“Knox,” she whispered again.
“Konflict,” I corrected, just like every night at Vixen’s.
“Konflict,” she echoed, her voice small, fragile. “Kiss me, Konflict. Kiss me like it’s the last time.”
Her eyes, glazed with fever and exhaustion, barely opened when I tipped her chin up. She looked at me, and I looked at her. There were no masks, nothing to hide us, nothing to shield us from the truth or the hunger burning between us.
I closed my eyes and leaned in, pressing my lips to hers. The kiss was slow, gentle, like I was afraid to break her. When I deepened it all the pain, fear, and raw love I’d kept locked away poured out of me. My hand slid up her cheek with my fingers sliding into her hair, and I felt her breath catch against my mouth. Her lips parted and her tongue found mine. For a second, it felt like coming home after a thousand years in the dark.
I poured everything into that kiss—regret, hope, the desperate vow I’d never let her go again. Every part of me broke and rebuilt itself in her arms. I wanted her to feel it, to know it, to remember with every heartbeat that no matter what happened, she was mine, and I was hers, and I would fight the whole world to keep her with me.
Chapter Seventeen
SERENITY VEYLOR-KORVEN
Why would I do that?”
“Because I told you to. Now do what I say.”
“I don’t work for you or for Konflict, Krash. I don’t have to listen to you.”
Their voices drifted toward me from far away, just as I struggled to open my eyes. My eyelids were heavy as hell and my head was pounding. Still, I forced myself to wake up. The light slammed into my eyes, too damn bright, making it twice as hard to adjust.
“Who do you think you’re talking to, Val? Sometimes I swear you forget who the hell I am, baby. You need me to remind you whose pussy this is?”
I heard him shove her against the wall.
“Krash…” Valery let out a sound in half protest, but it was cut off fast by what I knew had to be a kiss.
“Just because you got four years on me, you think you run this thing? Baby, both of us know when I touch you like this, your pussy starts singing my name. Look how wet you are, Mama. You want this dick, don’t you? Want me to fuck you right here against the wall before your boss wakes up?”
“Baby…” she whimpered again.
“You know the thought of you walking around this villa with my cum dripping down your thighs turns me on more than you can imagine?”
“Fuck... baby... We can’t. Serenity is right there…”
I heard my name and finally started to come back to myself. What. The. Fuck? Was that really Valery and Krash? Was my assistant fucking Konflict’s right hand?
I blinked, trying to snap back to reality. When my eyelids finally lifted all the way, I barely recognized where I was. My mind was hazy and for a second I thought I was hallucinating. This wasn’t my room, and it definitely wasn’t the room where I spent my nights with Knox at Vixen’s.
The bedroom was huge, luxury everywhere, giant windows flooding the place with light. The décor was all grays and whites, with expensive art on the walls, but the whole thing felt cold, like no one really lived here.
Where the hell was I? And what the fuck happened last night?
I racked my brain, but the headache was brutal and I had no clear memories from last night. I remembered falling into the Marquette’s pool, the feeling when vertigo took me out. I remembered the pain when my lungs started to fill with water, and I remembered making the choice to just stop fighting. God. I drowned last night. And I saw Kate Korven—she told me to hold on, to fight. After that, nothing but black.
“Valery…” My throat was dry as sandpaper.
“Shit, she’s awake,” she blurted out, voice panicked.
I heard the scramble of clothes—a zipper yanked up, a beltbuckled—then a few seconds later, Valery came into the room with Krash right behind her.
My brow furrowed the second I saw them.
“Oh my god, Serenity, you’re finally awake,” Valery rushed to my side, worry all over her face.
She hugged me tightly, checking me over, but my eyes never left Krash.
