Page 20

Her voice is coated in venom, flat and ruthless, and she doesn’t even look sorry. She just stands there with the hammer hanging loose in her hand, chest rising and falling slowly, like she’s perfectly calm. Like, she didn’t just interrupt the best part.

I stare at her profile, at the tension in her jaw, at the strands of dark hair that have come loose around her face. She’s furious, but underneath that, there’s something else too, something hot and restless, something she always tries to bury under control.

I guess there’s only one thing to do.

“If you wanted to be fucked, you could have just asked,” I say, my lips curling into a grin.

“Fuck you. This has nothing to do with sex.”

She says it too quickly.

I laugh under my breath and step in behind her. Up close, I can smell sweat, metal, and the faint trace of her perfume buried underneath all the blood. I reach out, brushing her hair back from her neck, letting my fingers skim over her skin just enough to feel her go still.

“Liar,” I whisper. “You’ve been waiting all night for me to fuck you.”

My hands slide down from her shoulders to her waist, slow and deliberate, feeling the tension wound tight in her body. She doesn’t stop me. Don’t move away. I trail lower, stopping at the waistband of her trousers, and watch her reflection in the dark window as her eyes lift to meet mine.

“Please,” she says, and the word comes out smaller than I expect.

I smile against the side of her neck. “Please, what, Em? Tell me what you need.”

I bite lightly at her earlobe, and she shudders.

“I need you to touch me,” she says, voice unsteady now. “It’s been weeks since you last fucked me.”

And fuck, she’s right.

It has been weeks. We’ve been too busy preparing for tonight, too busy planning, watching, waiting, sorting out where to go and when to move. Every second has gone into violence, logistics, and cleanup. If we weren’t scouting locations, we were disposing of evidence. If we weren’t killing someone, we were sleeping in short, dreamless bursts or eating over the sink like animals.

Sex just fell off the table somewhere between the bloodstains and the body bags.

There are only so many times you can fuck bent over a counter after dragging a corpse through the back door before even that starts to feel routine. Only so many nights can you come down from the high of hurting people and pretend that means you’re still normal. At some point, you start wondering whether this is all there is, whether you crossed some invisible line so long ago there’s no point even looking for the way back.

But Emma doesn’t want introspection. Neither do I.

She wants release. Something sharp enough to cut through the noise in her head.

I turn her to face me at last, taking the hammer from her hand and dropping it to the floor with a heavy clang. Somewhere behind us, the man lets out a weak, unconscious groan, but neither of us pays him any attention now.

My hand closes around her throat, not tight, just enough to make her breathing catch. Her pupils blow wide. Blood is still drying on my fingers, probably smearing against her skin, but she only leans closer.

“That’s what you need?” I murmur.

She nods once.

It’s almost funny, really. The mess around us. The body on the floor. The copper stink of blood thickened in the room. And here she is looking at me like I’m the only thing she can see.

Maybe I am.

Maybe that’s the real problem.

I brush my mouth against hers, not quite a kiss, and feel her restraint fray at the edges.

“Then be good,” I whisper, “and maybe I’ll give you what you’ve been begging for.”

“Please, Max.” Almost a beg, but it’s so fragile I don’t think I could call it that. She’s looking at me, her eyes gleaming.

I slide my free hand down her stomach, stopping, I unloop the button to her jeans, sliding my hand down the inside her jeans, then I continue further down, hooking my finger on her lace panties before I place my finger on her clit and a scattered moan falls from her lips. Emma’s head falls back against my chest, her eyes fall closed and the little of what sun is left shines on her blue hair. She looks magnificent—something straight out of a movie. I remove my hand, leaving a bloody handprint—fucking beautiful.