She doesn’t know I’m here. Not yet.
I stay exactly where I am, a predator in her sanctuary. I breathe her air, letting the room learn the scent of me—salt, sweat, and the iron-will of a man who hasn’t slept in three days because he was too busy imagining this exact moment.
Bursting in would be crude. Bursting in is Noah’s style—all noise and no substance.
No—I want her to feel me first. I want her to feel the way the temperature in the room changes when a monster enters it. I want her to feel the way the silence starts to press wrong against her ears, the way her instincts start screaming in her blood long before her brain can catch up to the reality of the shadow standing three feet away.
I tilt my head, listening to the water beat against the tile like a frantic pulse, a countdown to the moment she realises the door is locked and I’m the one with the key.
“Enjoy your shower, little sister,” I whisper, so quiet the steam barely carries the sound to her. “Your husband-to-be just painted a target on himself. And I’m a fucking marksman.”
I push off the wall silently, my movement fluid and lethal, and step closer until I’m stopping just outside the curtain. I’m close enough to feel the radiant heat rolling off her damp skin; I’m close enough that if she reached out her hand to grab the soap, she’d touch the rough denim of my jeans instead.
I grin, the expression feeling like a scar opening up.
Hilarious. This is absolutely fucking hilarious.
Noah thinks he’s in control because he has a ring and a piece of land, and here I am, standing in his bathroom, in his house, breathing his fiancée’s steam, waiting for the exact second she realises she isn’t alone and never will be again.
God, I’ve missed this. I’ve missed the way her fear tastes when it turns into a need only I can satisfy.
The steam is a suffocating weight now, a thick, white shroud that has turned this marble box into a sensory vacuum. She’s vulnerable, blinded by the scalding spray and the soap stinging her eyes, her head tilted back in a moment of false peace that I’m about to shatter into a thousand jagged pieces.
I don’t wait for her to find me. I don’t give her the mercy of a warning.
I reach through the curtain, my hand snapping out like a viper to catch her throat—not to choke, but to anchor. My palm is cold, a shocking contrast to her heated skin, and I feel her entire world stop in a single, terrified gasp.
“Eyes shut, Scarlett,” I growl, my voice a low, vibrating rasp that cuts through the hiss of the water. “Keep them closed, or I’ll give you something real to cry about. Don’t you fucking move.”
She freezes, her breath coming in frantic, shallow hitches as I step into the spray with her, my clothes instantly heavy and soaked, clinging to me like a second skin. I move behind her, my chest a wall of wet denim and muscle pressing against her slick, trembling back. I lean down, my lips grazing the shell of her ear, tasting the salt and the heat of her.
“I told you I’d be back, little sister,” I purr, the word sister sounding like a profanity, a dirty secret we’ve been burying for years. “You didn’t really think I’d let that pathetic bastard keep you, did you? That I’d let him put his name on what already belongs to my blood?”
My hand slides down from her throat, tracing the curve of her ribs, down the dip of her stomach, until I reach the wet, aching heat between her thighs. She’s already slick, her body betraying her the second my shadow touched the floor. I find her, my fingers blunt and demanding as I sink them into her, a low groan vibrating in my chest at how tight she is—how much she’s been starving for a touch that actually leaves a mark.
“Shh,” I hiss when she lets out a broken sound, her head falling back against my shoulder. I catch her jaw, forcing her to stay still. “Keep that pretty mouth shut. You don’t want the little husband-to-be to hear what a mess you are for me, do you? Or maybe that’s what makes this so much more fun for you—the idea of him standing right out there while I claim every inch of you.”
I reach for my belt, the leather creaking as I undo it with one hand, my other still buried deep in the soaking, swollen folds of her pussy. I feel her knees buckle, but I hold her up, a predator keeping his prey from collapsing. I pull myself free, my cock thick and heavy, a thrumming vein of pure, violent need that’s been building since the moment I saw her on that balcony.
I press it against the cleft of her ass, the friction of my wet jeans and her slick skin creating a heat that feels like it’s going to set the room on fire.
“Scarlett?”
The voice comes from the other side of the heavy wooden door. Noah.
She jolts, a sob caught in her throat, her eyes straining to open, but I press my palm over them, forcing her into the dark.
“Everything okay in there?” Noah asks, his tone casual, oblivious, a dead man talking to a ghost. “You’ve been in there a long time.”
I grin against her neck, the cruelty of the moment making my blood sing. I take my cock, thick and insistent, and I don’t give her time to adjust. I drive into her in one long, devastating thrust, burying myself to the root in her tight, screaming pussy.
She lets out a strangled gasp, her fingers clawing at the tile, her body arching into the invasion. I’m huge inside her, stretching her until she’s nothing but a vessel for my obsession. I feel her walls clenching around me, desperate even in her terror.
“Tell him you’re fine,” I whisper, my hips beginning a slow, punishing grind that makes her heels lift off the floor. I reach down, my fingers finding her clit, mocking her pleasure while I ruin her. “Tell him you’re just enjoying the water, Scarlett. Tell him before I decide to open the door and show him exactly how I’m filling you up.”
I pull out nearly all the way, the wet, suctioning sound lost in the spray, and then I slam back in, harder this time, hitting her so deep I feel it in my own bones.
“Scarlett?” Noah calls again, closer now. I can hear the handle jiggle.
