Page 50 of Built for Mercy

A wave of relief washed over me, so fast and heavy that it stole my breath.

“It’s not just you. I’ve broken all of my rules just to get closer to you. It’s important you know that I wouldn’t have—and never have—chased anyone down and begged them to come spend the night with me. To give this a shot,” I confessed, watching as the same relief flickered across her features before she curled further into me.

“Good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug, so casually, as if me opening myself up to her wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t tell her that, though.

For a moment, I just existed in the heat of her, in the way her breath stuttered against my throat, her body molding against mine like she was made to fit there. My fingers dragged slow, possessive paths down her spine, memorizing the way she shivered under my touch. I let her think I’d be gentle. Let hermelt into the illusion of softness. Until I flipped her, pinning her beneath me with no room to escape, no doubt about who she belonged to. Then I fucked her hard, spanking her until her moans broke into desperate little cries, until she was trembling, until all she could do was take it. Until she heard every filthy word I fed her—what a good fucking girl she was. How much of a slut she was for me.

That her pussy was mine.

That she belonged to me.

23

Sophie

“What the fuck do you mean, herevolted?” Maverick snarled, stirring me awake. I pushed onto my hands, glancing around his dark bedroom before I saw the bedroom door ajar and heard his voice drifting from down the hallway.

Frowning, I climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the door, listening to him murmur angrily into his phone.

“I hear what you’re saying, but I want to knowwhy.Did you even fucking bother to ask?”

I flinched at the harshness in his voice.Thiswas Maverick. This was the side I saw when I first met him: brutal, ruthless, dangerous. Not a man I wanted to cross.

His earlier confession rose up in my mind.I’ve killed people who crossed me.

“Not acceptable, P. I don’t care what you have to do. You fucking drag his ass down here so I can ask him myself.” A pause.“And when you do, tell him I’m going to tear him limb by limb for what he’s done.”

Nothing but silence met me for a beat—there were no parting words, no goodbyes—just the low, weighted kind of quiet that told me everything I needed to know. The call was over. I exhaled, straightened, and scurried back to bed, checking the time to see it was a little after three in the morning.

I wondered if this was what my parents’ marriage was like. My dad up at all hours handling God knew what while my mom worried from bed.

It was a few minutes before Maverick pushed the door open, wearing only a pair of low-slung gray sweats. His head was ducked so I could only see the hard set of his jaw, but the tension in his shoulders concerned me.

I doubted he’d open up to me about what had happened, but it was still worth trying. “Is everything okay?”

His head snapped up, eyes wide as he rounded his side of the bed and climbed in. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said instead of answering.

I crawled over to him and curled into his side, taking a moment to listen to the rapid beat of his heart. “That call sounded intense. You don’t have to talk about it with me, but you won’t scare me off if you do.”

I hated that it was the truth. In a matter of months, all of my morals—or, what morals I thought I had—had been thrown out the window. I no longer cared what was right and wrong, only that he was okay.

He was quiet as he rubbed a soothing hand down my back. “It seems, Sophie, that you don’t need to swoop in to take everything from me.”

His words felt like an ominous ice pick to my heart. “W-what do you mean?”

A heavy sigh. “Nothing. I’m sorry for disturbing you. You should get some rest.”

He’s shutting me out.

It felt like everything I’d expressed to him mere hours ago was already coming to fruition. But then again, maybe I was overthinking everything.

Yeah. That’s what it was.

Because even though he was a criminal and ran a dangerous drug empire, I trusted him to keep his word.