10. Malachi
MALACHI
The moon is a jagged hook above the pines. I’m walking back from the east wire with Dante, the silence between us heavy with the weight of maps and body counts, when a flicker of white catches my eye.
Savannah is a vision on her porch. She’s barefoot, her toes curled against the cold wood, her spine so rigid it looks ready to snap.
She doesn’t look at us. Her eyes are fixed on the treeline, wide and oscillating with a frantic, rhythmic pulse.
She’s breathing in shallow, jagged hitches—the sound of someone drowning in air.
"Go on," I tell Dante, my voice a mere breath. "I'll handle this."
"Don't do anything stupid, Mal."
He grunts, a sharp look toward the porch lingering before he disappears into the shadows of the main house. I don't approach like a predator. I don't creep. I let my boots heavy-step on the gravel so she hears me coming from ten yards out.
She flinches, her hand flying to her waistband before she remembers she’s in a nightshirt. She smooths her expression into that cold, porcelain mask I’ve come to loathe.
"Just scouting the wind, Malachi," she says. Her voice is a dry rasp. "Go back to bed."
I don't answer. I just sit on the step beside her, close enough to feel the frantic heat radiating off her skin. I pull a silver case from my jacket, flicking a match to life. The sulfur sting cuts through the mountain pine. I offer her one; she shakes her head, her gaze drifting back to the dark.
Five minutes pass. Ten. The wind groans through the eaves.
"Every time I shut my eyes, I’m back in that basement in Juárez," she says suddenly.
The words tumble out, unpolished and raw.
"The smell of bleach and copper. I hear them calling for Savannah—not Savage. They scream my name until it doesn't sound like mine anymore. I can’t... I can’t go back there tonight. "
I exhale a long plume of smoke, watching it vanish into the fog. I don't tell her it gets better. I don't offer the cheap currency of pity.
"Then don't go back," I say, turning my head to catch those fractured eyes. "Stay here. Talk to me instead of fading into the upholstery of your own skull. I’m far more entertaining than a ghost, and I promise I’m much harder to kill."
She looks at me then, her lip trembling just enough to ruin the mask. The honesty of the request—the simple, selfish desire for her company—stalls her out. For a second, the sniper is gone. There's just a girl, shivering in the dark, wondering if it's safe to stop fighting.
I don’t push. I don’t probe. I just sit there, cigarette forgotten between my fingers, and let the silence stretch like fresh stitches over an old wound.
She shifts first. Just a tiny motion—her fingers curling into the wood grain of the step like she’s clinging to something real.
"They made me watch," she says.
Her voice doesn’t crack. It doesn’t waver. It’s dead calm. A sniper’s report. Father first, slit ear to ear so he’d drown in his own blood. Mother next—they took their time. My brother lasted three days before they tossed what was left of him at my feet.
I don’t touch her. But I exhale slowly, deliberately, like we’re sharing the same air, the same wound.
"Christ," I murmur.
She tilts her head. "You don’t pray."
"No. But I recognize blasphemy when I hear it."
The corner of her mouth twitches. Not a smile—just a reflex. A flicker of life.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. "You know why I fucked every politician’s wife in D.C.?"
She raises an eyebrow.
"Because watching powerful men unravel when they can’t control a single goddamn thing in their lives?" I smirk. "Breathtaking."
For half a second, her mask slips. She sees me—the hollow cleverness, the decades of laughing so nobody noticed I wanted to scream.
Her hand brushes mine. Just once. A spark in the dark.
Neither of us mentions it. But we both feel it.
Her fingers suddenly twist in my shirt—a brutal, desperate grip—and then her mouth crashes against mine.
No hesitation. No tenderness. Just eight years of buried rage and grief and exhaustion detonating between us.
I don’t think. I react.
My hands lock around her waist, hauling her into my lap, her knees bracketing my hips. Her breath hitches against my lips—less surprise than relief, like she’s spent so long holding herself together that breaking feels inevitable.
I should savor this. Slow it down. But there’s no gentleness in the way her teeth catch my lower lip, no hesitation in how my fingers fist in her hair. Every touch is raw, reckless, an admission we’ll both regret later.
I can feel her shaking. Not fear—something worse. She’s starving, and I’m the first thing she’s let herself taste in years. I find her heated core beneath a thin cotton barrier—her panties—and yank them aside. I have to take her.
Her thighs tighten like coiled rope around my wrist—not resisting, but demanding, begging me deeper without words.
