Page 7 of Vicious Hearts

I’d do anything to save Finn. Even if it means sneaking into a notoriously dangerous and edge-pushing sex club, and deliberately putting myself alone in a room with a psychopathic sadist.

Even if it means letting that psychopath—and however gorgeous he may be, Cillian Kildare is amonstrouspsychopath—do whatever he pleases to me to get us to the part where I get to watch him bleed out.

It’s nothing personal, even if he did once put my father behind bars, and then later was instrumental in killing him.

My father Seamus O’Conor was a true monster. One even more dangerous than Cillian. He was brutal, and cruel, and insane. I haven’t shed a single tear or spent a single second mourning his passing.

This isn’t revenge.

It’s payment.

A life for a life.

If I kill Cillian Kildare, then the devil currently holding a blade to my brother’s throat lets him live. So no, this isn’t actually about my father at all. This is about doing whatever—whatever—it takes to save Finn, who did everything when we were younger to keep me safe and guard me from monsters.

I force another sultry smile as I turn toward the demon standing next to me. I slink close to him, brushing my other hand across his abdomen and trembling with surprise when I feel rock-hard, chiseled muscles beneath his black shirt.

According to my research, Cillian’s forty. Apparently, his abs still think he’s twenty-two.

“Not nervous,” I purr, standing up as high as I can on my tiptoes to nuzzle his neck. “Just excited.”

Play the part. Be the temptress.

My eyes close as my lips brush the skin of his neck—first kissing, then sucking slightly against the throb of his jugular.

“Did I fucking say you could touch me?”

I flinch, taken aback. Shivering, I pull back, quailing under the intensity of those supernaturally green eyes.

“W—what?”

“Did. I. Fucking. Say. You. Could. Fucking. Touch. Me,” he rasps thickly, his jaw clenched.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry.”

He tilts his head.

“No,” I murmur. “No, you didn’t.”

“No you didn’t…what?”

Heat floods my face.

“No, you didn’t…” I swallow thickly. “Sir.”

“Good girl.”

An outrageously inappropriate throb pulses deep within my core, clenching my thighs the second he says those two words together.

Jesus, keep your shit together, Una.

Mercifully, just then the elevator doors silently slide open. His hand tightens around mine, making my pulse jump as he pulls me from the elevator into a sinfully dark hallway. We turn to the left, moving until he comes to a stop at a door with a capital L—the Roman numeral for fifty—in metallic red against the matte black door. He holds his wristband to a sensor, and the door unlocks with a weighty click.

My heart climbs into my throat.

We step into a dark and sultry room: the walls are a deep blood red, the floor and ceiling the same matte black as the door, and the furniture is all in matching tones of matte black, blood red, and gold.

There’s no windows.

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