I take Peter’s hand and we run.
Chapter7
Peter
We sprint through the streets of Athens as sirens wail nearby.
I don’t think anybody saw what happened. There weren’t any cameras—none that I saw, anyway—and Balaska will cover for me if there were. I didn’t notice bystanders, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t witnesses. Still—as far as a random street shooting goes, I don’t think it will be a problem.
I go faster, hurrying, getting away from the police before they show up on the scene. I don’t know if I killed that guy and I don’t care. I’m too busy being angry that they nearly got the drop on me and cursing myself for getting distracted by my fucking phone.
If they’d been sent to kill us, we’d be dead. If they’d been armed with guns and planned on using them, I’d be full of metal and bleeding on the street right now.
Instead, they were a message.
Now I have to figure out what that message was supposed to mean.
After a while, we stop in a quiet alleyway. The streets are deserted this late. Adrienne leans up against the wall breathing hard and stares at me. I stare back at her and meet her eye. She doesn’t seem afraid—I thought she’d be terrified after watching me shoot a man in the gut—but instead, she looks elated, cheeks flushed from the run, her eyes like liquid fire, and she’s grinning like she wants to burn the world to cinders.
I move close to her and put my hands on her hips.
Fuck, she’s beautiful. The swell of her throat, the dip of her lips. I even love the scar, the crooked nose, the bruises. I love the way she looks at me with barely disguised hate, but now that hate’s mixed with something else.
Something primal.
“Did you kill him?” she asks, keeping her voice low enough that only I can hear.
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“What do you know?”
“Only that they said we should go back to the States before something bad happens. And that they really seemed like they wanted to hurt me.”
She tilts her chin up to meet my eyes. “Are you? Going back, I mean.”
“No,” I say quietly and kiss her.
She kisses me back with a surprising desire. I chew on her lip and let my tongue explore hers as my heart pounds. This girl, this nobody girl, she drives me fucking wild and I don’t understand why. She’s a weight around my neck, an anchor that’ll drown me, a distraction I can’t afford, and yet seeing her in this dress right after nearly getting killed, right after potentially killing a man, it drives me fucking wild with lust. I kiss her like an animal, like I’m consuming her, and her fingers dig into my hair, pulling tight. I’ve spent so damn long pushing everyone away—friends, family, women—and never letting myself get burdened by attraction, by love, by embarrassing emotions. But now I want her to keep kissing me until my lips bleed or until I make her scream my name. I want to bite through her tongue and make her gasp as I sink my fingers deep into her slick cunt. I want to ruin her—until she finally pushes me away with a sharp breath.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. She’s fuckingtremblingright now and it makes me want her so badly I could kill for another taste. “We’re not doing this.”
“Do you remember what I said? I said all of you, and I meant it.”
“Peter,” she whispers.
But a door nearby slams. I take her arm and turn her away. As much as I want to have her here and now, to feel my cock slide between her legs and push deep into her soaking, messy pussy, to listen to her moan and beg my name, to let the adrenaline of that fight mingle with the excitement of having her flesh, we can’t linger out on the streets.
I call that car and we head back in silence. Slowly, the rush of survival begins to fade, and something else comes in. A new voice in the back of my mind.
Why the fuck did you kiss the girl?
It’s one thing to let Adrienne work for me. That’s bad enough. But to kiss her on top of everything else, knowing that I want her fucking badly, knowing that now I’ll think about her taste whenever I look at her? The bright lemony acidity of her tongue, the Chapstick on her lips, the mint on her breath, the deep purr of pleasure in her chest? It’ll be in my head, whether I like it or not, and I’m tightrope walking across a canyon right now without a net, and kissing Adrienne is like putting weights on one end of my balancing pole.
She’s going to tip me into the abyss. The fucked thing is I want her to.