Page 51 of Pretty Vengeful Queen

I love the dirty things he wants me to do.

I love… him. The emotion is almost overwhelming, and it makes everything hotter, the deep sound of his voice turning me on until I almost can’t stand it as he uses it to guide me into the position he wants.

“Just like that,” he murmurs, his hand flying over the canvas. “Like you’re dying to be fucked.”

“I am,” I say, my fingers trembling where he wants them to rest, just inches from my pussy. I wiggle them closer. “Let me show you.”

He laughs, low and dirty. “You bet your ass I expect you to show me,” he says, the deep sound of his voice stroking over my skin like it’s made of sex. “Later.”

“Dick.”

“You can have that later too.”

I arch my back, rewarded with a flash of heat in his eyes. “You sure you want to wait?”

“I’m sure you’re worth the fucking wait,” he says, holding my gaze until it’s all I can do not to launch myself across the room and climb him like a tree.

I’m either going to need his cock or a distraction, because the man is about to make me come with his words alone.

I definitely plan on holding him to the promise to give it to me later, but for now, I go with the distraction. “How did you get into painting in the first place?”

His brush pauses for a moment, just a stutter, before he continues painting. “I told you a bit about my dad, yeah?”

I nod. “He was a hitman.”

Dante’s lips quirk up. “He was a lot of fucking things, but yeah, he was that. Took me out and trained me up from when I was young, and one of the things about it was… you gotta understand, princess, his clientele meant we were often working in some shitty-ass conditions. Dark. Dank. Dirty places with people who’d never had any fucking color in their life, and didn’t even miss it.”

I let my eyes roam over his shirtless torso. His body is gorgeous all on its own, but even more so with the bright, vibrant ink he’s covered himself in.

I already know the nature of his father’s work didn’t bother Dante, but I can’t imagine him ever enjoying moving through a world without color.

“The world can be an ugly place,” I whisper, knowing that fact firsthand.

“You got that right,” Dante agrees. “Literally, and with all the shit people do to each other in it too. But you know what one of my favorite things about my dad’s kills was?”

He doesn’t wait for me to respond. He shifts away from the canvas for a moment, holding out his left arm and turning it to expose the veiny surface of his forearm, bright with interlocking designs.

“The blood,” he says, touching the art right in the center. It’s an amazing piece of ink that looks almost three dimensional. A bullet hole exposing chipped concrete underneath, surrounded by an explosion of red splatters that overlay his other tattoos like an explosion of blood.

I suck in a sharp breath, realizing what he means. I know killing doesn’t bother Dante, but I also know it doesn’t thrill him. He’s good at it, but not a fucking psychopath. “It was bright. It added color to that fucked up world.”

He grins at me, then goes back to his painting. “Got it in one. That shade of red is still my favorite color. There’s nothing else like it. It’s fuckinglife, you know?”

“So how did that get you into painting?” I press.

“That was a little later in life. One of the first jobs I did on my own. The target was a true piece of shit. Ran a sex trafficking ring that catered to pedos, but painted a target on his head when he failed to tithe enough to one of the gang leaders who let him operate in his territory.”

I shudder, his words bringing to mind some of the fears I had when Austin first took Chloe. “I’m glad you killed him.”

“Yeah, I didn’t hate the job, that’s for sure,” Dante agrees, putting down his brush for a moment and picking up a tool that looks like some kind of scalpel. He works on the canvas with it for a minute as he goes on. “The thing was, he was an oily fucker, good at watching his back. I had to stake out the hole in the wall he was operating out of for a couple of days before I could get him. Spent the time in this rat-infested shit hole with a good view of the door he used, tucked into this back alley over in the warehouse district.”

I grimace, picturing it all too clearly after all the searching we did for Chloe around there.

Dante sees me, and laughs. “Yeah, you know how it is over there. Fucking ugly, in every sense of the word. But then there was this alley that the target snuck in and out of…” His eyes go distant for a moment, the hint of a smile dancing over his lips before he shakes his head and returns his attention to the canvas in front of him. “You never would’ve known it, but tucked away in all the concrete and piss and grime of the place, someone had painted the whole thing with this vibrant scene. Like a… a mural. Transformed the whole wall into some kind of urban warfare fantastical shit, dragons mixed with rocket launchers, all in colors just like this.”

He holds out his arm, and I suck in a breath, imagining what it must have been like to come across that in such a fucked up place, doing what Dante was there to do.

“Exactly,” Dante says softly, clearly reading the emotion on my face. “It blew my fucking mind. I’ve still got no clue who did it or why it was there, but the best part—” He grins, sharklike and fierce. “The best part was when I took the target out, right there as he stepped out of the doorway. Seeing his blood splatter across the concrete wall behind him, it was fucking beautiful. It was like I’d added something, my own mark, to this other scene. Like the rush of the kill was right there, emotions written in bright, vibrant colors instead of hidden away inside.”

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