Page 49 of First Offense

He smirked and drew down his zipper.

“That’s not an answer,” I muttered, grabbing the soap to begin lathering myself up as he stripped. I refused to look. It would bring back too many memories and take this conversation to a very violent level.

He’d betrayed my command.

He’d Fallen.

He’dleftme.

I hated him, and he hated me. Yet we were trapped in this tiny cage, inside a reformatory where death lingered around every corner, just waiting for me to slip up. Or that was how it felt, anyway.

Fucking three-headed demon dog.“What the fuck even was that thing?” I’d asked him before, and he hadn’t really answered other than to call it aproduct of Noir Reformatory. I didn’t expect him to elaborate now; my question had been more rhetorical than practical.

However, he was right about one thing—it’d been a trap. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with him.

Coincidences didn’t exist in a place like this, and there’d been too many for me to believe they’d all been circumstantial.

And even if by some miraculous fate it was all an error, thatthingstill existed in this prison. A prison housing the future Nora Queen.

Un-fucking-acceptable.

This place was a damn death trap that seemed hell-bent on killing me.

Because I was here to protect Layla? Or for another reason entirely?

It wasn’t as though the Noir liked me much. I was the lead Nora Warrior. Several of the men here had once reported to me, or to one of my lieutenants.

I had enemies.

But Layla…Fuck. Layla didn’t belong here, just like she’d claimed. Yet her wings said otherwise, which further infuriated me.

Water stung the gash on my leg, making me grind my teeth as I rotated to let it run down my side and leg. The distraction helped, somewhat, and I concentrated on the burn.

Until a soft wing touched mine. While the cell admittedly didn’t have much space, Novak never brushed his feathers against anyone or anything he hadn’t deliberately intended to.

Intimacy underlined that stroke, causing my eyes to snap up to Novak’s gaze. If he wanted to fight, he would have allowed his feathers to shift into razors. That he kept the tips soft meant he had something else in mind.

He stood naked beside me, his hand hovering by the showerhead.

I wasn’t sure if he wanted the water for himself or for another purpose, but I nodded because I didn’t trust myself to speak.

Seeing him like this brought back far too many memories. Ones that I wished I could erase.

Sculpted. Lethal.

Everything that sang to my warrior tastes.

His pale blue eyes glimmered, fully aware of where my mind had gone, as he slowly went to his knees in front of me. My cock pulsed at the submissive pose, then I groaned as he pressed the water directly over the gash on my thigh.

I fisted his hair on impulse, my body strung tight from the agony rippling up my spine. He didn’t fight me or utter a sound, just took the soap from my hand and used it against my leg while holding the showerhead with his opposite palm.

“I don’t need you to do that,” I said through my teeth, both pissed at him for taking control in such a way and also turned the fuck on by his current position.

He knew exactly what he was doing to me, too.

Asshole.

But I couldn’t release him, even though I tried.