“What did you say?” she whispered, her lower lip trembling.
“Maybe…” I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see me. “Maybe instead of me, you met someone else at that club, maybe it was Breaker—did he take care of you that night?”
“He took care of me every night, every day, it’s what he did.” She held her head high.
“Would you still love him if he betrayed you?” I circled her trembling body as she fisted her hands at her sides. “If he slept with countless women while you pined for him from afar…”
She moved from one foot to another. “Breaker didn’t—we didn’t. It only happened once between us.”
“How fortunate then.” I sighed. “That all I have to do is outperform a distant memory, and that one time you and he were together…”
“I’m going to imagine it’s him,” she taunted.
I grinned, tossed my mask onto the bed, leaned in, and whispered in her ear, “Good.”
Goosebumps flared and ran down her arms.
She started rubbing them away.
I inched my fingers across her shoulders and down her arms, and then I pulled her back against me; she let out a gasp as my hands found her hips.
It felt like I’d been walking around hard as a rock, unable to touch, unable to bring myself to do something that would so completely alter what we could have if she would just accept it.
Because I had sworn my silence.
Not that it mattered because eventually… she would know.
Whose blood was on my hands.
And why.
“I’m going to kiss you.” I turned her toward me, and then my mouth was on hers, my tongue sliding past her lips despite her attempt not to kiss me back. “Open, Violet, let me taste you. You promised you’d try, you said four nights, this is the price…”
“You’re expensive.”
“I wondered if your sense of humor died with him—good to see it’s alive and well.” I kissed her again and again until finally, she kissed me back, I coaxed her with my tongue, I held her tenderly with my hands, and then I nipped at her lips and sucked them with mine.
She released a small whimper.
“There she is,” I encouraged. “Forget about everything, but this moment, this kiss. This… should have been our very first… this…” I grazed her nipples with my thumbs. Her body jerked in response. Her mouth parted even more as I deepened the kiss, ready to rip the blindfold completely off.
A promise is a promise.
Figure it out, Vi.
Figure it the fuck out.
“For us to be together…” I said against her lips. “He had to die.”
She stiffened, but I kept talking.
“The price I paid last year…” I sighed, resting my forehead against hers. “Was coming back from the grave to save the one girl who could put me in it with just one seething glare…”
“I didn’t know you then…” She tilted her head. “I mean, I just—I was drugged and blindfolded, remember? And they kept yelling ‘proof, proof, proof.’”
“Russians are ruthless like that, princess.” I lifted her into my arms and gently laid her down on the bed. She was like a feast.
I gripped her thighs and then slowly tugged down her silk shorts.
“You’re naked underneath.” I could barely speak.
“I figured the sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can go back to plotting your death.” She grinned.
I burst out laughing. “See, this is why I like you… always so honest, unlike some people…” I threw off the silk shorts, letting them fall gracefully to the floor.
She let out a little sigh. “Are you calling yourself a liar?”
“I’m the worst of them, I’m afraid,” I admitted. “But lying to save someone you love—that will always be worth it, even if they hate you in the end.”
“If you lie to save someone…” She arched her back as I spread her legs wide, then started drawing small circles followed by light pinches. “…then how could they hate you?”
“Love and hate are cousins, didn’t you know?” I chuckled. “Best friends, brother and sister, however you look at it, they’re so closely blurred that sometimes extreme hate is truly fear that you’ll lose the love, and extreme love is obsession bordering on hate.”
She stiffened and sucked in a hard breath. I gave a harder pinch, followed by a sweep of my thumb.
“Valerian!” She yelled my name, not his. Pride swelled as I made her pant, as I made her body buck against my hand, and then my palm. “That feels… nice.”
If she could see my face. “Nice? It feels nice?”
I pulled my hand away immediately. “What? Where did you go?” She sat up on her elbows.
“Oh, I’m still here, but the hand was too insulted to stay, so it tapped in my mouth…”
“Wh—” She clutched the sheets with her fingertips and squeezed, pulling them up with each stroke of my tongue as I worked her into a feverish state.