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For a long moment neither of us moves. Just the sound of our breathing. The heat of his skin under mine. The deep, lingering fullness of him still inside me.
My mind, however, isn’t lost in the haze. The pleasure was real, devastatingly so, but beneath the fever of our bodies, the rot of the last three months is still ticking like a bomb.
Before the warmth can lull me into surrender, I move.
My right hand drops down, reaching with fluid, practiced precision into the tactical holster hidden inside the combat boot I didn’t take off while we stripped each other, lost in the heat of the moment. In a fraction of a second, the cold steel of my switchblade glides free, snapping open with a sharp, lethal click.
The next second, the cool edge of the blade is pressed to Tristan’s throat. I keep him locked in place beneath me, thighs still bracketing his hips, my body still bare and close.
Tristan goes rigid beneath me.
One brow lifts, slow and careful, as he processes the shift. His eyes drop to the knife, then rise back to mine. There’s surprise there, but not panic. Never panic with him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asks, his voice low and measured.
“Does Jake have anything to do with us ending things?” I ask, my voice deceptively quiet, vibrating with an edge sharp enough to split stone.
“Maksim—”
“Answer me,” I bark, pressing the steel just enough to bite into his skin.
A tiny pinprick of crimson wells beneath the metal, but neither of us looks at the blood.
“If you lie to me right now,” I whisper, leaning in until my lips brush the shell of his ear, “I swear to God you will lose me forever. I won’t just go to Italy, Tristan. I will disappear off the face of this earth to a place you will never find. You will tear apart every continent and find only ash. This will be the absolute last time your hands ever touch my skin.”
The tension in the room ratchets so tight it threatens to shatter the glass.
I pull back to look at his face. I can see the brutal, agonizing war raging behind his dark eyes. The calculations, the ironclad instinct to protect, battling violently against the terrified realization that I mean every single word.
“I’ll ask you this one last time, Tristan,” I say, my voice quivering with a grief I resent him witnessing. “Did Jake play any role in your decision to end things with me?”
Tristan holds my gaze, his chest rising and falling in one long, ragged exhale. The armor in his eyes fractures completely.
“Yes,” he rasps.
A brutal, sickening squeeze clenches around my heart, knocking the air clean out of my lungs. I swallow the lump in my throat, keeping the blade steady.
“Does he have something against me?”
The war returns to his face, fiercer this time. His jaw clenches so hard the muscle ticks, the veins in his neck straining against the steel. He doesn’t want to give it to me. He wants to keep carrying the cross alone.
“Tristan,” I warn, the blade trembling against his skin.
“Yes,” Tristan finally grits out, the word torn from the absolute depths of his throat. “He does.”
I grind my teeth until my skull aches.
“That’s all I needed to know.”
I jerk the knife away from his throat. A single bead of his blood slides down his skin, leaving a thin trail along the polished edge of the blade before I snap it shut.
Without another word, I push off him, lifting my body away from the lingering heat of his lap. The room's cold air hits my sweat-damp skin like ice water. I turn my back on him, reach for the dark, ridiculous Nightwing suit crumpled on the carpet, and begin hauling it on with furious, erratic motions, completely ignoring the fact that my ass is leaking out his cum.
“Maksim, stop,” Tristan commands, his voice tight with alarm. “What the hell are you planning to do?”
“None of your fucking business,” I snap over my shoulder. “You love planning everyone’s lives in the dark without consulting them, don’t you? Let’s see how you like it when I do the same.”
Tristan rises from the cushion, and I can feel the pure frustration rolling off him in waves as he closes the distance between us.
