Page 45 of Vicious Behaviors (The Next Vicious Generation #3)

She shifts closer, threading her fingers through mine. But then her gaze lands on my hands. The bruises… the blood… Aldo’s dried blood, still etched in the lines of my knuckles.

Her back goes rigid and her breathing shallows when she asks, “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Did you hurt someone?”

“Yes.”

“Did they deserve it?”

“Yes.”

“What did they do?”

“They killed an innocent woman. His wife. In front of her baby girls.”

I feel her entire body stiffen in my arms at the horrid images I just planted in her head.

A deafening silence ensues as I wait for her to kick me out of her bed.

“Will he ever be able to hurt anyone else?” she asks instead, her voice barely audible.

“No.”

Only then do her muscles slowly begin to relax. The reaction should surprise me. She’s a federal agent, after all, sworn to uphold the law. But I guess even Izzie has seen her fair share of demons. And tonight, with her now lying in my arms, mine have finally stopped whispering.

“You’ve seen evil too, haven’t you?” I ask, wondering where her head is at after such a confession.

“When I was deployed in Afghanistan, there was this boy…” she starts, wrapping my arm tighter around her.

“He was always out in the street with his older brother, bouncing a tennis ball against a wall. One day, when we were patrolling the area, he introduced himself. He said his name was Arsalan. He asked if I wanted to play with him, since his brother no longer had time for him.” Her voice softens, almost distant now, as if she were still there.

“I told him yes. That I could play for a few minutes.” She pauses, takes a breath.

“Arsalan loved tennis. He didn’t have a racket, so he used his palms to slap the ball onto a wall instead.

We talked a lot during those games. His dream was to move to America and marry Serena Williams after growing up.

” She lets out a sad, short laugh. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him she was already married with kids close to his age.

I can still hear his laugh. It was so full of life.

Contagious. Before long, everyone in my unit would take turns playing with him when we patrolled his neighborhood.

He’d wait for us. Tennis ball in hand. Like we were the best part of his day. ”

“What happened to him?” I ask quietly, already sensing the sad ending of this story.

“One day… he wasn’t smiling when we arrived, and his older brother was standing next to him.

I knew something was wrong. I could see it in Arsalan’s eyes.

He looked at me through the truck window, begging me not to step out of it.

” Izzie’s voice grows more strained with each word that falls from her lips.

“But one of my guys had already jumped down from the lead vehicle, holding a tennis racket we’d managed to get shipped to the base.

Not just any racket, one signed by his favorite tennis player, Serena herself.

We even got a red bow to wrap around the handle.

I saw the tears in Arsalan’s eyes when the guys walked over to hand it to him—tears because he knew he’d never get to play with it. ”

She takes a minute to gather the courage to relive that day, provoking a silence so heavy I can feel it pressing into the space between us.

“Then all I saw was fire. A flash. The truck in front of us exploded, the force lifting ours into the air. I made it out alive that day, but not all of us were so lucky. We lost eight men and ten civilians who were just going about their everyday routine. And Arsalan… Arsalan was gone. The bomb was strapped to him.” She swallows hard, then continues, barely audible.

“His brother had been recruited by the Taliban months earlier, and we missed it. Knowing his brother was so genuine and sweet, he used Arsalan to get close to us. The poor kid didn’t even know…

he thought he was just making new friends.

And once his brother was sure we didn’t see Arsalan as a threat, he strapped his tiny body in enough explosives to kill us all.

His own brother didn’t care. Not about blood. Not about innocence. Only the cause.”

I press a kiss to her temple and hug her from behind.

“Devils love to roam free in those who believe they’re too virtuous for sin,” I tell her, though I know it offers her little comfort.

She turns around, eyes shining with tears, and looks up at me. Her usual liquid sunshine-colored gaze now filled with misery cracks something open inside me.

“How can someone kill the person they say they love?” she asks, her voice trembling. “What kind of monster does that?”

“The worst kind,” I confess, getting lost in her eyes.

Izzie’s fingers trace over my bruised knuckles and the dried blood on my skin. Any other woman would be frightened at the sight, but not her.

Not my Izzie.

I half expected her to pull away from me after learning what I’ve done, yet she is pulling me closer.

“Izzie,” I breathe out her name, only for her to place her fingers on my lips.

“Would you ever hurt me?”

“ I would never hurt you,” I hear myself say, my voice raw and desperate for her touch.

“Would he? ”

Her question should send me running for the hills. How does she know when some of my closest family members have turned a blind eye to it?

“Would he hurt me, Marcello?” she repeats, with resolve.

“Yes,” I confess, my eyes lowering from her intense gaze.

However, Izzie will have none of it. She lifts my chin with one finger, staring deep into my eyes, as if they held the answer to all her questions, doubts, and fears.

“I don’t believe you,” she whispers softly, shifting her leg to straddle me.

Once fully seated on top of me, she leans down to my lips and kisses me so softly, my heart weeps at her tenderness.

I then feel her fingers pull down my zipper, just as her tongue invades my mouth.

I groan at her soft touch, as she pulls my hard cock out of its confinement, ready to return to her warmth.

I hiss out when she wraps her hand around my girth and gives it two tortuous strokes before centering it to her soaked core.

“Fuck, bella, ” I growl, before deepening our kiss.

My fingers dig into the softness of Izzie’s flesh, guiding her hips up and then thrusting deep inside her. She whimpers, her nails digging into my skin as she arches back, her long hair cascading over her shoulders like a beautiful silk curtain.

I become mesmerized when she starts swaying her hips to the rhythm of my heartbeat.

We move slow. No rush. No games. Just skin against skin, breath tangled with breath, a rhythm that says we’re still here.

Even after all the ugliness we endured, that we have faced, there is still something left in this world worthy of holding onto.

Izzie’s hips roll against me, slow and sure, my hands gripping her waist, her thighs, her spine.

I clutch her like a man who’s seen hell and needs her pure heart to remind him who he is beneath the monster.

When she finally lets go, trembling against me, I follow suit, burying my face into the crook of her neck, breathing her in as if she were the only oxygen left in the world.

Once her soul has returned to her body, she curls into my chest, arms wrapped tightly around me.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” she whispers after a little while.

“Neither did I,” I answer honestly, pressing a kiss to her hair.

“Will you be here in the morning?”

“Yes.”

That’s all Izzie needs to hear for her body to instantly relax, her breath slowing until sleep fully takes her under.

Still, just as her soft breathing starts lulling me to sleep, a cold shiver runs through my bones.

I shut my eyes and tighten my grip around her, praying to whatever God is still listening to keep the devil away from her.

To keep her safe. Since I’m not sure I can.