Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
LUKA
I’m inside her in a flash, this woman I can’t get enough of. This woman who, by all rights, should be in the Bronx River.
Her heat clenches around me, gripping like a vise, and I curse, dragging my hands over her hips and locking her against me. She closes her teeth around the skin of my neck. She could do some damage if she wanted. She could kill me with a bite there.
But she won’t.
She’s too gone, too ruined.
So am I.
There’s no control left. Just instinct. Heat. Hunger.
She grabs onto me, nails raking down my back.
I want her to mark me. Want to feel her teeth, her rage, her surrender all in one. We move together—rough, frantic, chasing something violent, something that isn’t soft or safe. We move like animals, desperate and raw, tearing each other apart, losing ourselves in the wreckage.
It should be meaningless.
But fuck, it isn’t.
The orgasm rips through me, a lightning bolt of pleasure, leaving me wrecked and breathless .
A hazy bliss I never let myself have.
My grip loosens, and my body sags against hers, not fighting for once. Just being. Feeling. Holding her.
She moves in my arms. Whatever she’s doing, I’m too out of it to care.
Until a sharp crack of pain explodes across my skull.
The world tilts. My vision goes black at the edges as I stumble back, my knees nearly giving out.
What the?—
She hit me.
I shake my head, trying to clear the daze, and through the haze of pleasure and pain, I see her.
She’s moving fast, yanking on her clothes with frantic hands, breathing hard. She takes my suit coat from where I’d thrown it over a chair and puts it on over her ripped shirt. Her gaze flicks to me, wary. She grabs her shoes and heads for the foyer. The elevator.
Rage and something else—something raw—burns through me.
I touch my head. Bleeding. I take an unsteady step forward.
“Ow!” She stops. “Fuck!” She looks down, mouth twisted in pain.
She stepped on glass, but she isn’t letting it stop her—she’s hopping on one foot now.
I blink, instincts flipping so fast it makes me dizzy. Before I can stop myself, I’m moving toward her.
She limps toward the door, but I’m there first. I sweep her up and carry her to the kitchen island, her body stiff in my arms.
She pounds on my chest. “Why can’t you just let me go?”
I don’t answer. Because I don’t fucking know.
Blood drips from her heel.
“Stay right there.” I grab the first aid kit stocked with everything from butterfly bandages to surgical sutures from under the sink. In my world, you learn to patch yourself up.
I set it on the expanse of granite beside her and pull out antiseptic, tweezers, and gauze. My movements are practiced, mechanical. I’ve stitched up bullet wounds in pitch-black basements with less than this.
“Is it bad? It feels deep,” she says.
“Not so bad,” I assure her.
“Okay.”
She’s not pulling away. That’s a start.
Blood wells from the cut as I examine it. A shard of glass is embedded in her heel, not deep enough to need stitches but enough to make walking painful. I grip the tweezers and extract it.
She doesn’t make a sound. She’s done being vulnerable.
“Almost done.” My words come out gentle, which sounds strange to my ears.
I clean the wound thoroughly, my hands steady despite the pounding in my head. The back of my skull throbs where she hit me. Smart move, going for the base of the skull. Another inch lower and I might be unconscious.
“You have good aim,” I say, pressing gauze to her foot.
“Not good enough, apparently.”
“Hold still,” I murmur, wrapping a bandage around her foot and securing it snugly. Not too tight. Just right.
When I finish, I look up to find her staring at me, confusion clouding her eyes.
“You’re still bleeding,” she says suddenly.
I touch the back of my head. My fingers come away sticky.
Before I can react, she reaches for the first aid kit, pulling out an alcohol wipe. “Turn around.”
I hesitate, every instinct screaming not to show my back to someone who just tried to crack my skull open. But I turn anyway.
Her touch is surprisingly gentle as she parts my hair to find the wound. I wince when the alcohol makes contact.
“Not so tough after all,” she says, but there’s no venom in it.
