Chapter 27 #2
He released one of my arms slowly, like letting go of a loaded weapon. His right hand went to his back. Pulled.
The Sig Sauer P226 Legion emerged into the cold light like a piece on an altar. Silver barrel worn from use. Dark wood grip marked by years of sweat and dried blood. The gun that slept on his nightstand every night. The gun I saw every morning when I woke with my head on his chest.
He held it out to me by the barrel.
The metal was still warm from his body, and when it touched my palm, I felt like I was holding something alive.
“Cassian… I already have the Glock.”
That Glock I had learned to respect as an extension of my survival. The Glock I never thought I'd need to use.
“Take this one.”
His voice scraped at the end, almost broken. More human than he ever lets himself sound.
I took it.
The weight was different. More intimate. Dense with memory. As if the gun carried pieces of his soul in every scratch.
Cassian closed my fingers around the grip, one by one, as if sealing a vow.
“This one's never failed me,” he continued. “Lighter trigger. Smoother recoil. Nine thousand rounds without a single misfire. I want you holding my luck in your hand.”
His eyes burned in a way that made my whole body surge toward him and, at the same time, want to flee from the weight of what it meant.
“If someone gets past Franco… if someone opens that door… you don't ask for a name. Don't warn them. Shoot until the firing pin clicks empty. Then reload and shoot again. Understood?”
The word “shoot” tasted like iron in my mouth. I gripped the Sig tight and felt the wooden handle embrace my palm like a blood promise.
I nodded.
My throat closed around all the things I couldn't say without falling apart.
He pressed his forehead to mine.
Hot skin against hot skin. A simple gesture, and therefore more dangerous. I closed my eyes. The world shrank to his scent, his warmth, the ragged breathing I could feel against my upper lip.
“I hate this,” I confessed.
My voice trembled, a small quiver I couldn't hide.
“I hate that you have to leave. I hate this world that makes you be this.”
Cassian let out a short breath, as if I'd pressed a bruise in his chest.
“I know.”
His lips brushed my temple. Then my cheekbone. Then the corner of my mouth. Each touch was a question without sound.
“I wanted to give you Paris in April, Solaia.”
He said it like he was offering something tangible, something soft.
“Bad gallery openings. Dinners where we complain about the wine. I wanted to give you boredom. I wanted to give you peace.”
His voice broke on the last word. I felt the fracture at the tip of his tongue, and it split something open in me too.
I opened my eyes before the tears could choose for me.
“I don't want peace.”
The words came out raw, unadorned. I set the cup on some shelf. The sound of ceramic hitting wood echoed like a gunshot in the closet.
I slipped my free arm around his neck and pulled him down. The Sig pressed between our bodies, cold barrel against my sternum, a reminder that life can end in a snap.
“I want you.”
Whole. Alive. Coming home to me every night. I didn't need to say the rest. My body said it, my pulse said it, the way I pulled him to me without asking said it.
He groaned.
A guttural sound, pained, torn from deep in his chest. And then he kissed me.
It wasn't a polite goodbye kiss.
It was war.
His mouth fell on mine with the hunger of someone who'd been fasting for years.
Teeth clashed in a rough collision. Tongues met without delicacy, like blades seeking a weak point.
He lifted me off the floor effortlessly, hands under my thighs.
The world tilted and I felt the air turn colder when my feet left the carpet.
He pressed me against the closet wall, firm wood at my back.
I wrapped my legs around his waist with the same reflex you'd use to grab an anchor in the middle of the sea.
I felt his hardness pulse against me through the layers of fabric. The gun still between us, cold barrel grazing my left breast with each movement. The perversity of it set me on fire.
Cassian bit my lower lip until I moaned into his mouth. A short, sharp, delicious pain. He licked the throbbing spot like an apology and a threat.
His hands traveled up my back. I felt the path of his fingers like lines burning beneath my skin. He grabbed my hair, pulled my head back to expose my throat. Teeth sank into the throbbing vein. He sucked there until I knew tomorrow there'd be a mark.
I wanted there to be a mark.
I wanted bruises shaped like his mouth so my body would remember when he was far away.
