Page 24 of Stockholm (Angel of Mercy #1)

For a moment, he doesn’t move, just scans my face, my chest as I take shallow breaths. Then he rolls his hips—slowly, intentionally—against me and I gasp, feeling him hard against me, forcing an electricity to sing through me.

My mouth falls open, and he watches like I’m an experiment, like he’s testing some theory and I’m giving him exactly the results he expected.

“What—stop,” I say, shock making my voice shake. My arms fly to his chest, pushing on the hard planes, making him chuckle into the space below my neck as he flicks his tongue across the spot he’d been pressing into with his thumb.

A bang ricochets from the far side of the room, making me scream and Jesse turns to look behind him. A giant grin spreads across his beautiful face, and he looks back down at me. “Oh, just in time. Your hero.”

He sits up, turning off the bed to lean back on the dresser, crossing his arms across his chest.

I sit up, chest heaving, eyes pinging back and forth between the two of them. Jesse looks intensely pleased with himself, and Noah looks irritated.

Noah rolls his eyes at the words. “Hero’s not the word I would use. ”

I don’t say anything, still looking between the two nervously. I’m barely awake, having been pulled from sleep by the strangest of my two kidnappers.

Suddenly, another flare of anger lights in my chest. “When is someone going to tell me what’s going on here? Or am I just supposed to sit in bed for the rest of my life waiting for someone to come in and either yell at me or touch me?”

Jesse bites his lip at my words, then glances at Noah, who’s watching me. My heart pounds. For some reason I don’t think they’ll hurt me, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make things extremely unpleasant.

Noah speaks slowly, like he’s not totally sure how much to reveal. “You were told why you were here.”

I huff a laugh. “Right. My husband made you upset. You’ve told me he took something from you, but that’s it. Did he steal from you? Date your sister? You’ve given me nothing . Just shoved me in here and locked the door. This is so unhinged.”

Jesse snarls, arms uncrossing and gripping the edge of the dresser. “Watch it, angel . You don’t know anything.”

Noah flicks his eyes to Jesse, then back to me. “Let’s just slow this down and think before we say too much.”

“Is that the plan? To keep me in the dark while you torment Eric? To never tell me why I’m here, but come in here and scare me whenever it suits your revenge?”

Taking the pain from myself and flinging it back at these men feels a little too good. The betrayal from yesterday still burns, along with today being my anniversary and the buildup of anger inside me needs somewhere to escape.

“Funny coming from you, annoyed at being kept in the dark by us,” Jesse snaps, and once again he’s in my face, lip lifted in a snarl that has me jerking my head back and hitting the headboard.

“While your piece of shit husband somehow fooled you while he fucked everything in sight. Including my baby sister. Including B—”

A thick bicep curls around Jesse’s throat, yanking him back from me. Noah’s hair flops over into Jesse’s face, growling in his ear as he pulls him back. “Not now. Not like this.”

Jesse puffs out an angry breath and turns, stalking from the room and slamming the door shut.

“What—what did that mean? Is that true?” I say, struggling to find my words as the stress of the confrontation makes my body shake. “Jesse’s sister, is that the Lily you were talking about?”

He looks at me, and I think he won’t answer. Then he tilts his head and pins me with a serious expression. “Jesse’s little sister, Lily, got involved with one of your husband's friends. They introduced her to Eric. To your husband,” he says, watching my expression.

I’m shaking my head, but not because I don’t believe what he’s saying.

Because everything I’m learning is so insane, so contradictory to what I thought I knew.

But he had proven to me already about the other lie.

In fact, I’m surprised how easily I now believe this information.

“Is that why he hates me? Is that why you hate me?”

His brow furrows. “I don’t hate you.”

I scoff. “Could have fooled me,” I mutter, looking down at my hands folded in my lap.

“We weren’t sure at first, you understand. A lot of our contracts deal with traffickers and pedophiles. It’s our niche, yeah? Sometimes the wives know what their husbands do and ignore it. Sometimes their comfort means more to them than not being married to a monster. We weren’t sure about you.”

“And?” I shrug. “What about now? What do you think of me now?”

A smirk tilts at his lips, his eyes bright for a moment. “Now, I think Eric was right. Maybe you’re the closest I’ve seen to an angel.”

Once more, he steps forward and my heart jumps to my throat. “Maybe, you are just innocent.” He stops at the edge of the bed, lowering forward so that his hands press into the sheets. “Maybe you didn’t see the bad in him because you were just too good. ”

It’s like being hypnotized, when Noah looks at you.

“Did Jesse touching you make you feel good, angel?”

My throat catches. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why? Does it hurt when I remind you of him? Of your anniversary today? Or do you not feel so angelic when you’re with us? With me?”

His hands creep forward, and I watch as they get to my ankles, grazing them, circling them with his big hands.

“I think you liked how he grabbed you, how he put his hands around your throat.” His eyes drop to my neck, where he can surely see the red mark from Jesse’s fingers. “I think you liked that very much.”

Why am I not screaming? Not pushing him off? Instead I’m positively drowning in his gaze.

“What about if it was me, Emma?” His hands on my ankles slowly tug so that my legs are slightly spread, and then he fills the space with his hard body, pressing down on my shoulder so that I sink under him. He does it so smoothly that it’s like I’m an observer.

Heart jack hammering in my chest, my thighs try to close but when they meet his hips they fall open. Accepting.

I don’t want him to stop.

It’s terrifying

It’s…

It’s not what an angel would do.

And that does it; I’m not an angel, the nickname starting to scrape at me in a way I wasn’t aware was possible.

I’d been perfect. I’d been so good. And look where it had landed me.

Literally in hell.

“I’m not an angel,” I say again. A little more forceful.

“Why don’t you prove it,” he says, hovering his face just barely an inch away. The smell of his body wash, of his last cigarette, have me sinking.

Could I?

Do I dare ?

He hums, and I can feel it in my chest from where his arms bracket me. “Hmm. I didn’t think so.”

He starts to pull away, and I shut my eyes, frustrated with myself. With my frozen body. My restrained head.

“But I will,” he says softly, and my eyes blast back open just in time to see Noah rolling his body back against mine. Pinning me with his hips, his hands on mine.

His mouth on mine.

A tiny moan leaves me, shocking us both, but he smiles into the kiss. Flicking his tongue against my bottom lip, trapping it in his teeth and tugging on it.

I’ve never been kissed like this. It’s the single most erotic thing I’ve experienced. My thighs are clenching against his hips and he looks down to where we meet, rolling slowly so I can feel his hardness against my clit.

I’m lost already. There’s no framework for how or what I should think or feel. Eric had always laid me down with soft touches and light kisses, like I was a princess.

Noah looks at me like he could devour me whole, and I’d cry for him to keep going.