Fuck.
I spread my legs wider, biting my lip.
“Don’t quiet yourself.” Anteros tugged at my captive lip, pulling it free. “Scream for your master, my little slave.” A small cry escaped me as he plunged one, two, three fingers inside. My eyes met the man on the couch, but they didn’t connect. I never connected with him.
It was as Anteros said—I craved the power, craved Anteros touching me, holding me. Craved his words that ignited burning shivers along my arms and spine.
The man across from me was just a toy.
Anteros’s lips connected with my neck as he worked inside me. I squirmed, trying to get him deeper. His free hand came to cup my breast and I thought I would float away on the feelings. I was so close to the edge I could taste the juicy release on my lips.
I focused my blurry vision on the stranger, on his dilated pupils, on the way he palmed himself and sucked in every move I made. It wasn’t about making him orgasm, it was about me coming and him having no choice but to follow.
“You know what I think?” Anteros asked, low laugh rumbling against my skin seconds later. “This has little to do with power—you just can’t help being bad.” He curled his fingers inside me, twisted a nipple, and bit my neck in a delirious threesome that sent me tumbling. The soft fibers of the beard he never ended up shaving tickled my already over-sensitized body.
“Anteros,” I cried, voice shaking as the orgasm pulsed through me.
My head fell back and I locked eyes with him.
“Wow, that was—” the guy started, but Anteros pulled a gun out of his waistband holster and shot him before he could finish, bluegreen stare still on me. One bullet, clean in the head, silencer on so no one would disturb us. Gun still aloft, Anteros consumed me with his eyes. I never got used to it—the look that said he was drinking in everything about me.
“Are you going to kill everyone who watches me come?” I murmured, twisting my head to lightly kiss his exposed forearm.
“Yes,” Anteros replied simply and without hesitation. He put the safety back on, shoved the gun back in the holster, and then smiled down at me with a dazzling, devious, crooked smile that I’d come to know as something only for me. One cheek quirked, teeth ultra bright, his turquoise eyes smoldering—a smile that would bring me to me my knees if I weren’t already sitting down.
Still at my back, Anteros gently kissed my neck and shoulders as he untied the rope keeping me bound.
“I’m not going to stop showing off,” I said, reaching for him as he finished untying me, planting feverish kisses on his lips. “Not going to stop wanting and needing to be seen.”
“I have a lot of bullets,” he said, returning my embrace.
A few minutes later we both held each other, staring out at Times Square. He tugged my wrist, spinning me back into his chest, and locked me tight against him. The New Year was approaching, and in a little over an hour, the countdown would begin.
“How are you doing?” Anteros gently pushed the sweaty hair from my face. Even when I wasn’t having a sick day, Anteros was always protecting me.
“I’m okay.” Business wasn’t the only thing that changed for us that day—Anteros had changed. Only for me, but that was the only thing that would ever matter.
He swayed with me even though there wasn’t any music. As much as I would have loved to stay and be held while we watched the changing neon lights out in Times Square, I had to tell Anteros about his present. The man had been an anniversary gift for me, but I’d gotten him something as well.
“You know it’s been almost a two years since the night…the night…” The night that changed everything. I swallowed, blinking up at Anteros. In the two years that had passed since we’d killed Lucia and Crazy A, my name had become feared. I was respected. Powerful.
When it came to Anteros, though, I would always be his slave.
“Yes, mio cuore,” he whispered against my ear. “I remember.”
“I got you an anniversary present.” Anteros spun around, searching my eyes. Nikolai’s escape had been a constant thorn underfoot. Some days I thought I felt Anteros’s pain more than he did, and sometimes I thought it was the same way for him. So every night I worked to find Nikolai.
Until I did.
I led him down the suite’s hallway to where I’d stuffed his present. We stopped just outside the extra bedroom and I paused, looking into his eyes.
“If you’ve got another man in there, I’ll need to reload,” he joked.
“I found Nikolai,” I said. His features hardened instantly. Pain and rage rippled across his face like light over the surface of a waterfall, but satisfaction was there too. I felt it as well. Finally this could end.
Like the fucking snake he was, Nikolai had been trying to amass forces to take us down. If Nikolai had just lain low, I probably never would have found him, so I supposed I should thank his reptilian nature because, in the end, it was why I got to hand him over to Anteros.
Anteros said nothing to me as he pushed the door open, but the appreciation in his gaze was clear. Nikolai was tied to the chair like I’d left him. There was a soldier guarding him, a soldier we could fucking trust—finally. The past years had been full of trials, but we’d gotten through them. Together. We told the soldier to leave and then it was just Nikolai, Anteros, and me.