I turn on the water and step into the shower, having slept commando.
As I wash, a slow smirk tugs at my mouth when I picture her face, her smile, that body that brings me to my knees.
And I don’t mind begging, if it is for her.
She has been mine since the night she came at me like a fallen angel with murder in her eyes, her intent clear.
She didn’t hesitate, she went straight for blood.
And that’s when I realized she was made for me.
The stars, the universe, God—call it whatever you like — but Octavia Bellanti was put on this earth to be mine.
A normal person would probably hate her, or at the very least crave revenge, but I am not a normal person.
I obsess over her, I breathe her in, she runs through my veins, and when she is near the sensations tearing through my body are almost unbearable.
What was once a dead mind and a hollow soul stirred the moment I first saw her face, and even more so when she straddled my lap and pressed a blade to my neck.
A rush of emotions I can’t name floods through me.
It is strange, the way my skin prickles and my heart races so violently I am convinced I am on the verge of a heart attack, the sensation starting low in my stomach before tightening and rising into my chest until I cannot tell whether I am dying, or simply losing my mind.
It is fucking unsettling.
And it is the best thing I have ever felt.
When I see her, all I want is to keep her close, to protect her, to mark her, to claim those lips and take her apart until she forgets she ever belonged anywhere but with me.
I want her to be mine, in every sense that matters, and I want her to know it, to feel it settle into her bones the way it has settled into mine.
But all in good time.
Because for reasons I don’t yet understand, my spitfire insists on hating me.
She carries so much rage, so much hatred, and I love it, though I would rather see it turned on those who deserve it, not on me, for I am no saint, but I am utterly incapable of harming a single hair on her head, I would sooner put a bullet through my own skull.
Still, I take what I can. Even her anger is proof that she feels something for me.
My cock hardens as I replay the moment from the party, and I fist myself with a low groan.
I have lived with a permanent hard on since the twenty ninth of August, and no amount of jerking off seems to fix it.
But this is more than sex.
This is everything.
She is so… perfectly broken.
Broken in the most exquisite way.
I don’t merely want her body.
It is her soul that calls to mine.
She is damaged in the same way I am, split open, stitched wrong, left to fester, and people like us don’t heal.
I don’t want to put her back together.
