Page 26 of Taming Seraphine

I need to prove to Leroi that I’m not a liability that’s going to get him killed. I have to make him listen.

Sliding off the bed, I reach beneath my pillow for the stiletto daggers that I divested from the dead bastard I undressed. Payment for him forcing himself on me and Leroi making me clean it up. Leroi confiscated the knives I took from his kitchen and locked them up in the room with the guns.

Adjusting my oversized wife beater, I creep across the room and slide out of the door. A pang of guilt hits my chest at the sight of Leroi’s living room. It’s mostly empty now, all the blood-stained sofas were removed along with the corpses.

I cross the space on my tiptoes and ease open his bedroom door. Leroi lies on his back with his torso exposed, the sunlight caressing his olive skin. His sculpted chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm, and I pause for a moment to admire how his muscles flex and relax with each breath. He’s a work of art, a perfect specimen of masculine strength.

With the pulse between my legs pounding hard enough to fill my ears, I drift forward. My mouth waters at the sight of all that exposed flesh and how beautiful it would look smeared in red.

But I’m not here to kill him. Not today.

His rhythmic snores fill the air, the sound infusing my chest with bursts of warmth. Leroi might be an asshole, but he has a heart. Would it look as elegant as him if I removed it from his chest? Its pulse would slow in the palm of my hand and its arteries would ooze delicious red blood.

Clutching both knives, I mount the bed. My knees sink into the mattress, and I crawl the length of the bed toward my prey, and sit on his hips. Leroi loosens a deep groan that hits me low in the belly.

My breath shallows the way it usually does before a kill, only this time it’s accompanied by an excited flutter. I never feel this way when I’m with a man. Ever. All I ever care about is the kill. Leroi is so handsome that it’s distracting.

As I position the pointed tip of the blade to his carotid artery, I hold the second behind my back.

Leroi’s eyes snap open. “Seraphine, what are you?—”

“You’re not sending me away,” I hiss.

His gaze drops to the blade. “Put. That. Down.”

I press its point into his skin, and he stiffens. “Not unless you let me stay with you.”

Leroi’s breath quickens, and the flesh beneath me shifts and hardens until his shaft nestles between my ass cheeks. Heat rises to my cheeks. I didn’t mean to make him erect, but it’s too late to think about that part of his anatomy.

“Seraphine,” he says, the same placating tone someone might use to call a rabid rottweiler a nice doggy. “I won’t ask you again. Put down the knife and we’ll talk.”

“Let me stay, and I’ll put down the knife.”

When I press the tip of my blade into a point of his flesh adjacent to the artery, his hips jerk. The movement makes me shift a few inches down his erection, and its crown presses into my slit.

Heat floods between my legs in a rush of pleasure so sudden I’m forced to swallow back a gasp. Sensation rushes to my clit, which pulses and swells. My gaze drops to his heaving chest for an instant to find his nipples puckering.

In a flash of movement, Leroi produces a gun and points it at my head.

My jaw drops. I jerk backward, only for my clit to rub against his hardness. Tingles shoot up my core, making my breath catch. What the hell is Leroi doing to me, and why do I want him to do it again?

“Put that down,” I whisper, my voice trembling.

“You first,” he replies with a smirk.

I swallow, but my mouth is dry. Every drop of moisture in my body rushes south, accompanied by a rush of sensation. When my hips roll, it takes every effort to force my attention back to Leroi and his bullshit. “This is all your fault. We could have avoided a stalemate if you hadn’t tried to throw me out.”

“Seraphine,” he says with an exasperated exhale. “You’ll be right next door, where I can keep an eye on you?—”

“Liar!” He’s just saying whatever he needs to get out of trouble. I push the dagger deeper, making its tip glisten with a bead of blood. “You want me to leave.”

Leroi’s expression darkens, and he pushes the gun’s safety off with a click. “This is your last warning.”

My nostrils flare and the backs of my eyes burn. He thinks he can threaten me with a pistol when I know his weakness. The only time he ever lost his cool was when he found me slicing that penis.

I lower the knife behind my back to his erection. “Are you sure about that?”

He hisses through his teeth, his pupils darkening, his chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. My own breaths quicken in tandem with his and every nerve ending in my body thrums. Is this what it feels like to find someone attractive?

---