head. Maybe you were hoping he’d just kill you, put you out of your misery.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Stone-cold sober, Harry.”
“No… of course not. I wasn’t hoping that at all.”
Torin pushes me back into the wall. I can’t breathe. He’spressed against me, hard and hot, and my senses go haywire. “Or maybe,” he says, stroking a finger over my lips, “you just hoped he’d turn and shoot me.”
“That’s a pleasure I’ll have for myself,” I snap.
He kisses me hard, and it’s hot, bitter, divine. When he lifts his head, I’m rasping, wet, aching, and I don’t know why.
“Old-fashioned, are you? Not interested in farming out the jobs.”
“Torin, I?—”
“Don’t. Don’t be sweet. Don’t be fucking sweet. I almost failed you again, didn’t I?” Then he rips himself away, stalks across the room, and turns around.
That utter despair cracks something in me, and with shaking fingers, I start to push my dress off. I want to hate him, to burrow back into that snug groove of disgust and passion, not hate this man who’s full of some kind of anguish I don’t understand.