Every taut line of her body radiates tension, muscles locked in that dangerous harmony between fight and surrender.
The corded strength in her neck, the rigid press of her shoulders—she’s braced like this might kill her, her knuckles white where they twist in my hair.
"Fuck," she chokes out, the word splintering as her head snaps back, exposing the swift hammer of her pulse beneath pale skin.
I don’t give her mercy. Wouldn’t dare. She’d gut me for trying.
Instead, I twist my fingers inside her, pressing ruthlessly against that spot that makes her choke on air, adding a third before she can catch her breath.
Her hips buck wildly—not the calculated roll of someone playing at control, but the desperate jerk of a woman who’s spent years without letting herself want.
Her grip in my hair tightens to the point of pain, her spine arching sharply, as if she could physically escape the pleasure threatening to crack her open. The ragged sound she makes is half-growl, half-sob.
I drag my teeth lightly over the frantic flutter at her throat, grinning as her breath hitches. "Gonna come already, sweetheart?" I murmur, voice dripping with mocking sympathy. "Eight years starving yourself, and you’re this close to shattering already?"
Her arm snaps up, elbow locking against my windpipe in warning. "Shut up and fuck me."
I don’t—of course I fucking don’t. Instead, I lick a slow, filthy stripe along the shell of her ear, then whisper exactly how wrecked she feels around my fingers, how shamelessly slick and hungry she is after acting like she didn’t need a goddamn thing.
She hisses something vicious in Spanish, nails scoring red lines down my back, but I feel the exact second her body betrays her—her breathing fractures, thighs spasming, the first tremors of surrender working through her like a fault line splitting open.
Then—
Footsteps. Heavy boots on gravel.
Savannah freezes beneath me. For one terrifying second, I see the sniper snap back into place—the cold calculation in her eyes as she instantly catalogues exits, weapons, threats. The warmth of her drains away like someone pulled a plug.
I don’t move. Don’t breathe. The heat of my cock straining against my jeans is suddenly irrelevant.
Gideon rounds the corner. He stops dead. Takes in our tangled bodies, the way Savannah’s nails are still buried in my shoulders. His expression doesn’t change.
He steps closer.
Savannah’s knee locks against my ribs. A warning.
Gideon doesn’t even glance at her. He looms over us, dark eyes locked on mine, before flickering down to where my fingers are still buried inside her.
His mouth twitches. "Keep practicing, Mal," he says, voice rough with amusement. "I can smell your fucking pre-cum from here. You're just getting her ready for me, aren't ya?"
Savannah slowly turns her head toward me. I swallow.
The crack of Gideon’s knuckles echoes like a gunshot.
"You done playing with her yet?" He steps closer, looming over us. The shadows carve deep lines into his face, turning his scowl into something feral. His pale grey eyes flick between my fingers—still glistening with Savannah—and the red mark blooming on my jaw.
Savannah jerks away from me, yanking her nightshirt down with a violence that says she regrets every second of this. Every fucking inch of vulnerability.
I wipe my fingers against my thigh. "Don’t be jealous, Judge. There’s plenty of her to go around."
Gideon’s boot connects with my ribs before I can brace. Pain knifes through my side, hot and sharp, but I laugh through it anyway.
Savannah’s already at the cabin door, silhouetted in the dim light. She throws me a look over her shoulder—fury, yes, but something else. Something worse.
Panic.
Gideon grabs my collar, hauling me upright. "You think this is funny?"
"Not at all." I grin, tasting blood. "I think it’s terrifying."
His grip tightens. "Explain."
"She just realized she wants this. Wants all of it." My pulse thrums against his knuckles. "And the cartel’s last surviving ghost? She doesn’t do want. Isn’t allowed to. Need is a bullet to the skull, Gideon. And you just walked in on her loading the chamber."
He releases me with a shove. For a long moment, we both stare at the shut cabin door.
Inside, a chair scrapes—wood on wood. The sound of barricades going up.
I exhale sharply. "Congratulations. We broke the sniper."
Gideon’s jaw works. "Fuck you."
"Tempting. But I think we both know whose bed we’d rather be in tonight."
He doesn’t deny it.
That’s when I see it—the flicker under his anger. The same one Savannah just ran from.
Fear.
Not of her. For her.
Because wanting something means having something to lose.
And Hell Court’s Beast? He’s never lost gracefully in his life.