His lips twisted. "So brave for so early in the morning."
"Not brave, just pissed off with you hovering. Who knew the heir to the Five Points wouldn’t be able to make a decision about a little woman?" I jeered.
"There’s nothing little about you," he rumbled.
"Should I take that as a compliment?"
A laugh grated out from between his lips. "Your personality is bigger than your ass," he said wryly.
"I repeat, should I take that as a compliment?"
His hands dropped, and just when I thought he was going to pull away, to back off and disappointment started to strum through me, a shadow of grief too, he dropped them to my waist and, skin to skin at last, slid them around and down until he was cupping my ass.
I groaned when he squeezed my cheeks then tugged them apart. His fingertips did that searing thing again, so that I felt them in my sit spot and right between the crease where my pussy and ass almost met.
Biting my lip, I rasped, "Is that a declaration of intent?"
"You don’t want to be in my world."
"I spent my whole life studying your world," I countered. "If anything, I know what I’m coming up against."
"You had a taste of it yesterday. Why the fuck couldn’t you just stay out of trouble?" he snarled.
"You said you agreed with me blowing the whistle at TVGM," I retorted, not afraid to get in his face about that.
"I do, I did, but you didn’t have to get wrapped up in this Sparrows’ shit." He released a breath that gusted over my lips, and then stunned the hell out of me by leaning down and pressing his forehead against mine. "Why couldn’t you just marry a TV executive and have kids and settle down and be safe?"
I knew it was a rhetorical question. The man had just told me he’d doctored my wounds because he couldn’t stand his brothers' hands on me, for Christ’s sake. But still, rhetorical or not, it made me freeze. Well, every part of me except for my tongue which, as usual, came to my aid.
"If that’s how you feel," I ground out, "how you really goddamn feel, if you’d prefer another man to be touching me, to be fucking me, to be filling my pussy with his seed then—"
He snapped.
I felt the break in his control. Felt it, reveled in it, luxuriated in it.
His hands didn’t just hold me now, didn’t just squeeze, they bit into me.
Hard.
Nasty.
Tight.
Firm.
Fast.
He wasn’t going to let me go.
Thank God for small mercies.
Fifteen
Aidan
The first moment we’d met, I’d learned she was a pusher.
She pressurized everything and everyone around her. I knew that. I just never thought she’d be able to do that to me.
But the thought of another guy fucking her, of him getting her pregnant—as much as I wanted the temptation out of the way, I couldn’t stand it.
Whatever the fuck it was between us, something that acted like a massive, supercharged electro-goddamn-magnet, it couldn’t handle her belonging to another.
I couldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t allow it.
I’d dealt with her hook-ups over the years, frightening them off when I thought they were getting too close after I ran background checks on them, all while I’d hoped she’d find someone better than me.
Instead, she’d confirmed what I already knew—she had shitty taste in men.
But her taunts made the beast inside me snap. The beast who’d pulled at the chains I’d looped around its neck whenever another man had approached her, tore free of the restraints, finally liberated from my desire to keep her safe from this world.
It had one thing in mind—a feral need to claim her.
I knew she felt it because she tensed, but curiously, she didn’t pull away. That would have been smart. The intelligent thing to do, and as clever as she was, I knew she was too curious for her own good. Years of researching my family would have told her that, pre-Oxy, my control was legendary.
She wanted to see it break.
She wanted to be the one to rupture it.
I could read her with an ease that didn’t come to me when I was reading a fucking book.
After the day’s events with barely any sleep, I’d admit that now wasn’t the right moment for her to be taunting me.
Adrenaline was riding me high, and bloodlust flew alongside it.
I hated what happened after I killed a man. I hated it because it was like a sickness in my blood, as addictive as fucking Oxy.
I felt like my da at those moments, felt as crazed as him, and that was good for no one. If I shared that same sickness...
God.
Just the thought made me want to push her away, but that image came to me again and the beast snapped its jaws in fury. I’d started it, I knew that, but she’d perpetuated it.
The thought of her round with child.
Another man’s fucking child.
No.
Just no.
A snarl escaped me as I dropped my head, bowing it until our mouths were a hair’s breadth from one another’s. I could no more hide this from her than I could hide the boner I knew was pushing into her stomach.
"Last night’s intruder... would you like to know his name?"
She tensed, her head rearing back with surprise. "W-What?"
"Would you like to know his name?" I taunted, even though I’d never tell her. Would never sully her that way. But I wanted her distracted. Wanted her scared. The beast wouldn’t let her go, but if she was scared, she might run, and that was the only way I could save her from me.
The beast would never hurt her.
I could never hurt her.
She swallowed. "You know it?"
"I know everything. The first time he pissed his pants in kindergarten and how many goddamn brothers and sisters he has."
Her mouth quivered. "Y-You tortured him?"
"I did." Brennan’s crew might have started it, but I’d fucking ended it. "Do you want to know what I’m capable of, Savannah? You think you know, you think you’ve read enough shit, but I don’t think you have.
"Because as clinical as it can be on a piece of paper, written by a journalist whose job it is to note the facts down with ink not blood, it’s never the same as knowing it firsthand."
Her throat bobbed. "I can handle it."
"Are you sure? Are you sure you want to know what I did in your name? How I sliced and fucking diced him to make him pay for daring to cut you?"
Her eyes flared, and her tits jiggled as she released a soft gasp. Her breathing came hard and fast. "Tell me," she demanded, her fingers digging into my pecs.
"Do you want to hear how I flayed him alive? How I made him beg for death? All so that I’d know who paid him to get to you?"
"Y-You skinned him?" she breathed, her eyes wider still.
"I did. Parts of him," I corrected. "Other parts I just cut. A thousand cuts to make him pay for that single one on your thigh." A sharp laugh escaped me. "Been a long time since I’ve gone to that much effort."
"You did for me though."
"I did." My mouth tightened as I saw her shiver, but not with revulsion like I’d hoped. Not with appreciation either. A complex mixture of desire and fear that was as intriguing as the woman herself.