Page 73 of Tethered Souls
“It’s mine, Micha.”Whether or not we marry, it’s fucking mine.
Her mouth drops open, and I haul her lips to me before she can speak. The words I didn’t utter bang around my skull as I fuck her hard and fast, pumping my cock up into her. She nips me as I hit the back of her cervix. Then she’s pushing me back, and I’m letting her, just for this moment. In this singular lowering of walls as I let myself imagine a future we can never have. I let her take control.
Her hands on my chest, she rides me until she comes. Until I’m joining her in orgasm, triggered by the blush of her cheeks, by the honesty of her desire. As she collapses onto my chest, tucking her face into the nook of my neck, I wrap my arms around her and breathe.
Just for this moment…
I hold her close and breathe.
Twenty-Four
HIM
Micha is up in an instant as a body appears right beside us. I bite back a sigh as I look up at Aleric, half expecting to see naked bloody balls dangling above me. There isn’t, but I’m too pissed off to feel thankful he kept his damn clothes on before phasing into our shower. Two seconds. I got two seconds with my fucking gi–
“Don’t,” I order Micha as I sit up. Water is steaming from her hands, and although I can’t see her fire, I can sure as hel feel it in the air. “This is just how he likes to meet.”
“In showers?” she growls.
“By violating people’s personal spaces. Now get out and get dressed.”
“Yes. Don’t want to start a new war by tempting me into eating you. I have a thing for feisty women.”
She lifts her chin. “I’m a fucking lady.”
He laughs as he leans against the wall, but his eyes stay perfectly on her face. “So you are.”
“Wait in the bedroom, Micha,” I say as I stand.
She throws a look at me but doesn’t argue as she files out of the shower. Grabbing a towel from a cupboard and her dress off the floor, she leaves the ensuite.
“She’s delightful,” Aleric drawls as he starts to take off his suit jacket. He drops it on the floor as I leave the cubicle, assuming he wishes to get the blood off him now that he isn’t worried about Maddox seeing him. He’ll leave after this little chat, and I wonder if Vlad is still downstairs or if he’s already gone. Probably the latter; otherwise, Mother, Talon, and Uncle Myers would be wondering where Aleric is.
“What is Antonio doing to your men?” I ask as I grab a towel and wrap it around my waist.
“And you’re not in any way delightful,” he says, ignoring my question entirely. He sighs as he rips the buttons off his shirt, popping every single one of them. Given the piece is already wrecked from the blood, there’s no point showing it any care.
I keep my eyes on his face as he strips. It’s a tactic he likes to use. Make people uncomfortable so they turn away and he can strike at their back. He’ll just as easily hit from the front, but a predator like him? Can’t resist an easy kill.
“You should learn to engage in small talk, Varius. It will make you much more likable.” He grins as he starts to lather his hair. His voice rises in pitch as he mocks me. “I’m Varius fucking Shadow. I don’t need to be likable when I can just cut off people’s dicks and make them choke on it.” Lowering his hands, he applauds slowly. “Bravo, by the way. I wish I’d arrived a few seconds sooner to see that.” He cocks his head as he goes back to washing his hair. “Then again, I can just reenact it tonight. Mmm. No, not tonight. I’m busy tonight. Got a date with a bottle of lotion in an empty house, you know?”
“Have all your missing capos had their skin fall off?” I ask, ignoring the shit that comes out of his mouth, which is practically every fucking word.
He waves a hand at me. “My Family’s business is mine, just like yours is yours. You don’t go around kidnapping my men to get answers, and I don’t go around telling you who tried to kill you thirteen months ago. That’s how this whole treaty thing works.”
“This ‘whole treaty’ is about to fall apart if Antonio is picking you off this easily.”
He laughs from deep in his belly, then gives me a look. “You really trying to play it off that you don’t want to know what I know?”
I don’t move a single muscle. But it doesn’t matter if my poker face is completely flat. He knows I want it. I know he knows. A stranger on the street would guess I’d pay top dollar for good information about that night. “What will it cost me?”
“Leave Cara Jervis alone.”
“That’s it?”
He shrugs. “I have a soft spot for the girl.” He lowers his arms to clean the blood off his hair-free chest. “And she has a soft spot for dangerous men with dogs. She gets stupid brain when Leno’s around.” He rolls his eyes as his hands dip further south. My eyes stay on his neatly trimmed face as I try to discern what’s real and what’s just a smokescreen to throw me off.
He’s given information too freely. So either he genuinely likes Cara Jervis and will do whatever he can to protect her, or he wants me to think he does so he can use her as bait. She’d be a hel of a lot easier to ambush than Aleric would. If he really liked her and our Families turned on each other, I could grab her to draw him out.
