Chapter 3 #3
Instead of releasing me, he turned me in his arms until my chest was flush against his. Rain ran between us, but heat still bled through his suit into my skin and I hated how much my body wanted to chase it.
He tilted my chin up and his thumb settled against the pulse point of my throat. He could feel it—the frantic, stupid rhythm of my heart, giving me away.
“I saved your life, Keeper.” His voice hit lower this time, quieter, made for just the two of us.
“Thank you,” I whispered, and I meant it, even knowing what a mistake it was to mean it.
“I don’t want your gratitude.” His thumb moved, tracing along my jaw, and I forgot how to breathe. “I don’t do charity. Everything has a price.”
The rain kept falling. Neither of us moved.
“What price?”
“A taste.”
He leaned down slowly enough that I could have stopped him. Could have done a million other things my training insisted I do around dangerous Supers.
I didn’t do any of them.
His mouth came down on mine and every warning bell in my head went silent at once. The shock of it made me gasp and he used the opening instantly, his tongue sweeping into my mouth to taste me.
Villain. Killer. Run. My brain screamed the words, flashing every rule in the Alliance handbook like hazard lights. But my body was a traitor. The fear spiking in my blood felt terrifyingly like arousal. I kissed him back, meeting the invasive thrust of his tongue with my own.
He groaned, the sound vibrating against my lips and sending electricity through every nerve ending in my body.
No.
The word echoed through the haze of my arousal.
This wasn’t fantasy Cipher. This wasn’t the safe, imaginary Villain who only existed to star in my pornographic dreams. This was the actual Cipher.
A man with a terrifying body count. A man who snapped bones and crushed windpipes without a second thought, and he was actually kissing me, and I was letting him, and—
Panic finally shattered the lust.
My fingers fumbled, blindly hitting the manual release on my cuff before I shoved the metal band hard against his neck.
Electricity arced outward with a vicious crack, connecting with his suit in a spectacular display of poor decision-making.
“Fuck!” Cipher jerked backward, his boots slipping on the rain-slicked ledge.
He stumbled backward.
Right over the edge of the roof.
I lunged forward, my fingers swiping frantically through the empty air, missing him by mere inches as he disappeared from view. A second later, a sickening, concussive crunch of metal and shattering glass echoed up from the street below.
Oh god.
I threw myself toward the fire escape attached to the side of the building, my palms sliding over the wet railings as I scrambled downward.
My breathing came in ragged, shallow gasps tearing at my throat.
A hysterical thought bubbled up through the terror: He can’t be dead.
What the hell would I do with my nights?
I was absolutely certain I’d go straight to hell if I kept getting off to photos of a man I had personally murdered.
I skidded to a stop the second my shoes hit the street. It looked abandoned. Everyone sensible was either watching the Obsidian and Dread fight blocks away or sheltering from the torrential rain. Small mercies.
At the side of the road sat a crushed sedan. The vehicle’s roof was caved inward, forming a jagged metal crater.
“Mr. Cipher?” My voice cracked over the drumming rain. “Are you alive?”
The car’s chassis gave a pathetic, dying groan.
Then, silence. No movement. No deep, mocking voice. Nothing.
I counted my breaths, my chest tight. One. Water poured off the shattered windshield. Two.
I jumped as a metallic screech ripped through the street.
A hand clamped over the edge of the door frame, the steel bending like aluminum foil under his grip. The car’s frame shrieked in protest as Cipher pushed his way out of the wreckage.
I skittered backward, my smooth-soled shoes slipping against the wet pavement.
He rose from the ruins, a terrifying, hypnotic unfolding of dark armor and raw, predatory power. He stepped out of the cratered roof and rolled his shoulders.
Cipher tilted his head, his mask locking onto me. He took a slow, deliberate step forward.
The chill of the rain sank so deep into my bones that I couldn’t even feel my fingers anymore.
“You have teeth.” He stalked toward me, closing the distance. “I didn’t think Keepers were allowed to bite.”
“I panicked,” I offered lamely.
He stopped inches away and my mind desperately tried to cite an Alliance protocol, to act like a professional, but my body was only focused on the fact that he wasn’t touching me.
I wanted him to.
“I’m leaving,” I managed to say. “I need to get back to my post.” It was a bold claim, considering my feet were firmly rooted.
He let out a dark chuckle that scraped right down my spine. “Go ahead and run. But don’t think for a second that this is over, Annie,” he said softly.
The sound of my name snapped the paralysis holding me hostage. I turned and ran, my numb fingers curling into fists as my shoes slapped against the flooded pavement. The weight of his gaze burned a hole straight between my shoulder blades, tracking every frantic, desperate step I took.