Page 35 of Desperate Crimes (Mergers & Acquisitions #6)

T he living room back home smells like moonlight and roses.

I’m still in the dress from earlier— Nico’s choice for tonight .

The blue silk he picked out like it was sewn from the night sky just for me.

Now it clings to my skin like a question I don’t know how to answer.

I hear his footsteps behind me.

Slow. Heavy. Determined.

“Lee,” he says.

I freeze.

He never calls me that.

It’s always Princess or Leanna. Sometimes he calls me Baby.

Not Lee.

My heart lurches like it’s trying to escape my chest.

“I need you to understand,” he says again, voice low, rough, as if it hurts to say the words. “ You were never about any of that. You weren’t a business deal.”

My throat tightens.

“Wasn’t I?” I whisper.

“No. Fuck, no.”

“Then why?” I turn to him.

My voice is shaking now, and I hate it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away.

“Because our fathers are larger-than-life. Titans. You know that. You grew up with it too. Always walking the line between power and legacy. I’ve been clawing my way up just to breathe outside their shadows. I needed to stand beside those men, and know I earned it. That I’m equal to the task.”

He runs a tattooed hand through his short hair, pacing now. He’s practically vibrating with masculine energy.

“This merger. This deal. It’s everything I’ve worked for in my business life. But it’s business. It’s not you. Never you.”

I blink at him, my ribs tightening like a corset laced too tight.

“Nico, I just—I guess I can try to understand that part of it.”

My voice cracks on the last word.

“But why go after me, Nico? Why do the whole dark-romance charade?” I ask, each syllable landing like glass in my throat. “Did you just want to fuck me before someone else did?”

He stills.

The air goes heavy.

“Goddamn it, Leanna,” he growls, stepping forward with eyes lit like blue lightning. “No.”

I flinch. Not from fear.

But from the force of the feeling in him.

The burn in his stare.

His electric blue gaze, sparking flames inside my blood, is on mine, unrelenting.

He moves fast. Like a cobra. Lifting me in his arms, like I weigh nothing, and my legs open automatically, gown riding high as I lock them around his waist.

“You’re mine,” he says, fierce and final. “My wife. My Princess.”

He takes the stairs to our bedroom, and my chest is heaving as I hold on to him.

Tight. Too tight.

“I meant every word of my fucking vows. And I’ll say them again, and again, if that’s what it takes for you to believe it.”

“But now you’re leaving,” I whisper, my lips brushing his ear.

He groans.

I say it again.

“Your leaving. For maybe months. And I’ll be alone.”

Nico pauses at the top of the stairs. One hand grips my neck, the other is holding onto my ass.

“I can’t take you, Princess,” he says, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “The places I’m going? They’re dangerous. This isn’t some fucking vacation. There are people out there who’d cut off my hands just to hold this deal. I need you safe.”

I nod slowly, holding on to him so tight.

Like he’s just gonna disappear at any moment.

Like this is all I’m ever going to have of him.

“I understand that,” I whisper. “I do. I’m just confused.”

My voice trails off as tears threaten.

“Fuck, please don’t cry. You’re killing me, Leanna.”

Killing him? I want to laugh, but I can’t.

“How long will you be gone for real?”

“Six weeks minimum. Maybe a couple of months.”

“I was right. You’ll be away from me for months.”

He clenches his jaw.

“I’ll call. Every chance I get. I swear it. And when I’m done— when this is settled —we’ll start over. Do it the way we should have. The way you deserve.”

But I’m already drifting.

Floating somewhere outside of my own body. Numb.

I don’t respond to that. I can’t.

“Leanna?”

I push against his chest, trying to free myself from his dark embrace as I whisper. “I need time. To think.”

He steps forward, gripping me tight, refusing to let me go.

“No. No more time. Don’t shut me out, Princess. I can’t take it.”

I push again, and this time, he relents. I slide down his body, pulling my fingers from his, and goddamn, it hurts.

I make a noise. A scared little sound. Something between a plea and a sob.

He doesn’t speak.

He doesn’t move.

And even though it feels awful, I turn my back on him.

For the first time since he stole me away— since I became Mrs. Fury in a blur of obsession and roses and dangerous devotion —I think I might be going to bed alone tonight.

Nico stands there.

Looming behind me like a shadow. A memory.

I step inside the bedroom.

It’s too big.

The silence is too loud.

The ache in my chest is too sharp.

I tell myself he’s gone.

That he’s giving me the space I asked for.

But that’s not Nico. That’s never been Nico.

I should’ve known better than to think he’d let me sulk and cry myself to sleep in peace.

I should’ve remembered exactly who I married.

Because Vipers?

Once they strike? They strike hard. And with purpose.

