Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
It was wonderful and beautiful and domineering and just a hair short of insane.
And if we start again, I won’t fight him.
But it didn’t fix anything. In fact, it may have made things worse.
And now Samson Vexley is in my bed, his eyes closed, his breathing calming down.
If he falls asleep? I won’t wake him.
I want to sleep next to him. Because frankly, this is the safest I’ve felt since I started looking into this whole thing.
But I don’t kid myself.
This was sex to him. Nothing more. Whatever warped emotions are creeping up in me, I need to tamp them down. Not just for myself, and not just for my work. And not just for women in general.
I need to keep my focus. I’m playing the endgame. I’m going to find out what truly happened that night and why.
I can’t do that if my heart is involved.
31
SAMSON
I wake the way I always do. All at once.
For a second, my body goes on instinct. This is the wrong bed, the wrong ceiling. Every muscle pulls tight. Every nerve goes on edge. I almost reach for the weapon that’s not beside me because this isn’t my bed, my room, my house.
Then I feel her. The heat at my side. The soft breath against my chest.
Delaney.
The memory comes back in pieces. Her mouth under mine. Her hands on me. My hand in her hair. My cock in her throat. Her body arching. The sound she made when I gave her exactly what she needed and exactly what she should have run from.
The marks I left.
The ones she let me leave.
I stare into the dark, the truth of it pressing low and heavy inside me.
I stayed.
I never stay.
Not after sex. Not after violence. Not after any moment that puts me off balance, and last night put me further off balance than anything has in years. Maybe ever.
I turn my head.
She’s asleep on her side, facing me, hair spilled across the pillow. Her lips are slightly parted. A bruise low on her throat. Another shadow at her shoulder where I was too rough.
Mine.
Something brutal and possessive stirs in me at the sight of it, but that isn’t the feeling that sits deepest.
That one is worse.
Because somewhere in the middle of her pushing into me instead of away from me, somewhere between the fight in her and the surrender in her and the way she said my name like it meant something other than a warning, I had one monstrous thought.
I would burn everything for her.
Not a room. Not a deal. Not one expendable man or one disposable structure.
Everything.
The club. The houses. The accounts. The carefully sealed doors of the empire my father built with blood and obedience and fear. The machine Nate keeps polished and precise. The whole dark kingdom of it.
I would put a torch to every last inch if it meant keeping her.
The thought should disgust me.
It should sound like weakness. Madness. Treason written in the language of desire.
Instead it settles into me like a vow.
Nate was right.
She is a weakness.
The realization doesn’t make me softer. It makes me colder. Sharper. More dangerous. Because weakness is only fatal when you refuse to see it for what it is.
I look down at the ring on my finger.
My father put it on my hand and told me some things are opened only once.
He meant power.
He meant loyalty.
He meant doors that should stay shut unless a Vexley chooses otherwise.
But lying here with Delaney breathing against me, the ring feels less like power and more like prophecy.
The key.
And beside me—
The lock.
Beauty sleeping next to the beast.
The image should almost be laughable. A child’s story, dressed up for little girls who think monsters can be loved into gentleness.
That isn’t this.
I am not gentle.
And if there’s any magic in this room, it’s not the kind that saves. It’s the kind that ruins. The kind that turns men inside out and leaves them staring at things they were raised to kill in themselves.
Desire.
Devotion.
Need.
I brush my thumb over the ring once and then ease out of bed.
The room is cold without her heat. I drag on my pants and then stand for a second beside the mattress, looking down at her.
She doesn’t wake.
Her body remains angled toward the place I just left, as if even in sleep some part of her notices my absence and reaches anyway.
I turn away before the thought can sink its teeth in.
Focus.
I move through the apartment, checking the front door first. I turn the deadbolt and open the door. The lock plate catches my eye immediately.
Scratches.
Fine ones. Recent ones. New ones. New since the first break-in.
I crouch, dragging two fingers over the metal. I close the door, locking it once more, and head toward the window. I lift the blind a fraction.
It’s still dark on the street. Parked cars are illuminated by the orange lamps. A man sits on a stoop, smoking.