“Hard not to when the world keeps trying to kill me.”
“That’s why you’ve got me.” He leaned down, pressed a kiss to the back of my neck. “To carry it for you.”
His hands moved lower. Down my back. Over my hips. Slowly, deliberately, he pulled my leggings down and off.
“Prime—”
“Shh.” His breath was hot against my lower back. “Let me take care of you.”
He spread my thighs apart, and then his mouth was on me.
I gasped, my fingers gripping the blanket beneath me. He ate me from behind like he was starving for it—tongue sliding through my folds, lips sucking at my clit, hands gripping myhips to hold me in place when I tried to squirm away from the intensity.
“Prime—oh God?—”
He didn’t let up. Just kept going, relentless, pushing me higher and higher until I was shaking, moaning into the blanket, my whole body on fire.
When I came, I screamed his name loud enough that I was grateful Mehar was sedated three rooms away.
He kissed his way up my spine, settling his body over mine, his lips finding my ear.
“I’m going to get Yusef back,” he said quietly. “And I’m going to handle your sister’s husband. Both of them. I promise you.”
I turned my head to look at him. “Mehar’s husband is mine.”
His eyebrow rose. “Yours?”
“I want to be the one who does it.” My voice was steady. Certain. “She’s my sister. He hurt her. I want him to know it was me.”
For a long moment, Prime just looked at me. Searching my face. Seeing something there that must have satisfied him, because finally he nodded.
“Okay.” He kissed my temple. “Then he’s yours.”
We lay there in front of the fire, tangled together, the flames casting dancing shadows across the walls.
Tomorrow, we’d go back to war. Tomorrow, we’d face Rashid and Zoo and Vivica and everyone else trying to tear our lives apart.
But tonight, we had this.
And for now, that was enough.
23
RASHID
The boy looked like a shell of himself.
Good.
I sat at the head of my dining table, watching Yusef push food around his plate with the enthusiasm of a death row inmate facing his final meal. His shoulders were hunched. His eyes were downcast. The defiance I’d seen two days ago—the fire that had made him push me, challenge me, scream about wanting to go home—had been extinguished.
This was progress.
His knees were blistered beneath his sweatpants. I knew this because I’d inspected them this morning, ensuring the wounds weren’t infected. I wasn’t trying to damage the boy permanently. I was trying to reshape him. There was a difference.
His back was sore from the wooden spoon—I could tell by the way he winced every time he shifted in his chair. But he hadn’t cried this morning. Hadn’t begged to go home. Hadn’t spoken at all, actually.
Silence was the first step toward discipline.
