Page 35 of His To Erase

It would seem like I’ve been too quiet and someone’s gotten too comfortable.

I slide my thumb across the screen and open a thread I haven’t used in a while. The last message I sent still has no response.

My jaw flexes, and for a moment, I wish I was there to savor the reaction.

Me: You looked good tonight. But you’ve always looked better on your knees.

She locks her windows now. I expected that. They aren’t hard to get open, I just don’t feel like trying to squeeze through the window right now. I’m not in the mood, not with my cock hard as a fucking rock.

She deadbolted the door like it’ll keep anything real out. Cute. She’s cautious, smart, and maybe a little paranoid. I like that.

The lock’s decent enough to slow someone down, but not enough to stop me. It never is. One shift of pressure, a flick of tempered steel, and I’m in. God, I’m good at this.

She doesn’t even stir.

Inside, it’s quiet, and the air carries a faint hint of something warm. Lavender, maybe or vanilla.

It smells like the girl who looks at men like she’s daring them to try and fight, because she’s clawing her way back from hell.

But the softness I see in her right now is a version of her I’m sure she doesn’t let very many people see. She looks so peaceful, I almost want to disrupt it.

Only I don’t move for a minute, I just stand here and listen to the faint hum of the fridge, and her breathing.

I move through the space without a sound, avoiding the places I already know creak. The place isn't that big, and she doesn't even lock her bedroom door, but she should.

Her breathing’s uneven, and her lips are parted. One arm is tucked under the pillow, the other is curled protectively around her ribs like she’s trying to hold herself together even in her sleep.

She’s wearing the shirt she left my house in, and her whole hip is exposed, baring her whole leg where the blanket slipped, showing off a tattoo that I suddenly have the urge to lick.

Fuck.

I don’t look away soon enough, and I feel the all too familiar ache pressing against the front of my pants. The violent timing couldn’t be worse. My cock twitches like it wants to finish the job, but even the devil couldn’t ruin her the way I plan to.

I should turn around, forget I was ever here, and let her keep pretending she’s safe. But then I remember his hands on her while he kissed her mouth like it belonged to him.

My hands curl into fists.

My cock is still fucking hard, and all I can think about is what she’d sound like if I buried my fingers in her—if she’d wake up moaning my name, just like she did when she was bleeding on my kitchen counter.

I take a step closer to wake her up and find out, when she shifts and murmurs something under her breath. Her fingers twitch against the pillow, and her leg jerks. “Don’t touch me?”

My spine locks, and my fingers flex at my sides.

What the fuck is she dreaming about now?

Her legs shift again, dragging the hem of the shirt higher, and I don’t realize I’ve stepped closer until I feel the heat rolling off her skin.

I’m right at the edge of the mattress now—close enough to catch the jerky rise and fall of her breath, and the shallow, panicked rhythm of a body trying to outrun something even while unconscious.

Her chest rises, and a sharp sound rips from her throat—choked and raw.

It dies halfway out of her mouth, strangled by sleep and instinct.

But it’s enough to make me freeze in place as heat travels up the back of my neck.

Her arm twitches against the pillow like she’s trying to fight something off.

Her head turns sharply and her lips move until they finally spit one broken word.

“Please.”

I’m standing there, hard as a fucking rock, breathing through my teeth, watching her unravel. I don’t even realize I’m touching her until I’m brushing a strand of hair back from her face. If I don’t touch her, I might break something.

She twitches at the contact, and a soft whimper escapes her lips. “Figures. The first time you beg me, you don’t even know you’re doing it.”

She stirs again, sighing as her body relaxes. I let my gaze drag over the bruises, the curve of her hip, the soft part of her inner thigh still exposed from where the blankets slipped. She’s wrecked, and she’s still the most fucking dangerous thing I’ve ever touched.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” I murmur. “It doesn’t matter who took you before… they won’t be the ones to keep you.”

Her lips part on another breathless whimper, and my cock throbs.

There’s a part of me—black and hollow—that wants to press a knee to the mattress, crawl over her and whisper into her ear until she says my name instead of his. She’d forget every hand that’s ever touched her before mine.

But I don’t.

I want her to wake up knowing I was here—and that I will be again.

She’s breathing softly, as her chest rises slowly, like whatever chased her in that dream finally let go. But her fingers are still clenched in the pillowcase, and that does something to me I don’t fucking like.

I turn away, walking back through her room like I haven’t already memorized every inch of it. The soft rustle of my coat is the only sound as I pass the bathroom—then stop.

A pair of black lace looks like it was slung by the door like an afterthought. She must have peeled them off mid-step and kept walking, bare and unbothered. My filthy little liar.

I crouch down, lifting the soft scrap of fabric like it weighs more than it should and tuck them into my coat pocket. This isn’t some fuckboy fantasy, this is about control. It’s a reminder that she let me in. Even if she didn’t mean to.

I step back into her room one last time, and she doesn’t stir as I pull a notecard from my coat and set it on the nightstand—Impossible to miss.

She’s under my skin—crawling deeper no matter how much I pretend she’s not. Twisting her way into places I don’t let anyone fucking near.

I reach into my coat pocket and pull out the black lace panties, looking at them like they have the answers I’m looking for.

She sat on my counter in these. She came in them. Now they’re in my hand, and the scent of her still clings to them. I close my fist around the lace, feeling more frustrated than ever.

She’s not just taken, she’s claimed. He touches her like she’s a fucking ornament on display. And she smiles for him and plays the part. Yet, I’ve had that same mouth open against mine. I’ve felt her break and go quiet. I know what she feels like when she gives in.

She can lie to him all she wants—hell, she can lie to herself all she wants, but her body isn’t capable of knowing how to fake it for me and that’s what matters.

The only problem is, she doesn’t need someone like me. She needs someone safe. Someone normal. And I’ve never been any of those fucking things. I’m the thing you send when you want someone erased. The one you hire when pain needs a name. I was trained to vanish. To ruin and leave.

And yet—here I am, holding her ruined lace, with no intention of walking away.

I can feel my cock getting hard again. It’s been hard since I watched her sleeping in my shirt, leg bare, and those fucking lips of hers parted. She doesn’t even know what she does to me or how close I came to waking her up with my hands around her throat and her name between my teeth.

It’s fucked. I know that.

She needs to remain at arms length, and she needs to stay scared of me.

My phone buzzes on the counter and I grab the device, checking the screen.

Travis : Got something you’re going to want to see. Sending now.

A second ping, and it’s another file. Encrypted—of course. Layers buried under aliases and multiple offshore shell dumps meant to hide a money trail. This is the kind of mess these people specialize in. The kind I used to clean up when I still took contracts.

Only this one wasn’t cleaned up well enough, because it took Travis all of two hours to crack the thing.

I open the file, expecting another shell property or another side account, but it’s not. This isn’t just a routine property transfer.

What the fuck?

What does Puerto Rico, and a private estate have to do with anything?

It’s hidden in plain sight with two dead board members and a sealed beneficiary file.There’s no listed name and no signature.

But the money trail doesn’t lie. The last three tax payments are tied to a traceable account.

An account that leads to a name I didn’t expect.

Rivera.

The trail isn’t perfect, it’s filtered through several accounts that don’t match. But it’s enough to know where it didn’t come from.

I scroll slower this time, thinking I had to have missed something. The next document he sends is a smaller file, half-corrupted, like it’s been passed through too many hands. A bank log of a seven figure transfer.

There’s no signature, but the route is familiar. It’s one of the shells I flagged months ago. I scroll slower, then I see the name on the ledger.

DeLuca, F. C.