We’ve just had a pretty dirty fuck in a back alley. I shouldn’t be feeling so emotional, so connected, but I never even dreamed of belonging to a man like him. I kiss the side of his neck with reverence, overwhelmed by my… yeah… the depth of my feelings for him.
“I love you,” I say tenderly, closing my eyes as I rest my head on his shoulder. “No need to say it back. I just do.”
He inhales, then turns in my arms, and my cock slips out of the plush heat of his body. I should be more self-conscious. I always fall too hard too fast, but this is my fiance, and when he meets my gaze in the dark, it holds no judgment or doubt.
“Dalton...” He places his hand on my nape and gently guides me lower, to his whisky-flavored lips.
That’s all the confirmation I need. I’d eat the scraps off his table my whole life if it meant being together. I thought I was off my high after my orgasm, but the kiss makes my heart beat faster and I hold him close, enjoying every second I get to taste him.
I’m the only one who gets to see him soft, sweet, and unguarded. I’ve floated through life before, through its highs and lows. I’ve come back from the brink of death and won big at the casino, but nothing can compare to the golden lottery ticket in my arms. Corvus is my meaning, my purpose. I can see it so clearly it’s as if there’s a spotlight on him.
I open my eyes with a smile, never pulling my lips away.
And then I see it.
A red laser dot on his forehead.
My heart stops, but I act on instinct and push him at a container filled to the brim with broken wood and trash bags.
Chapter 25
Corvus
I’mfloating.
The last time I’ve allowed myself to drink this much booze was… I don’t exactly know when, but way back in my teens, before the weight of responsibility dropped on my shoulders. But it feels so good now to have only surface-level thoughts as Dalton holds me up.
My abdomen and ass ache a bit from the rough fuck without an adequate amount of lube, but the soreness feels like a never-ending caress, a reminder that I’m not alone for once. That Dalton’s not going anywhere.
I should be embarrassed and self-conscious about letting him do me in a place where someone could walk in on us, in the winter cold, and with filth surrounding us on all sides, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt more exhilarated.
I want to tell him.
But before I get to open my mouth, Dalton violently pulls me away from the wall. The pants pooling at my ankles threaten to cut my feetfrom under me, but none of that matters when the brick explodes where my head has just been.
The sound of the muffled gunshot still pounds in my head as we drop behind a metal dumpster. Dreaded sobriety sets in as my heart starts pounding, and I can’t pull my pants up fast enough. Dalton is still busy zipping up as well, eyes frantic as he scans our surroundings, but the attack comes from the side this time.
A masked man in black tries to stab Dalton, but he jumps to his feet, already grabbing the guy’s wrist. It happens so swiftly my drunk mind can barely keep up. Dalton is like a charging bear. He twists attackers wrist back and forces him into a hold, but then with a roar like I’ve never heard him make before, he breaks the man’s arm with a nasty crack that finally wakes me up.
I pull my knife out on autopilot. I didn’t take a gun to the club for my bachelor party, but I never leave without a knife and poison. They will save us now.
The ease with which my fiancé broke this man’s ulna and radius keeps replaying at the back of my mind, along with the noise resembling the moment a spoon breaks through the burnt sugar topping a creme brûlée, only magnified tenfold. It’s terrifying, yet I can’t help being turned on by the proficient way he leapt into action less than a minute after emptying his balls inside me.
Maybe it’s the booze, but I suddenly have the profound need to have his cum inside me too.
My curved knife cuts through the flesh just under the fucker’s Adam’s apple with the same ease a chef dices beef. The tart odor of blood is overpowering for just a moment.
Still in Dalton’s grasp, he twitches, head jerking back, and it splashes Dalton’s face before he can let go. I did sometimes wonder what Dalton’s other life was like. Not the one in which he brings me coffee in bed, but the one in which his father set him up for fights to the death.
Now I know. Dalton’s face dripping blood, sharp focus in his eyes as though he’s a predator on the prowl for the next throat to rip open.
“What the—” he starts, glancing at me, but then a man zip-lines down the wall right next to us. This must be the fuck who shot before.
The decision comes as easily as breathing, and I reach into my pocket, to the syringe disguised as a small pen. If someone wants to attack me in retaliation for whatever I unleashed on another person previously, or because I’m a Van der Horn, I need to know the details, and that won’t happen if by the end of the night both bodies lay in a pool of blood at my feet.
With the knife in one hand and the tranquilizer in the other, I stumble forward. The alcohol in my veins is now my biggest enemy, and if I can’t keep it in check, Dalton and I could be hurt or worse—left without answers.
Why didn’t he shoot? He must have had more than one bullet.
