He didn’t say anything. Only grabbed my wrist and dragged me along behind him.
14
Mack
I practically dragged her into the house.
She was quiet on the ride back, but I knew what she wanted. I tasted it when she kissed me, felt it in her breathing and the way she met my eyes and asked me to take her home.
I felt it in my hands when I cupped her ass and pulled her against me, let her feel my stiffening cock.
I knew what she wanted.
Oblivion.
All the pain, gone.
She needed it so desperately, maybe as desperately as I did.
I shut the door behind her and left the lights out.
She drifted in toward the living room then turned back to me, biting her lip. She wore a black top, loose and low-cut, tucked into a pair of tight black jeans with rips on the knees. She reached up and took down her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders. The red tips swayed against her back and shoulders, like paintbrushes dipped in blood.
I approached slowly.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’ve been so willing to destroy my life to keep you safe,” I said, speaking softly.
She backed up into the couch and stared at me, plump lips parted. “Yeah? And why’s that?”
“It’s because of that first night. I didn’t want to kill you, but I decided you needed to live when I made you come.”
“Seems like a bad reason to let your world burn.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. I’ve been a bad man, princess. I’ve been a very bad man and I have certain tastes. I think you might share them.”
“Might share them?” She tilted her head, mouth hanging open now. “What do you mean?”
I got closer, looming over her. God, she was so small.
So easily broken.
Snapped and destroyed.
But that was all a show. She wasn’t delicate, not at all. I knew what she was made of: concrete and cinders. Fire and rock.
I tilted her chin up to look into my eyes.
“Can you give me what I want?” I whispered and felt a surge of longing in my core, like something unwinding after being bound up for years.
“I don’t know,” she said biting her lip hard. “I think I want to.”
I kissed her then. Gently, my tongue probing between her teeth, tasting her and teasing her. I wanted to be tender, to ease her into this next part—
In all my years, through all the dark days of my training, during all the kills and all the lonely nights, one lesson kept coming back to me, again and again.
There was never good without bad. No pleasure without pain.
No bitter without sweet.
Life was a series of opposites, an undulating march from one extreme to the next.
And I’d found that combining opposites could make for the most intense experiences imaginable.
Hot to cold. Joy to sorrow.
Pleasure to pain. Fear to orgasm.
I reached up and grabbed hold of her hair. She let out a soft moan. I didn’t pull tight—not yet. I tipped her further back, bending her over the couch ever so slightly, just enough to cause some discomfort as my other hand moved down her throat, pausing over her pulse—the quick patter of her nervous throbbing hard beneath my fingertips—before going down to her breasts, the nipples hard enough to poke through her bra, down her stomach, until I could untuck her shirt.
She didn’t resist. I almost wished she would.
“Is this what you mean?” she asked when I kissed her throat. “You want this?”
“Not only this.” I pulled her shirt up and over her head, tossing it down onto the floor, then stepped back far enough to look at her.
Fucking incredible. Smooth stomach, pale skin, breasts spilling out of a bra that was slightly too small.
My blood boiled for her.
But not yet. I had to keep calm, keep controlled.
Control first. Then I could release.
“What else?”
“If I wanted sex, I could find it anywhere.”
She glared at me, struggled slightly. I grabbed her wrist and held her in place. “I don’t need to hear that, asshole.”
“It’s the truth. If all I wanted was to fuck, I could go fuck some wet hole. But that’s not what you are to me, Fiona.”
“Good to know I’m more than some toy.”
“Oh, you’re much more.” I kissed her throat—then bit her. Softly, not hard enough to break skin.
But hard enough to make her flinch.
“What do you want then? Why are you ruining yourself for me?”
“For a long time, I thought there was only one way to live. Only the Morozovs, only the family.” I tightened my grip on her hair as my other hand explored her breast, moving in under her bra to tease her nipple, then back around to unhook it. When it came loose, she let it drop down onto the floor.
Her bare chest sent ripples of agony through me. My cock strained against my pants and it took all of my willpower to keep myself from taking her then and there. I teased her pink, hard nipple, and bit her lower lip hard.