Page 70 of The Hitman's Prince

He flailed against me, cursing through gritted teeth at my tenderness. I did my best to hold him down, but his fist connected with my cheekbone hard enough for me to see stars. The impact sent me reeling backward, and I pressed my fingers beneath my eye, surprised to find blood.

“I don’t want your gentle fucking handling,” he seethed. “Do you think they’d give me this task if I wasn’t capable of it? I’ve killed people before, Orion. Just because I’m a masochist doesn’t mean I can’t wring the life out of someone with my bare hands, doesn’t mean I won’t put a fucking bullet in someone.”

Jacob’s eyes were wide and frantic, hands shaking as he spoke.

I realized why he’d brought us to his room and not mine.

With Vince’s nod of consent fresh in my memory, I crawled around Jacob and pulled his little black toy bag out from beneath his bed, and catching his angry stare, I unzipped it.

Chapter 52

Orion

The fucking man had a tawse in his bag. It was the first thing I saw and the only thing I reached for.

“Take off your clothes, priest,” I warned, voice low and serious. I wondered if this was how Vince felt when he made demands of me, drunk with power and hard enough to split a man in half.

Jacob glared at me, tugging his shirt over his head and off, then making quick work of his pants and shoving them down to the ground. He’d barely turned back away from me before I raised the strap in the air and brought it down across his shoulder blade. Immediately, he fell to his knees, an anguished cry tearing out of his mouth. Before he could breathe, I hit him a second time. His skin split from the force of the leather, tearing open old scars and fresh skin, and Jacob sobbed, collapsing forward onto the floor.

He was prostrate, but it wasn’t enough. I was angry, furious, irate…there wasn’t a word strong enough to describe the complicated mess of emotions that had exploded in the middle of my chest. How dare Vince ask this of me? Of us? How could he sit there and tell me I was expected to let Caspian make another attempt on his life? Hadn’t once been enough?

I brought the tawse down onto Jacob again, this time cracking the leather hard against his raised ass. His back bowed, but he made no real move to get away from my assault. He needed it as much as I did, but I worried if I didn’t stop, I would kill him. I thought of Caspian again, the way Vince was so careful with his handling. How horrible to have a love so fragile, I thought, bringing the tawse through the air again.

“Is this what you want from me, Priest?” I asked, splitting the skin on his legs open next. Blood beaded and pooled, racing down the backs of his thighs, onto his calves and onto the carpet. He was a mess, and I dropped the leather strap by his feet and sank to my knees behind him. With shaking fingers, I scooped up blood from the backs of his knees and shoved it into his ass.

He whimpered, so I spit down at the place our bodies were joined together and pushed back inside.

“Please fuck me,” he begged.

I wanted to. I wanted to so fucking much, but there was only so much of Vince I could find in myself. At the end of the day, I was still Orion Delmar, still a masochist who was in love with a prince who was about to die. Foras frantic as Jacob was, I was worse, and I yanked my belt off my pants before I could talk myself out of it.

Looping the leather around my throat, I rolled Jacob onto his back. He winced when the cuts on his back hit the rug, and I shoved the end of the belt into his hand.

“Hold it tight,” I whispered, spitting into my palm and getting my cock as wet as he deserved.

“Are you?—”

“Tight,” I repeated, spreading him open and shoving into him with one rough thrust of my hips.

Jacob cried out, arching off the floor and taking me deeper. His hand wrapped around the end of my belt and he pulled tight enough for me to see stars at the corners of my vision.

“What a commotion,” Vince said quietly from behind me. It was enough to bring Jacob’s angry gaze into focus, the way his knuckles were white around the edge of the belt. “And for what? To make a mess of a carpet that costs more than your life is worth?”

I dug my fingers into Jacob’s thighs, waiting for the stars to turn white, waiting for Vince to…do whatever he was about to do. My heart beat in my cock, throbbing against Jacob’s stretched rim, blood visible at the places we were joined because I’d smeared it all over him.

“Look at the two of you,” Vince said next, kicking the back of my foot with the toe of his shoe. “Neither of you able to get what you need without me.”

“Sir,” I rasped the honorific, because he was right, but I didn’t have the words to ask for what I needed in thatmoment. I would have given Jacob as much as I could muster, but it wouldn’t have been enough for either of us, and Vince…somehow he knew it.

“Keep it tight like he said.”

Behind me, a belt came undone, pants shoved out of the way. Vince spit. He opened the lube, and then the blunt crown of his cock pushed insistently at my hole. He flattened a palm against the middle of my back and pushed me down toward Jacob, letting my body open for him with the movement. He spit onto my ass again and then thrust inside, a growl between us that vibrated me down to my bones.

“Keep it tight, Priest,” Vince said again. “You do anything he tells you to do, do you understand?”

“Yes.” Jacob nodded and wrapped the belt around his fist, pulling it tighter around my neck and bringing our bodies closer together.

“He’s not afraid of death, are you?”