Page 28 of The Ache That Stayed

Bastard.

Instead, his hand moved fast. He caught my wrist, twisted, spun me so sharply the knife clattered across the floor. My back collided with his chest before I could process what just happened. One arm locked across my shoulders. The other forced behind my back, wrist bent just enough to sting.

“Not quite the welcome I expected,” he breathed against my ear.

The warmth of his breath slid down my spine like a live wire, heat cascading down in a violent shudder. His grip tightened as he felt it.

God, I hated him.

Don’t show weakness. Don’t show weakness.

“Are you scared, little Volpi?” he whispered against the shell of my ear.

My vision tunnelled at the heat of him, breath heavy against my skin. My heart pounded so violently it blurred thought. Heat pooled low in my belly in a traitorous rush that made shame claw up my throat.

Use your head, goddammit.

His voice echoed in a memory:

If someone pins you from behind, don’t fight their strength. Shift your weight. Drop your centre. Break the balance. And flip them before they know what hit them.

I inhaled, then moved. I slammed my elbow back hard into his ribs. He grunted with a sharp intake of breath. I twisted my hips, dropped my weight and hooked my leg behind his.

He didn’t expect that.

I pivoted, grabbed his wrist, and flipped. He hit the floor. Hard. But he didn’t go alone. He took me with him.

I landed straddling his hips, palms braced on his chest. His body was heat and muscle and something devastatingly familiar. His back hit the floor with a solid thud, and a groan escaped him—low and involuntary, vibrating through me.

For one split second, we were frozen like that. The loose strands of my braid falling forward. His hands hovering but not touching. The hard muscles of his chest rising beneath my palms. Warm and solid.

He looked up at me—amused. Impressed.

“Well,” he said, breath warm against my chin. “Someone’s been practising.”

“Imagining your face,” I snapped.

I tried to push off him, but my sock slipped.

“Shit—”

My balance tipped. I pitched forward, my mouth hitting the side of his neck—the side still bleeding. Warm blood smeared across the corner of my mouth. Metallic. Salted. Intimate in a way that made my stomach drop.

My tongue darted instinctively before I could stop it. To anyone else, it would look like a lover’s embrace. But I was trying to get off him.

“Now,” he murmured, voice dropping lower, darker, rougher, “that’s more like the welcome I expected.”

Lightning cracked across the sky outside, white light flooding the kitchen for a split second. It illuminated a rawness behind his eyes I’d never seen before. The arrogance slipped, and beneath it I glimpsed a fracture he hadn’t meant to expose.

Then he moved. In one brutal, fluid motion, he flipped us.

My back hit the floor. Air punched from my lungs. His body followed, caging mine beneath it. One thigh forced mine apart. His weight pinned my hips, locking me in place. My wrists caught and forced above my head in one hand. He loomed over me. Close enough that I could smell rain, smoke and sweat and him.

And that’s when I felt it. The hard, unyielding press of his arousal against my thigh. At first I thought I imagined it, then it twitched. My eyes went wide. He didn’t even try to hide it.

His free hand lifted to my mouth, thumb dragged blood across my lips, smearing it like a mark. Then he lifted the pad of his thumb to his own mouth and licked it clean, slowly, eyes never leaving mine.

My traitorous body sent a new wave of shivers down my spine, which made me clench my thighs harder. My chest rose and fell against his weight, body reacting before my mind could process the danger.