Page 122 of Shadowed Sins: Nitro

She turns toward me, and I see her face clearly for the first time. No rage. No excitement. Just calm satisfaction, like she's completed a particularly challenging routine.

Blood decorates her dress like abstract art. Bodies surround her like fallen rose petals. She's not even breathing hard.

"Are you hurt, sweet boy?"

This should terrify me. Watching her kill eight people to protect me should make me question everything about her.

Instead, watching her unleash that deadly grace because I was bleeding—because someone hurt me—makes something primitive and possessive roar to life in my chest.

Her priorities have shifted, and I'm at the center of that shift.

She approaches me with the same fluid grace she used to end lives, her hands gentle as they examine my wounded shoulder.

"Remy will be here soon." She presses her palm against the wound with practiced efficiency. "The bleeding is manageable."

Her touch is infinitely gentle—the same hands that just carved through eight armed men now providing medical care with surgical precision.

"All hostiles neutralized. Package secured. Medical attention required."

Cole's update reaches us as Mira maintains pressure on my shoulder.

"Mira—"

"They would have killed you." Simple statement. No justification needed.

For her, it really is that simple.

I stare into her eyes, searching for some sign of the woman who cried over childhood memories. She's there, but underneath layers of lethal competence that take my breath away.

Her weapon-self isn't gone. It just finally found something worth killing for.

And that revelation should terrify me more than watching her dance through eight armed men.

Instead, it makes me want her more than I've ever wanted anything in my life.

"You're not afraid."

"I should be."

"Yes. You should be."

Her thumb traces my jawline, leaving a streak of someone else's blood on my skin. I lean into the touch despite everything.

She's right. I should be terrified. Instead, I catch her wrist, press her palm flat against my racing pulse.

"Feel that? You did that. Not the gunfight, not the blood—you."

Her fingers curl against my throat, feeling the hammering rhythm of my heartbeat.

Which means I'm either completely fucked up, or completely in love.

Probably both.

twenty-eight

Mira

"You're bleeding through the bandage."