Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
If anything fucking happens to her.
I hoist her up into my arms. I can’t get close enough to her.
“I need you so fucking much right now.”
I kick the door closed behind me and carry her across the room.
Once in her bedroom, I shred her clothes from her tiny frame and spend the next hour getting lost in her luscious body.
RORY
“Is she going to survive?” I ask, horrified by the gruesome details Ares shared about Katey. We’re lying in bed, the sheet pulled up to our naked waists. Ares’ thumb grazes my shoulder as he stares up at the ceiling.
“Physically. But the scarring will be a mental hurdle.”
His warm brown eyes fill with empathy but also fury. The mix is a turn-on.
“Seeing her like that…” His voice is hoarse. “Things won’t ever be the same for her.”
I didn’t plan on seeing Ares tonight because my visit to Boston was still fucking with me. Hell, seeing my mother and her fiancé was still fucking with me when I got home and unlocked my front door. All I wanted was a shower, to crawl into bed, and slip into a long, dreamless sleep.
But Ares knocking on my door changed everything, and ironically, it was the very man who I am meant to kill, who pulled me out of my funk and made me feel better with two mind-blowing orgasms and Chinese takeout.
Now, I lay tangled in his arms, my body content and relaxed in the afterglow of what his giant cock did to me.
While a war rages in my head.
I lean up on my elbow. “She’s so young. When this kind of thing happens, sometimes it makes me think there isn’t any justice in this world.”
“Sometimes you gotta make your own justice,” he says, his jaw ticking.
“Do you really believe that?”
“I live by it.”
I look up at him. “Is that what you used to do when you worked for the De Kysa?”
His eyes dart to mine, and he searches my face.
He frowns. “I never mentioned the De Kysa to you.”
Fuck.
Imprisoned by this questioning look, I race into damage control. “In passing, you mentioned working for the De Kysa.” I shrug as if it’s nothing. “Boston is my hometown. I know who the De Kysa are and what they do. I figured you worked for them in a similar role as the Kings.”
His gaze is scorching, but I don’t look away. I play it cool as if I hadn’t just put a giant foot in my mouth.
He has never mentioned the De Kysa to me, and he knows it. But he is silently questioning it, and I hope it’s enough for us to move past this slip-up.
Finally, he asks, “Does that bother you?”
Inwardly, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“I guess that depends on what you did for them.”
He pauses and then surprises the hell out of me when he says, “I took care of bad people.”
My blood runs cold. My throat tightens.
A tornado spins wildly through my emotions.
“Took care of them?”
“Whatever needed to be done.”
I struggle to swallow past the cold ache.
He killed our Joey in cold blood.
Connor wasn’t lying. It was true. Ares worked for the De Kysa and killed Joey for them.
My voice is small. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I wasn’t lying when I said I fucking like you. I think there is something between us that is more than sex, right?”
After a pause, I nod. It’s all I can manage because inside, I am being torn in two.
My heart agrees with him while my head is screaming bloody murder.
He killed your brother.
He reaches up and tenderly brushes my hair from in front of my eyes. “So I need you to know who I am. Who you’re in bed with. Who’s inside you. And I want you to trust him and know he is never going to hurt you. I’m fucking falling for you, Rory, and I don’t want you to find out who I am and run away from me later. So, this is me. I’ve got blood on my hands from working for the De Kysa and blood on my hands working for the Kings. It’s who I am.” His face is an emotionless mask, but the emotion burns bright in his eyes. “My question… am I the kind of man you could fall in love with?”
My heart pounds wildly.
Yes, she cries.
But I can’t say the words because my throat is too tight with emotion.
All I can do is nod.
He crushes his lips to mine, and I kiss him back with a hunger I’ve never known. His hands roam everywhere, his tongue and lips kissing me into a dizzying high.
Ares doesn’t fuck me with the urgency he brought over with him tonight. This is different. Another wall has crumbled, and when he makes love to me, I can feel more walls dropping around us, and it makes it easier to get lost in him. To forget what is happening outside of our bubble.