She was half-curled against me, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, hair spilled wild across the sheets and my chest.Morning light bled weak and grey through the curtains, catching the gold in her skin.She looked too soft for this world.Too soft for mine.
Taking her should’ve felt like a victory.Instead, it felt like the kind of peace a man only got right before someone put a bullet in the back of his head.
I lay there longer than I should have, watching her breathe.Watching the tiny shifts of her face as sleep loosened its hold on her.There was no armor on her like this.No sharpened tongue.No cool control.Just a woman carrying the weight of a family name that dealt in blood ties and war lines.
She stirred before I could stop staring.Her lashes fluttered.Her eyes opened slowly, still heavy with sleep, then sharpened the second they found me.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Something moved between us.Quiet.Loaded.Intimate in that way that new love is.
“You’re staring again,” she murmured.
I brushed a strand of hair from her face before I could think better of it.“You make it difficult not to.”
Her mouth curved, but it wasn’t a full smile.There was too much thought behind it.Too much reality creeping back in.
We both heard the crash at the same time.What sounded like a door downstairs.
Tone went still beside me.
I was already moving.
Years of instinct snapped into place before thought could interfere.I was out of the bed in a heartbeat, scanning for a weapon, dragging on my slacks quickly while listening for movement.Heavy steps trailed up the stairs, fast and certain, like they knew their way.
Tone pushed up on her elbows, the colour draining from her face.
“Raze,” she murmured.
There was no time to answer.
The bedroom door swung open so hard it cracked against the wall.
Raze Cavalho filled the doorway like violence itself.Barely contained.Barely human.His gaze hit the bed first, to where his sister lay half naked, the sheets held close around her upper body.Then his eyes shifted to me, half dressed, standing on the wrong side of every line that mattered.
His face changed.
I’d seen dangerous men before.Been raised among them.I knew the look of fury, knew the shape of murder when it walked into a room.
But this—this was different.
His eyes landed on me, and I knew immediately that if he’d had a gun in his hand, this chapter of my life would have ended right there.
“You.”His voice came out low enough to curdle the air.
Tone pushed up from the bed, sitting up fully.“Raze?—”
“Don’t.”He didn’t look at her.“Don’t you say a fucking word to me right now.”
I stepped forward, putting myself between him and the bed.
“Careful,” I said quietly.
He laughed, sounding almost hysterical.
“Careful?”he repeated.“You wake up in my sister’s bed and tellmeto be careful?”
His chest was rising hard now, each breath dragging violence closer to the surface.He looked like he wanted to rip the room apart with his bare hands, starting with me.
