Panic flares in my chest at the reality waiting for me outside this door.
Maybe I really do need a monster to get through this.
I put out a hand to hold him off just as his mouth returns to mine, capturing my lips as I’m about to speak.
And it’s too late for me. His infiltration is complete.
I’m consumed by him, and the only thing that matters is his tongue in my mouth and the darkness I can taste, a decadent darkness, one that beckons to the corners of my soul and God help me, I kiss him back. Hard. Like I need him to breathe.
Our tongues tangle and dance and a desire burns through my veins, turning them into liquid fire. I want to grip his head, haul him against me harder, deepen the kiss and see where it goes.
And I latch on.
Not to him.
To the gun.
With my heart rattling in my chest, I shove him away with my free hand and point the gun at him with my other one.
This is the second time in my life that I’ve pointed a gun at him, a monster who hides his true diabolical powers in kisses. Behind a face of masculine beauty.
“What are you waiting for,” he says calmly, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
That move slaps me in the face. I’ve been kissed once or twice. Not like that. Never like that.
But even I know that move is… insulting.
He deserves to die.
“Nothing.”
“Pull the trigger,” he says, taking a steptoward me. I straighten my arm. He doesn’t know it, but I now know how to use a gun. I might not know this gun, but I’ll fucking shoot him if I have to. Or if I want to.
Which I very much do.
I swallow. “I will?—”
“Of course, then you’ll have to take your chances with the Ricci family.”
“It’d be better than being tethered to you.”
“You know marrying me is your only way out of this hit.”
The asshole’s right. But I just narrow my eyes. “I’m not marrying a man who killed my family.”
“I saved you, Harry.”
That isn’t him saying he’s innocent. At all.
Not that I’d believe him.
“And my family?”
“I didn’t shoot them.”
And that also isn’t saying he didn’t kill them. “So you’re not the monster I think you are?”
He grins, and it’s so devasting my knees almost give way. “I’m far worse than what you think. But the people Ricci hired? They’re the worst.”