“Everyone bleeds. ”
She works in silence for a moment, cleaning the cut. “You’ll live.”
“Disappointed?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
I turn to face her, our bodies close, the air between us charged.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she gusts out. “I didn’t. This cop, he’s got some sort of control over my sister. He can get to her. Horrible things’ll happen to her if I don’t do what he wants. I was so scared.”
I listen, emotion coiling in my gut. I had told myself I didn’t need to hear what she had to say, but it was a lie.
She tells me about Mary sliding into the underworld and her attempts to find this sister of hers she loves so much. Searching everywhere without considering her own safety.
“Mary cared for me. She’s the only reason I’m not dead or in a gutter. And then she went missing, and I had to find her.” She searches my eyes. “So I went out to where she worked, dressing to blend in...”
My blood boils as she tells me how this cop picked her up and exploited the fuck out of her. Then sent her to sit with Dardan, for fuck’s sake.
She must have been so frightened. I can barely grate out the next word, but I slide a gentle hand over her shoulder to show it’s not her I’m angry with. “Name.”
“Bender.” She wrings her hands. “I think it’s fake, though.
I looked it up, and I couldn’t find any cop named Bender that matched him.
At first he said all I had to do was sit at the table for a few hours and leave.
It was all it was supposed to be, and then he would bring her home to me.
I didn’t know what to do. But then you showed up. ..”
“And took you for my own.”
I scrub my face as I see how fucked up I’ve acted. Not letting her explain. This woman is mine. Mine to protect.
“I just need you to know—I was determined not to tell him anything, but then he got all scary and made these threats. So I told him a few things that seemed like common knowledge with you, like the Lazarus rumors. But he kept demanding more from me, and if I reminded him it wasn’t our deal, he’d get so scary.
Unhinged. And I’d panic. I swear—I never wanted to tell him anything.
And when I heard you planning the meeting, I wasn’t going to tell, but it’s like he knew I was holding something back.
Like he could read my mind. And he got angry, and I was so scared and. ..”
Her gaze points down to her wrist.
Ice spears through my veins.
Gently, I take her bandaged arm, cradling it in my hands, and I’m vibrating with rage. “ He did this to you.”
Her lips tremble. “He wouldn’t let go. He kept squeezing and twisting.” Her eyes glisten with unshed tears.
The room temperature seems to drop as ice floods my veins. “Show me. Now.”
“It’s nothing, just?—”
“ Show. Me. ”
She unwraps the beige bandages. The moment I see the hand-shaped bruise marking her delicate skin, something dark unfurls in my chest. I trace the outline with trembling fingers, memorizing every detail of what this bastard dared to do to what’s mine.
Her eyes widen in alarm. “You can’t go after him?—”
“Go after him?” I laugh, and it’s a terrible sound.
“I’ll do more than go after him. I’ll hunt him down like the scum he is.
I’ll break every bone in his hands, starting with the ones he used to touch you.
Then I’ll start on the rest of him, piece by piece, until he begs for a death I will not give him. ”
“Please, you don’t understand?—”
“No, he didn’t understand. You’re mine .” I’m shaking with barely contained violence.
“But he’ll kill my sister! ”
I close my eyes. Right. The sister. “Do you think he kidnapped her?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that she’s somewhere against her will. I’m sure of it because why wouldn’t she call me? It’s been five weeks now, and she always reaches out. And he seems to know the people holding her...”
I cup her face in my hands, forcing her to meet my gaze. “Then he’s a dead man who just doesn’t know it yet. We’ll get your sister back. And then...” My thumb brushes away a tear. “I’ll make him pay.”
She swallows hard.
I trace the bruise one last time. “I’m going to tear this whole world apart to find her. I’ll make sure she’s safe. And then I’ll rain bloody hell on this Bender. I will make him so sorry, and then I’ll make sure nothing like this ever happens to you again.”
“Thank you.” She throws her arms around me.
“No thanks needed.”
She holds me more tightly. “I’ve been so scared. And just so tired.”
“I know.”