Chapter Thirty-Eight
Adriana
It’s my turn.
I push him back onto the bed, slip the makeshift blindfold around his head, and decide that’s not enough.
“Adriana?” He says, his blindfolded head turning left and right as I slip off the elegant bed and head to the nightstand, searching, hoping, because if there’s a place that’s likely to have something extra available bedside, it’s this suite in a Triad drug and gambling den.
I slide open the drawer of the nightstand and smile down at a pair of steel handcuffs and a set of keys, resting comfortably in the drawer next to a Gideon Bible and a comic book showing big-breasted women having sex with tentacle monsters.
I close the drawer and turn back to him, the cold metal warming in my palm. He's still blindfolded, still waiting, his chest rising and falling with measured breaths that betray his anticipation.
"Give me your hands," I command, climbing onto the bed and straddling his hips.
He hesitates for just a moment before raising his arms above his head. I guide his wrists to the ornate metal headboard, feeling the way his muscles tense as the steel clicks into place around first one wrist, then the other. The sound echoes in the quiet room like a promise.
Now he's completely at my mercy — blindfolded, bound, helpless beneath me.
The thought sends a dark thrill through my chest, and for a moment I imagine how easy it would be to interrogate him like this.
To demand answers about what Eng was really trying to tell me, about the shadows in Ricky's past that keep dancing at the edges of my vision.
The doubt creeps in like poison, whispering questions I'm not ready to hear. What if there's more to Vanessa's story? What if —
No, I push the thoughts away, burying them deep. I love him. That's what matters. Whatever truth might lurk in those dark corners, I'm not strong enough to face it. Not tonight.
Instead, I lean down and press my lips to his throat, feeling his pulse jump against my mouth. His skin tastes like salt and danger and something uniquely him. I trail kisses along his collarbone, mapping the landscape of scars and tattoos with my tongue, each mark a story I want to memorize.
"Adriana," he breathes, and my name on his lips sounds like a prayer.
My hands explore the hard planes of his chest, fingers tracing the ink that decorates his skin like a roadmap of pain and survival.
I love this man beneath me. I love him, and I want to keep him.
But even as my fingers wander over him, my mind wanders, too, and drifts to a single name: my sister, Vanessa.
Reaper and I could die tomorrow, or even sooner, doing whatever vile favor it is we need to do for Charlie Eng and his Triads, and I wonder if my sister felt this way before she died — swept up in love, facing an unknown future, fighting desperately to avoid thinking about her death.
Am I just repeating her mistakes?
“Where’d you go?” he whispers, his voice warm, calming, inviting, consuming, and I shake my head and smile.
“Nowhere. I’m right here,” I lie.
Another shake of my head, a sigh that I exhale while leaning down and pressing my lips to his chest. A desperate attempt to keep myself anchored to this moment, to him, to not be thrown about by the storm that seems to surround this wounded, broken, loving man.
I want him.
I love him, and I want him.
I hope — hope — that doesn’t cost me everything.
My mouth finds the hollow of his throat where his pulse hammers against my lips. I can taste the salt of his skin, feel the way his breathing catches when I drag my teeth gently across his collarbone. His body responds to every touch, every kiss, arching beneath me despite the restraints.
I map the constellation of scars across his chest with my fingertips, each one a story I'm learning by heart.
The long thin line near his ribs from a knife fight he told me about.
The puckered mark on his shoulder from a bullet that missed anything vital by millimeters.
These are the marks of survival, of a man who has walked through hell and somehow made it out alive.
When my hands slide lower, tracing the defined muscles of his abdomen, he makes a sound low in his throat that sends heat spiraling through me. This is what I need to focus on — the way he responds to me, the way his body knows mine even when he can't see or touch.
"You're thinking too much," he murmurs, and I wonder how he can read me so well even blindfolded.
"Maybe," I admit, pressing a kiss just below his sternum.
He's right, though. My mind keeps drifting to dark places — to Vanessa, to questions I'm not ready to ask, to a future that feels as uncertain as smoke. But here, now, with him helpless beneath me and trusting me completely, I remember why I fell for him in the first place.