He carried me to the center island and set me on the cold marble surface.
The shock of the marble ripped a gasp from me that turned to impulse.
My fingers climbed his chest, finding clinging fabric, and I pulled the thermal shirt over his head in one stroke.
The knit scraped against me. His scars appeared in the cold air like maps.
I ran my nails over them, reading what I'd already read a thousand times, only now with fear rubbing salt inside.
The smell of man—sweat, gunpowder, and desire—filled the air like gas.
Cassian opened my sweatpants with one hand. The fabric yielded in a whisper. He pulled them down along with my panties, leaving me exposed to the freezing marble. My body reacted in a spasm that was half cold, half hunger.
He growled low, a sound I'd learned to recognize as the point of no return.
His mouth descended along my neck, chest, belly. His tongue left hot trails that contrasted cruelly with the cold marble. When he found my center, it was with cruel and worshipful precision, as if he knew the map better than I did.
I screamed his name toward the closet ceiling, my voice breaking into short echoes among expensive clothes.
My hands grabbed his hair, pulling, guiding, begging. I felt the strands between my fingers, damp with sweat, and fear transformed into another kind of madness.
When he rose, his eyes were black. Animal breathing. His nostrils flared as if the air itself were combustible.
He opened his tactical pants with rough movements, freeing himself with an urgency that seemed to hurt him. He entered me with a single deep, brutal, perfect thrust.
The sound I made was a rip.
I screamed again. My spine arched, fingers dug into his back. My legs locked around his waist as if I could keep him from leaving that apartment, that life, me.
He took me there, on the island where minutes before he'd been packing death. Each thrust was a wordless promise: I'm coming back. I'm coming back. I'm coming back. Each moan of mine was an answer: I'll wait, I'll kill for you, I'll die for you.
The cold marble beneath my thighs faded to a distant detail. The world was his weight, his scent, his rhythm inside me—as if he wanted to brand his body onto mine.
I came screaming his name against his neck, teeth sunk into his skin, marking him as he marked me. I tasted salt and man on my tongue. I felt my body shatter into waves that asked no permission.
He came right after, buried to the hilt, body trembling, face hidden in the curve of my shoulder. He murmured my name like an ancient Italian prayer, shaken in a way I'd never seen Cassian Varro shaken before.
We stayed like that for long seconds.
Bodies pressed together. Sweat binding us. Hearts trying to escape our chests. The entire closet seemed suspended in a hot vacuum, only our breathing cutting through the cold light.
Then he pulled away.
Slowly.
Like tearing off his own skin.
He straightened my clothes with hands that still trembled. Straightened his own in measured haste. The ice mask dropped like a steel visor. The soldier returned. His mouth revealed nothing but duty.
He picked up the bag from the floor.
“Lock the door. Upper manual lock. Phone on.”
His voice was crisp, commanding. I hated that I needed this and loved it.
“Cassian…”
Just one word. My whole heart in it.
“I'm coming back.”
He repeated it, his gaze driving into me like a stake.
“You're the only thing that matters. The rest can burn.”
He turned on his heel.
Walked to the front door.
I followed, barefoot, gun in hand, heart in my throat. The hallway outside the closet was suddenly too long. The cold wood floor seemed to protest with each of my steps.
Franco was out there with two men I didn't recognize. Short rifles hanging from their chests, faces shuttered like men who'd seen too much death. The hall air smelled of cold metal and rain seeping through the building's cracks.
Cassian didn't look back.
The door closed with a click I felt in my bones. Then came the clack-clack-clack of the three steel pins sliding home.
I turned the upper manual lock. The metallic sound echoed like a sentence.
I went to the floor-to-ceiling window.
The glass was ice-cold under my palms. Down below, I watched the black SUV pull out of the garage. Watched it blend into traffic like a shadow too good for this world. Watched it disappear.
The Sig Sauer weighed in my hand like a promise and a threat. The wooden grip was warm, as if it still held his warmth inside.
“Come back to me,” I whispered against the cold glass.
The city didn't answer. Only the November wind beating against the building like impatient fingers.
The apartment had never felt so large.
Or so silent.
Or so deadly.