“You’re staring.” His mouth curves into a smirk that makes heat crawl up my neck.
I tear my gaze away, trying to gather my scattered thoughts. My brain struggles to put the pieces together and remember the night before.
Spider’s apartment materializes in flashes. Kirill showing up out of nowhere. I slit Spider’s throat seconds before Kirill breaks down the door. He was my first kill, and while the reality of it sits heavily on my shoulders, it doesn’t make my stomach turn. He deserved it.
After that, everything is a blur. Kirill bringing me here, to his penthouse. Me tied to a chair while he interrogated me, but the details are slippery, like trying to hold a fish in my hands.
He gave me something. A drug.
Another flash of memory slams into me, and humiliation scorches through my chest. Begging Kirill to touch me. Being so wet and desperate I could barely think straight. And then, oh shit, him sitting across from me, pulling his cock out and stroking himself while I watched, needy and aching.
He crosses the room to the dresser, picking up a coffee mug and taking a slow sip while his eyes stay locked on me. I squirm, feeling vulnerable chained to a bed, wearing only a T-shirt I assume is his.
“Where are my clothes?”
“I needed to check for weapons,” he says matter-of-factly. “You were strapped with knives. I wasn’t taking chances.”
“So you stripped me.”
He turns back to face me, leaning against the dresser. “I won’t deny, I also liked the view.”
I reach for the water bottle on the nightstand beside me and drain half of it in one long gulp, buying myself time before I have to look him in the eyes again.
“Enjoy the view while you can,” I say after I swallow. “This is all you’ll ever get from me again.”
“That’s not what you were saying last night. You were begging for my cock. Telling me how wet you were. How much you needed me.”
Heat floods my cheeks. “The drugs made me delirious. Trust me, if I were in my right mind, that wouldn’t have happened.”
But even as I say it, I know the drugs lowered my inhibitions, but that’s not what made me desperate. That was all him. The way he touched me. The way he looked at me. The raw desire in his eyes when he stroked himself.
Not that I’ll ever admit it.
“How do you feel?”
I try to sit up and my entire body protests. My neck is stiff. My shoulders ache. My wrists are raw where the zip ties cut intothem. Everything hurts, and my mouth tastes like I licked the inside of a garbage bin.
I shake my head, trying to clear it. “Like you care,” I snap. “But for the record, I feel like shit. What did you give me?”
“Sodium pentothal.” He pushes off the dresser and prowls closer to the bed, each step deliberate. “Also known as a truth serum.”
Oh shit.
Panic grips me. “What did I say?”
He smirks and it’s downright sinful. “Quite a bit. You were talkative and incredibly horny. Sorry I left you so needy.”
My cheeks burn but I force myself to stay focused. The embarrassment doesn’t matter right now. What matters is if I revealed my real identity and my connection to the Syndicate.
He crosses his arms, biceps flexing with the motion. “What do you remember?”
“Very little,” I admit, because there’s no point pretending otherwise. The damage is done. Whatever I said, I need to know so I can figure out how to control the fallout.
He studies me a beat, like he’s deciding how much to reveal. Then he shrugs. “You told me about your mother. About men with cathedral dome tattoos taking her when you were six years old. About how you’ve been searching ever since these memories surfaced. You told me you think my family was involved in her trafficking. That you came to New York and got yourself a job at Velour to find out what happened to her.”
Air whooshes from my lungs. That’s more than I wanted to reveal, but it could have been worse. Much worse.
“Anything else?” I manage to ask.
