Page 17

Faster. Shallower.

I watched her every reaction, cataloged every tiny movement.

Every time her breath hitched, making her breasts quiver. Every time her skin tightened under my touch. Every single flutter of her eyelashes or parting of her lips, I watched, fascinated.

Her hands clenched at her sides, opening and closing, needing to do something to find a way to respond.

There was a storm brewing inside of her, just beneath the surface, but she wasn’t letting it break.

I wanted it to break.

My hands caressed her body again, my thumbs flicking over her tightened little buds, but she said nothing. She did nothing.

I left my hands at her waist for a moment, lingering there, waiting for her to push me away, to tell me to stop.

Instead, she leaned more fully into me. The connection where her back pressed against my chest felt alive.

Like every single place we touched had new nerve endings that just became active.

I didn’t realize I was touch-starved until I had her in my arms.

Then she moved, not breaking contact, but turning in my arms so she could look up at me.

It was a fucking mistake.

Our bodies aligned too perfectly.

Her chest pressed against mine. Our breaths mingled in the steam.

Her chin lifted. Her beautiful green eyes still blazing.

If she was smart, Zoya would push me away. She should tell me to never touch her again and then storm out of the shower.

She didn’t.

She surged forward, lifting onto her tiptoes and crashed her mouth to mine, the kiss violent, desperate.

I wrapped my arms around her tighter, spinning us around so I could press her into the shower wall.

My hands tight around her waist, her hands fisted my hair, holding me where she wanted me.

This wasn’t a kiss.

It was a battle. She was staking a claim, making a demand.

She had started a treacherous game, and when her teeth sank into my bottom lip, I lost that game.

My control, my restraint—all of it shattered.

I pressed my body into hers, my fingers bruising at her waist, her nails digging into my skin as she held me against her.

She bit me harder, drawing blood as she devoured me. So fucking emblematic of our fucked-up relationship.

Blood for blood.

I groaned into her mouth, pressing her harder against the wall, caging her in.

She wasn’t going to run away from me this time.

She started this battle. She was going to see it through to the fucking end.

My body demanded more, harder.

Now.

My cock moved to her core, shifting between her hot, wet lips. All it would take was one little thrust, one quick movement, and she would be mine.

I’d claim her like a fucking savage, and my little warrior would take every single inch and still fight me as I fucked her into submission.

Her nails sank into my back as her teeth nipped at my lips again.

That was it.

She was fucking mine.

I pushed inside her impossibly tight body, and she tensed against me.

I held her tighter, knowing I would have absorbed the pain for her if I could.

I held my breath as I forced myself not to pull out and thrust in again—deeper, harder.

Then she shuddered and trembled in my arms.

I pulled back, breathing heavily, dragging my gaze down her body.

My heart slammed against my ribs as I saw what I had done.

A thin trickle of blood trailed down her milky thigh.

Not much. Not enough to be harmful, but enough to remind me of the risk.

The drug worked. She was safe from my cock causing another bleeding issue.

She looked at me with fire and heat in her eyes.

Fuck.

Everything hit me all at once, square in the chest

I took her innocence from her, and she fucking liked it.

What little was left of my control was fleeting.

I slipped the leash I had wound so tightly around myself, so tightly around every emotion, subduing my fire in favor of respect and honor. Fuck it all.

The tension in my chest eased as I let the hot water wash away the man I tried so hard to become and gave in to the man I was born to be.

The savage who took what he wanted and then demanded more.

I lifted her effortlessly into my arms again, ignoring her gasp as I carried her out of the shower, still dripping wet, still burning.

She grabbed a towel as we passed the warming rack.

She wasn’t going to need it.

I wasn’t going to give her the time to dry herself.

This was how I wanted her. Raw, primal, and fucking dripping wet in all the right ways.

I jumped toward the bed, turning so she landed on top of me, and this time there was no restraint, no leashes. No mercy.

Nothing but fire from both of us.

Her hands raced over my chest, exploring me as she moved her body, lining us up, and then sank down on my cock.

My vision went white as I let out a low, pained groan. It only encouraged her. This may have been the first cock she had ever ridden, but she took it like a fucking goddess. Riding me like her life depended on it.

I let her, enjoying the way her tits bounced and her cunt squeezed me like a vice as she used me for her own pleasure.

When her cheeks reddened and she threw her head back, I tightened my fist in her hair and flipped us around. She was going to come on my cock, hard, but I was going to claim that pleasure.

I slammed into her like a man possessed. Each thrust a demand, each growl a promise: she was mine. Mine to fuck. Mine to ruin. Mine to worship. And my little warrior? She spread wider and begged for more, locking her ankles behind my back, pulling me in deeper, demanding more.

I didn’t stop.

Not when she came, not when she begged. I didn’t stop until she screamed my name, and I knew everyone in this fucking house heard her.

She was mine.

When I finally spilled inside her, it felt like surrender and victory at the same time. She was trembling. Shattered, boneless, and completely wrecked beneath me.

And mine. Entirely, irrevocably mine.

I collapsed next to her and pulled her into me.

That was when I noticed it.

The stain of red against the stark white of the pillowcase.

My breath locked in my throat, and I couldn’t breathe.

It was a brutal, visceral reminder of what she was.

What she wasn’t.

What she could be.

She had been hurt, on death’s door only a few hours ago.

She wasn’t just some girl.

Zoya was a leader, a leader of my enemy.

She had taken my cousin.

He was alive but injured because of her.

Zoya played a serious game.

A game that could get any of us killed, but all it would take to end her life was one injury.

I had survived gunshots, stabbings, and countless creative tortures.

All of us had.

She almost died from an accidental pistol slap.

She risked internal bleeding just to escape a chair.

The risks for her from this life were so much higher than anyone else’s.

And that was before she made an enemy of my family.

I couldn’t be sure if she would survive the games that she played.

The games she started.

The games it was my job to end.

I couldn’t rip my eyes from the stain and everything it represented.

Her mortality, her weakness.

And the choice I would have to make…