I watched with parted lips and a slamming heart as Everett went for his eye, the man screaming, kicking, thrashing, the sound of the spoon digging into his eye socket meeting my ears.
Everett looked so…calm about it. As if he were simply interrogating the guy. His teeth weren’t clenched, there was no uncontrolled rage in his eyes. He looked right at home.
Fuck me. I felt my thighs tighten, my fingers digging into them, a sweat breaking across my skin. This was sick. This was twisted. This was—
Everett’s eyes flicked to mine and his motions slowed. He looked me over slowly before turning back to the man and finally popping the eye out.
It fell over the side of his face, still connected by the optic nerve.
The man was whimpering, pulling at his restrains, his wrists bleeding.
Everett shifted and went for the other one—
“Okay!” the man cried out, my racing heart falling at his concession.
Everett paused, glancing to me, the spoon still poised above the man’s eyes.
Goddammit, I wanted him to keep going. I needed him to keep going.
But Everett straightened and ran his hand back through his hair, trying to put it back into place, only for it to fall into his eyes again, blood splattered across his mask, his lips, his eyes. God, he was beautiful.
The man was struggling to breathe, and I half wondered if he thought Everett was going to let him go after this.
“It wasn’t difficult,” he confessed, his voice thick, his eyelifting to Everett’s. “Agreeing to go after you wasn’t difficult,” he went on. “He made a request, and we agreed. Weaken the sons, weaken the Kingdom. He’s coming after you with everything he has and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”
Everett pulled his gun out and slid it deep into the man’s mouth, his eyes wild. “The Delepski’s should have taken the hint.” And he pulled the trigger.
I released a breath, taking in the splatter of skull and brain matter all over my curtains and wall.
Fuck, I needed therapy. Although I didn’t think I’d have the guts to tell her how wet I became watching a masked man spray a Russian man’s brains all across my living room walls.
Lucy flinched back from the noise before shaking herself out and walking up to the man’s leg. She sank her teeth into his undamaged leg for a second before stepping back and turning to me. She limped over, her ears still back, and nudged my hand a little, her eyes slowly going back to the normal, kind, soft eyes I loved so much.
I gently scratched her neck, my own eyes lifting to Everett, Evelyn pulling out her phone. He walked over without a word, and carefully slid his arms under my knees and around my back, easily picking me up.
I fell into him, the smell of pine, light rain, and copper filling my nose. My eyes lifted to his neck, watching his pulse beat steadily beneath his blood splattered skin.
I studied it for a long time before I slowly, hesitantly, closed the distance between my mouth and his skin.
I felt his hands tighten around me as soon as my lips brushed by his neck, my own eyes falling shut at the feeling of it. Warm, alive. So much power. Fuck, he was held so much power.
I kissed him again, just under his jaw, listening to his breath catch as I kissed him again and again, and then finally grazed my teeth along his skin, biting down, pulling—
“No,” I heard him say, causing my stomach to hollow out.
I leaned back, my eyes lifting to his. Unreadable. My heart skipped a beat as I fell back into his arms, slowly falling into some sort of state where everything felt numb and overly exposed at the same time.
I was aware and unaware. Feeling everywhere he touched me and nothing at all. He said no for a reason, a good one, I knew that, I did, but I wish he hadn’t.
I could hear Lucy padding behind us as he carried me back down the hall and into one of the spare bedrooms. He walked me over to the bed and carefully sat me down, pulling my dress up to my hips at the same time.
I winced when my spine went to curve, forcing myself to sit straight up as he crouched down in front of me and took my chin in his bloodied hand, his knuckles covered in blood, already bruising.
“You said nobody could know,”I wanted to tell him, but the words wouldn’t find my lips.
“There are cameras everywhere but in these two spare rooms,” he said as if hearing my thoughts, his eyes searching mine carefully. “We need to talk about what just happened before anything else.”
But I didn’t feel like talking.