It wasn't just the magnetic pull of his damaged soul calling to mine. It was the way he looked at me that morning in the kitchen of our hideout, making me breakfast like it was the most natural thing in the world to want to treat me right, despite everything that’s happened between us.
The way his eyes — those bright, impossible eyes — seemed to see past all my defenses to something deeper. Something I didn't even know existed.
He sees the darkness in me and doesn't flinch.
Doesn't try to fix me or save me or convince me I'm something I'm not.
He understands I need to fight for people who can't fight for themselves, that violence sometimes lives in the same space as justice in my heart.
And somehow, impossibly, he loves me for it.
My lips trail lower, following the path my hands have traced. He strains against the handcuffs, a soft curse escaping him when I lavish attention on a particularly sensitive spot.
"Adriana — "
“Shhh," I whisper against his skin. "Let me."
I need this. Need to worship him with my mouth and hands, need to memorize every inch of him in case tomorrow brings the ending that people like us so often get. The thought terrifies me more than any gun or knife ever could.
What scares me isn't dying. It's losing him.
Losing him… and losing myself.
I force myself to stay present, to focus on the way his skin feels warm and alive beneath my palms. My hands slide across the hard ridges of his abdomen, feeling the way his muscles contract under my touch. He's beautiful like this - vulnerable yet strong, completely mine in this moment.
When I trace the tattoo that curves along his hipbone, he makes that sound again, deeper this time. His wrists strain against the handcuffs, and I can see the tension in his shoulders as he fights the urge to reach for me.
"Easy," I murmur, pressing kisses along the path my fingers have traced. "I've got you.”
And I do. Right now, in this bed, in this stolen moment between violence and uncertainty, I have him completely. The thought should make me feel powerful, but instead it fills me with something softer. Something that scares me more than any gun ever could.
Don't think about Vanessa. Don't think about the overdose. Don't think about what he might have…
I kiss him harder, trying to drown out the whispers in my head.
His response is immediate and electric, his whole body arching toward me despite the restraints.
This is what I need to remember - the way he sees me.
Not as broken goods or damaged cargo, but as someone worth protecting.
Someone worth those careful breakfasts he makes, standing at the stove in just his jeans while I watch from the kitchen table, marveling that someone like him wants to take care of someone like me.
Those eyes of his — God, those impossibly bright eyes — they look at me like I'm something precious.
Like my darkness doesn't scare him, it completes him somehow.
He understands I carry a gun because sometimes that's what it takes to protect people who can't protect themselves.
He doesn't try to talk me out of walking into danger; he just makes sure I don't walk into it alone.
My mouth finds the hollow where his neck meets his shoulder, and I feel him shudder beneath me. The handcuffs clink softly against the headboard as his hands flex, wanting to touch me back.
"Adriana," he breathes, and there's something in his voice - need, yes, but also something deeper. Something that sounds like forever, even though we both know forever isn't something people like us get to count on.
That's what terrifies me. Not the Triads or whatever sick job Charlie Eng has planned for us.
Not even the possibility that tomorrow might be our last day breathing.
What scares me is how much I love him. How completely he's worked his way into the spaces I didn't even know were empty.
How the thought of losing him makes me want to burn the entire world down.
I trail my lips lower, tasting salt and something uniquely him, trying to memorize everything about this moment. The way his breathing changes when I find that sensitive spot just below his ribs. The way he whispers my name like it's the only word that matters.
I hook my fingers into the waist of his jeans, feeling the heat radiating from his skin.
The denim is rough against my palms as I work the button free, then slowly drag the zipper down.
He lifts his hips to help me, and I take my time sliding the fabric down his legs, letting my hands trail along his thighs.
"You're killing me," he groans when I trace patterns on his skin instead of removing his boxers right away.
"Good," I whisper against his hipbone. "I want you to remember this."
When I finally slip his underwear down, he's already hard for me, and the sight makes something hot and possessive coil in my chest. I settle between his legs, running my hands up his thighs, feeling the tension in his muscles.
"Adriana, please — "