Chapter Thirteen
Bianca
Tank’s hands press against my waist — hot, rough, and unapologetically possessive — lifting and pulling me onto the counter as though I am something meant to be his. The whole thing is so intense, so sudden, and I know I should stop him. I should also stop myself. Before this goes further. Before it becomes something I can’t control. But I don’t. I can’t. There’s a part of me that wants this, that needs it, that craves this overwhelming, searing feeling to take me over, to drown out the constant hum of stress and the gnawing worry that everything in my life—Safe House, the women, all of it—is about to fall apart.
His mouth captures mine, hungry and demanding, and his body leans in like he can’t get close enough, like there’s not enough space to fill with his heat.
I want him closer; I want him to consume me; I want more, need more.
“Give it to me,” I say, a desperate, ragged plea that makes something rumble deep in his chest. My heart thunders in response. His hands spread across my hips, holding me in place, fingertips pressing just enough to make me ache for more of him. I hear myself moan into the kiss, shameless and needy, a raw sound that I can hardly recognize as my own.
Tank pulls back just enough to let out a low chuckle and smirks against my lips. “Knew you were a moaner.” I should slap him for that. For being so smug. So sure of himself. Instead, I kiss him with everything I have, wild and breathless, feeling reckless and desperate.
The outside world falls away. There’s only Tank and his mouth and his hands and the way he makes me forget. I hardly notice the vibrations of my phone rattling against the counter. He’s kissing down my neck now, touching all the places that make my breathing hitch and my mind go blank. I arch into him, his name a whisper, a prayer on my desperate lips.
The parts of me I keep buried, the parts that long for more, for something real, are rising to the surface. I should bury them again. I should push him away. But I won’t. I can’t. He makes me feel alive, and real, and I want that so damn much. I need it more than air.
Annoying and relentless, the phone buzzes again, shaking insistently against the granite. I ignore it, burying my hands in his messy dark hair and pulling him closer until I am dizzy and weightless and consumed. Until there’s nothing but the two of us and everything I shouldn’t want.
Somewhere in the distance, the bell over the bakery door jingles, the chime thin and tinny compared to the storm raging in my head. I barely register it, barely let the sound puncture the cocoon of need wrapped so tightly around us. It repeats, trying to cut through the haze of urgency.
Then voices, loud male voices, follow. They echo off the walls, out of place in this little haven we’ve created, and they inch into my brain, familiar and unwanted. I can’t quite place them, but I know they’re from the life I’ve been trying to ignore, the life I’m trying to forget. Tank growls against my mouth, ignoring them like the buzzing of a fly.
But then someone shouts, a harsh staccato bark meant to get attention.
“Yo! Anyone working here, or what? You want us to just come behind the counter and serve ourselves?” The words hang in the air, cocky and sure, refusing to be pushed aside. Recognition slams into me, a shadow tainting the moment. I know that voice; I know that life.
Tank exhales sharply, frustrated now, and I bite back a smile at the way he doesn’t want to let this go, the way he hates interruptions that don’t involve us tangled together, reckless and lost in each other.
“Fucking hell,” he mutters, forehead resting against mine, still trying to cling to the now-fading heat between us. I can feel his hands on me, possessive and lingering, feel the pulse pounding loud in my throat. And I know — we’re both debating whether to keep going, and fuck the consequences, forget the world outside and everything that comes with it.
Then I hear it; a voice that makes my blood turn to ice, a voice that turns want to terror in the space of a single heartbeat. “I won’t be kept waiting.”
Victor. My brother. The world crashes back, brutal and unrelenting.
My stomach lurches. Every inch of me goes cold and rigid, a sharp, instinctual panic overtaking the heat in my veins. The old fear, the familiar fear, seizes me with merciless hands, squeezing hard. I shove Tank back, hard, breaking the kiss abruptly and without finesse.
His hands tighten on my waist, surprised at the sudden shift from lust to panic, from heat to ice. I don’t look at him. I can’t. He can’t see the fear in my eyes, fear that, even now, is suffusing my body and making it hard to breathe. I slide off the counter with all the grace of a stone, landing on my feet but feeling anything but steady.
Silent, panicked, mind racing, I try to wrap my brain around what's happening and what Victor wants and how to deal with it.
Tank’s voice is low, gruff. “What the hell?”
I barely hear him.
I turn toward the back room, toward the hallway leading deeper into the bakery.
Footsteps sound at the front of the shop.
Tank stiffens beside me.
That’s when I see it—the shift in him; it’s instantaneous; one moment, he’s just Tank—gruff, cocky, the insufferable baker brute with flour on his hands and an apron tied around his waist.
Then, his entire body language changes.
He casts a look to the front of the bakery, through the semi-open doorway that gives just a glimpse of the front, sees something, and then Tank goes utterly still.
Predatory.
Controlled, but coiled so tightly I swear the air around him shifts.
It’s the posture of a man about to go to war.
My heart pounds against my ribs.
I shouldn’t be here.
I need to get out of sight.
I barely think before I slip into the back hallway, pressing myself against the doorframe.
Just out of sight.
Just in time.
From my hidden spot, I can hear Tank’s footsteps as he moves toward the front of the bakery. Deliberate. Measured. Like a soldier walking into a battlefield.
My pulse slams in my ears, every beat a warning — of fear, of violence, of the evil that swirls around my brother like a plague.
"It’s about time.” Victor’s voice is casual, easy. “Been hearing good things about this place. Figured we’d stop in.”
Tank doesn’t answer right away. For a second, nothing happens. Then I hear his voice—calm, but razor-edged. “That so?”
My stomach twists. I know that tone.
It’s the same controlled menace I’ve heard from men like my brother. From dangerous men who don’t speak unless they’re about to do something lethal.
I grip the edge of the wall, my breath shallow.
It’s all balanced on a razor’s edge, and if I so much as breathe wrong — It’s all going to explode.