The absurdity of that isn’t lost on me. He kidnaps me and locks me up, and I ache for him. He laughs at me, and I want to kill him.
But he doesn’t allow me my anger. He grabs my cheeks between his fingers, pressing them together and forcing me to lift my eyes up to him. All trace of humor has left him, and he stares at me with a dark hunger that makes me shiver.
“You’re mine,” he growls. “Do you understand that? You belong to me.”
He presses his mouth to my earlobe, nipping it hard, and I teeter over the edge, wanting to give in to him, to let him take control, even while anger holds me back, keeping some part of me sane.
But he doesn’t care. And there’s something freeing about that. I can’t keep myself in an iron grip anymore, the way I’ve done my whole life. Control is an illusion. He’s taken it away from me, and all I can do is submit.
And so I do, letting the anger ebb, my aching need taking its place. I close my eyes as his teeth continue to explore my body, leaving little bites and marks all down my left side, his breath hanging hot against my nipples and the place between my legs.
He swipes his hand there and snorts, bringing up a glistening finger to my mouth and rubbing it on my lips. He flips me around on my stomach, smacks my bottom hard and kisses the back of my neck.
“Mine,” he hisses again.
Then he stands up and walks out of the room, clicking it shut behind him.
I’m left alone on my bed, panting with need and utterly confused.
14
Damien
“Damien. Damien. Wake the fuck up.”
I snap to and take in the four faces that are staring at me.
“Come on, man,” lashes out Logan’s impatient voice. “We’retalking about important shit. The Feds? Angel? Snap out of it.”
“Sorry,” I mutter, massaging the bridge of my nose. “Migraine.”
It’s not entirely false. I’m literally addicted to my girl. Every moment that I don’t spend by her side, stabbing pain makes my eyes water. Nothing works, not Advil, not Tylenol. Only her.
Corny, but true.
“So, what’s the latest news?” I ask.
“The latest news is the Feds are closing in,” he growls. “We are in hot water. Very hot.”
“I just can’t understand what Angel was thinking, killing the whole family,” I mutter.
The words come out of me like a broken refrain. I’m well aware that I’m not doing anything to advance the situation. Overnight, the Feds went from being a distant threat to breathing down our necks. But the nanochip still hasn’t been found, which means Logan is right. Thereisa rat. And if we don’t find it soon, we’re fucked.
“It was just an unlucky situation,” intervenes Vale, repeating the story for the fiftieth time. “Angel had done its research. The wife and kids were supposed to be on vacation. Lazarus went up to the bedroom to shoot Jonathan Cole, and his wife was lying right next to him. He had a silencer, but of course, the noise was still loud enough to wake her. The second he shot him, she woke up, screaming like a banshee. He had to shoot her. Then the kids came running in. They didn’t have the sense to stay hidden.”
“Kids at that age don’t even know what death means,” says Everest hotly. “Of course they came. One of them was three years old or something. Lazarus messed up.”
“He didn’t have a choice,” insists Vale, his eyes flashing.
“He shouldn’t have shot Cole in the first place,” spits outLogan. “The second he saw that the wife was there after all, he should’ve left and done it at some other time. That was his first mistake.”
“Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty,” quotes Vale drily.
I inhale my cup of black coffee, willing it to help the migraine. But it does jack shit.
“Vincent,” I call, snapping my fingers at my assistant, who at once goes to fetch me another. Then I turn to the others.
“We can’t afford to work with people who don’t have twenty-twenty hindsight,” I say. “It was a mistake to give this job to Angel. Vale, that’s on you.”
