The Reaper (Dark Verse 2)

Morana rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the tutorial.”

She caught the flash of a dimple as he turned away towards the door. She tugged him back by his shoulder and planted another one on him. That dimple was to blame. He returned it. Passion burst between them.

Panting, he took a solid step back this time. Morana straightened her clothes and brushed her hair with her fingers. Following him out the door, she saw Dante take note of her swollen mouth and Tristan’s disheveled hair.

“Not a word,” Tristan warned, slipping back into his usual mask.

Dante just grinned, pushing one hand in his trouser pocket and another around Morana’s shoulder as they started walking towards the mansion. Morana saw Tristan glance pointedly at Dante’s hand, which the man did not remove. Tristan looked forward again and kept walking. She relaxed into his hold.

The night was quiet, beautiful. The sky was still littered with clouds, the moon still peeking from behind them. Men, who had been visible around the property during the day, became invisible again. Strolling towards the mansion with the two men, Morana broke the silence, announcing, “I had a little moment with Mr. Maroni today. Nothing that I couldn’t handle.”

She informed them about the conversation, at least parts of it, and about the coding programs she had worked on all day. Leaving out the parts about her watching the camera recording and talking to Amara, she walked, tucked beside Dante, walking beside Tristan. It felt surreal. Safe.

The closer they got to the house, the more she could see both men tense. After a point, Dante dropped his arm from around her and walked into the mansion. Tristan was back to his stoic, cold self as they reached the door. He gestured for her to precede him. She did, still fuzzy in the heart and the body.

They entered the foyer. As the door shut behind them, surprising the hell out of her, Tristan pulled her into his body and looked down into her eyes. His hand came up, his thumb circling her heavy lips where his mouth had left his mark.

"Tonight."

Morana inhaled sharply as she felt the touch throb in her body. She gulped, nodding. He dropped his hand.

“Give them hell,” he whispered to her.

She smiled. He stared at her smile for a long, long minute, his magnificent eyes glued to her mouth.

And the most beautiful, precious thing happened.

His cold, aloof eyes warmed.

Something wasn’t right.

The nagging, persistent feeling refused to leave Morana alone as she looked down at her phone, tracking the progress of the programs she had left running in Dante’s house remotely. It never, ever took her software so much time, no matter how complex the algorithms. She prided herself on that fact. And yet, it was almost twenty-four hours that she'd let the codes run and the progress, much to her disbelief, was only at forty percent. Forty fucking percent. That just wasn’t possible, not unless she had external interference. She had checked for it. There was none. So she just didn’t understand what the hell was taking so long that her program was progressing at the pace of a pregnant snail.

Baffled and annoyed at her creation, Morana walked out into the lawns from the house. She was slightly frustrated and not only at the program - also at last night.

The dinner had gone over surprisingly smoothly. There had been some underlying tension of course, but not a single snide remark from Maroni. He had informed her politely about a party he had been planning for a while, a party that would be held tonight, and then he had been quiet throughout the dinner. Maybe that was how he behaved at the table and her first night had been an exception. She didn’t know but she had been braced for a wrong look or that smile that rubbed her the wrong way. She had been braced for some underhanded words at her or worse, at the hunter sitting beside her who, by the time they had been seated, had completely wiped away every trace of the man he had been back at Dante’s house. Had her mouth still not been burning from the passion inflicted by his, she would have chalked the entire thing up to her crazy imagination.

Tristan had not been Tristan sitting beside her, he had been the silent Predator - alert, watchful. And now that she had seen some of his layers, she marveled at the ease with which he switched back to his default. And not just him. Dante had sobered as well, his grins of ease shifting to smirks without mirth.

The more she got to know both the men, the more she realized just how much of their true selves they kept hidden, so much of which she still hadn’t been exposed to. Some could say the same about her as well. But since she knew herself, she knew it was more about not knowing who she was under the entire facade. She was discovering that herself for the first time in her life because, for the first time, she had started to feel the edges of that comfort. Regardless, there was a long way for her to go, to realize who she truly was as she wasn’t her father’s daughter deep down. For now, she was a confusing mess of things. All she knew at the moment was.

And despite everything, she still didn’t trust anybody completely.

She trusted Tristan and Dante more than she had ever trusted anyone but she knew she was still holding some part of herself back, especially when it came to Tristan. She trusted him to keep her safe. She trusted him not to hurt her. She trusted him enough to show him her jugular, over and over again. She was getting attached to him at a rapid rate she couldn’t and didn’t want to control. But there was a part of her, a rather small but strong part, that told her to hold some of herself back, to not surrender completely. She felt for him, strongly, deeply and truly. The emotion he incited in her came from the most broken parts of her, and yet it was the purest emotion she had felt in her life. She acknowledged that he had the power to emotionally scar her in ways her father had never even grazed. He had the power, that she had given him, to ruin her for anybody else.

And that small part was her failsafe, her just-in-case. Because if that ever happened, if he ever betrayed her and left her for the wolves, she won’t succumb like a helpless lamb. That small part of her would let her survive. It would let her build herself back up. That small part was hers, only hers. And she had no clue how to give that to him, even if one day she wanted to. That was just another one of the many reasons for her frustration.

She was also vexed because her shopping was supposed to be delivered by noon and it was already afternoon. Usually, that wouldn’t have bothered her but she’d just had a rather rancid encounter with Chiara Mancini in the morning. The stunning woman had reminded her rather nastily (and Morana was assuming she was nasty because she, like the rest of the house, had heard her passionate encounter with Tristan two nights ago after she had warned Morana off him) of the party Maroni was hosting in the evening for his ‘business’ partners. The party was in honor of some big deal they had made that she was not supposed to know about. And assuming from the first party Morana had seen on these grounds, she knew she needed to look good, especially if that Chiara woman planned on looking stunning and make eyes at her man. It was a female thing.

She needed a dress.

Another reason for her irritation was Tristan himself. Last night, after his eyes had screamed unnamed pleasures on her flesh, after his mouth had whispered the same promise of pleasure on hers, he had escorted her to her room after dinner and opened her door. And then, for the first time since she had known him, he had chickened out and left her there.

Chickened out.

Tristan ‘The Nothing-Scares-Me Predator’ Caine had chickened out. Yeah, she hadn’t believed it either. But she had seen it in his eyes, those magnificent eyes.

He’d been spooked. She, in all her tiny capacity, had spooked him and he, during the quiet dinner, had had enough time to process whatever shit had gone to his head.