Page 18 of Broomsticks and Bloodstains
Because she had just stepped all the way into my world, and there was no leaving now.
Later, when I had her back in my apartment, I carried her directly to the bathroom, where I stripped us of our clothes and moved us into the shower. I’d dispose of the clothing later.
Shock was setting in, and she simply stood there mute as I washed her hair and then her body. Afraid she might pass out but not wanting to let her get out on her own, I watched her like a hawk as I quickly washed myself.
By the time I shut off the water and dried us, she was pale, and I was starting to get worried. Except the adrenaline crashed into something else—something hotter, hungrier, unstoppable.
She kissed me first, desperate and shaking, but I kissed her back harder, needing to claim her, needing to remind myself she was still here, still mine. Not breaking the kiss, I scooped her up and carried her to my bed—a place no other woman had ever graced.
As my hands roved over her soft curves, I tasted her. The scent of my body wash all over her skin filled me with such primal triumph, it was unreal.
“You k-k-killed him,” she whispered right as I entered her body.
I froze, debating whether continuing this was the right thing to do. The lump in my throat was uncharacteristic and difficult to swallow.
“I did,” I confirmed as I held myself still above her.
“For me,” she went on.
“Yes,” there was no use denying it.
She wet her lips with her tongue, then bit her lip. For a moment, she simply stared at me as my heart dropped.
Then she reached for me, and my breath stopped. One hand cupped my cheek and the other rested over my heart. Still, I waited.
Her fingertips trailed down the side of my neck before she gripped the back of my neck and pulled me in. When the tip of her nose slid up the side of mine, I breathed her in. When she tilted her head and her lips found mine, I groaned.
My cock throbbed once in her heat, and she wrapped her legs around mine. She rotated her hips, and I lost it. Our kiss went wild, and I thrust deeply into her tight pussy, over and over.
Her nails scored my back.
My teeth found the sensitive spot at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
We became nothing but two lost souls, eager and desperate for release.
By the time the night ended, there was no line between fear and desire, no line between possession and obsession. She was tangled in my sheets, her body marked by my mouth and hands, and I knew the truth Konstantin had warned me about.
No, I hadn’t erased the liability. Instead, I’d killed for her with complete and utter reckless abandon.
She’d become my priority.
Killing a man had never shaken me. It was routine, part of the life I chose, the life that chose me. Blood spilled, problems erased—that was my world.
But tonight was different.
The Armenian’s body was nothing more than another ghost added to the long list that trailed behind me. Yet when I looked at Sofia’s tear-streaked face in that dark alley, then the way she shook in my arms as we made our way to my apartment, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years.
Rage. Not at the kill. At the thought of her being touched—hurt.
What I’d done should have been a warning to her about who and what I was. A reminder of what happened when you stepped too close to the flames. But when I pressed her against the wall during our second shower of the night, when her lips crashed into mine with desperation instead of fear, I knew it had gotten complicated.
Because I’d claimed her.
After she finally collapsed into sleep, I sat in the chair across the room, the glow from the city painting her skin in gold and shadow. Lying there, lost in her dreams, she looked so angelic. I knew damn well she was too young for me and far too innocent. My chest was tight, my mind racing.
I found myself facing the reality that she wasn’t just a distraction—she was a weakness.
Konstantin’s words echoed. Cut the thread. Don’t fuck the liability.