The door slams open like thunder. I jolt where I stand, spinning around.

And there he is.

My Hades.

He comes for me like a violent prayer—skin, bone, and barely leashed chaos.

Rage ripples off of him, but beneath it, I see it.

Desperation.

The desire he’ll commit crimes to sate.

The love he claims to feel but still can’t say.

His eyes, burning blue, lock on mine like they never left.

“Don’t walk away from me, Wife,” he growls, voice dark silk laced with fury.

Before I can answer, his hand cups the back of my neck— hot, firm, commanding —and he bends me toward him, crashing his mouth onto mine.

There’s no preamble.

No soft brushing of lips.

Just raw, punishing possession.

“You don’t ever get to walk away,” he snarls against my mouth. “Not from me. Not when you belong to me.”

Then his hands are on the neck of my gown— the one he loved on me just hours ago, the one he had made for me —and with a violent rip, the fabric tears.

I gasp as the midnight blue splits and falls, slipping from my body like ruined petals from a rose, leaving me bare and breathless.

Stunned.

My chest heaves. My thighs press together in desperate reflex.

I should be mad. Should scream.

But instead, I’m soaked.

Because this is him.

This is my dark god, my unhinged husband, the man who watches me from security monitors like I’m the Mona Lisa and he’s the only man alive who understands the masterpiece.

“You can’t do this,” I whisper, voice cracking.

“Yes, I can,” he breathes against my jaw. “Because you need me to. You’re mine, Leanna. And I’ll remind you exactly what that means.”

His mouth crashes down my throat, sucking hard where his teeth had once left marks no one could see.

His hands are everywhere—rough, hungry, claiming —like he’s trying to memorize my body all over again before he leaves in the morning.

“Tell me you want this. You want me.”

“I want my Nico. This feels like my husband,” I gasp, arching into him. “But you’re leaving. ”

He lifts me easily, cradling me with the reverence of a sinner holding his only salvation.

“Stop thinking, Wife,” he commands, laying me down onto the cold sheets. “Just feel. ”

His mouth replaces his hands.

His tongue flicks the tip of my breast, and I moan— loud and broken .

“You said you wanted time,” he growls, dragging his belt from his slacks with one sharp pull, the sound of leather slicing the air.

“But I gave you the ride here. That’s all I can survive. Now you’re mine again. Tell me.”

The soft leather winds around my wrists like a lover’s promise—tight, but gentle.

A caress with teeth.

Nico’s fingers are precise, reverent, as he binds me to the headboard, sealing me to this moment, to him.

The silk sheets are cool beneath my back, but I am burning.

Every part of me aches.

Every nerve ending sparks.

And when his mouth finds the underside of my breast, trailing downward with a hunger he doesn’t bother to hide, I arch for him.

Offering myself.

Begging without words.

“Nico,” I pant, voice raw, already undone.

“Say it,” he demands, voice velvet-drenched steel.

Like a god whose altar has been forsaken for too long.

And I say it.

Because I mean it.

Because there is no one else, there never has been.

“I’m yours. Only yours.”

His groan is more animal than man, and he presses his mouth to my sternum like he’s sealing a vow into my bones.

“That’s the goddamn truth,” he growls. “Only mine, Princess. Mine to love. Mine to break. Mine to rebuild.”

My thighs tremble as he kisses lower, slow and deliberate, tongue flicking over the swell of my hip, the curve of my belly.

“You taste like roses,” he murmurs, almost in awe. “The kind I’d lay on an altar. The kind I’d bleed for.”

My breath stutters.

The garden he built me —filled with roses of every shade, wild and tangled and perfect —flashes in my mind, and I realize that even then, he was building a shrine.

Not just to beauty.

To me.

“These are my fucking roses, Wife,” he continues, dragging his tongue down the valley of my stomach. “No one else gets this. No one else gets you. You hear me?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes.”

He presses a kiss to the top of my sex, and my whole body jolts.

“I’m gonna worship you until the sun comes up,” he says, eyes glowing like midnight fire as he looks up at me from between my legs. “And then?”

I can barely think. My blood is lava, my lungs too tight.

“And then?” I echo, helpless.

His gaze locks with mine, searing.

“Then I’ll kiss you goodbye. But it’s only temporary. I’m coming back to you. Always.”

A whimper slips past my lips as his tongue slides along my soaked seam, every stroke designed to unmake me.

To make me his.

Not just in body.

In soul.

Desire coils inside me like a serpent rising, sinuous and molten.

My hips jerk against his mouth, my thighs framing his beautiful, wicked face as he flicks his tongue against my clit.

I can feel my orgasm teasing at the edge, but I can’t touch him.

My hands are bound. My fingers curl uselessly into fists.

I struggle, needing more, needing him.