CHAPTER 15 #2
He was so heavy. He was collapsing, dragging me down with him.
Arterial spray painted the entire left side of my face, my neck, and the front of my slip in a hot, coppery mist. The submachine gun clattered uselessly to the floor.
The guard hit the linoleum hard, both hands clutching the gaping ruin of his throat, his legs kicking out in a spasming rhythm.
Andrei was on his feet in a fraction of a second.
He spun around, his stolen gun drawn and aimed directly at the dying man on the floor, before the barrel snapped up and pointed dead at the center of my chest. For one absolute heart-stopping second, the warlord had me in his sights.
Then his eyes registered the blood, the knife, and the body, and he slowly lowered the weapon, his chest heaving.
The heat of the blood on my face was already starting to cool in the drafty air, the overpowering smell of pennies and raw meat flooding the hallway.
The eerie silence that followed the guard's final gurgling breath was deafening.
I stood paralyzed over the corpse, my entire body violently shaking. I reached up with my free hand and wiped a thick smear of blood out of my left eye, leaving a bright red streak across my forehead.
"He... he was going to..." I stammered, my voice cracking under the sheer weight of what I'd just done. I'm a killer. I literally just butchered a human being.
"I saw," Andrei said, his voice entirely devoid of shock.
"Is he dead?"
Andrei didn't even glance down at the guard.
He didn't give a single fuck about the threat anymore.
He stalked straight toward me, his heavy boots thumping against the floor.
His expression was completely unreadable, a terrifying mask of stone and ice-blue fire.
The power dynamic of the entire night shifted in that exact moment.
I wasn't the helpless civilian he was dragging through a warzone anymore.
I was a participant. The adrenaline crash hit my system like a freight train, my lungs burning as I gasped for air.
My fingers went numb. The bloody knife slipped from my trembling grip, hit the floor with a dull thud, and stayed embedded upright in the linoleum.
"You didn't hesitate," Andrei stated, stopping inches from me. He looked at me with a predatory intensity that made my stomach drop.
"I had to," I whispered, staring at his chest because looking him in the eye felt too dangerous.
"No. You wanted to. I felt it."
Before I could back away, he reached out.
His massive, leather-gloved hands grabbed the sides of my face with bruising, unyielding force.
He didn't care about the gore. He used his thumbs to deliberately smear the hot blood across my cheeks, his eyes scanning every single inch of my splattered skin.
He looked like a man who had just dug up a priceless artifact.
He was branding me. He was taking full credit for the feral, unhinged thing I had just become, and I was entirely trapped in his grip, forced to endure his hungry, obsessive stare.
His thumb dragged down, tracing the edge of my lip and applying just enough pressure to force my mouth slightly open.
"My little killer," he murmured, his voice a dark, possessive rumble.
"I’m not yours," I choked out, a defiant reflex that sounded weak even to my own ears.
"Look at you," he countered, his eyes dropping to my mouth. "You’re covered in my world. You’re exactly mine."
He crashed his mouth against mine. It wasn't a kiss.
It was a violent collision of teeth, adrenaline, and dominance.
I gasped against his lips, tasting the harsh bite of his whiskey breath, the freezing air, and the vile, metallic copper of the blood coating my own skin.
He let out a low, territorial groan straight into my mouth, a sound that vibrated deep in my chest. It was total sensory overload.
The kiss was a complete violation of my autonomy, a demand for submission right over a fresh corpse, but the sickest part was that it was the only thing grounding me.
If he let me go, I was going to fracture into a million pieces.
My hands flew up of their own accord. I grabbed handfuls of his ruined black shirt, my fists clenching so tight my knuckles ached.
I pulled him closer, fighting the sheer terror of my own reaction.
His teeth caught my bottom lip, biting down hard enough to draw a sharp, stinging pain that sliced right through the adrenaline fog.
He forced his tongue past my lips, taking whatever he wanted, demanding I submit to the horror of what we were.
He tasted the death on me, and instead of being repulsed, it fueled him.
His massive hands slid from my jaw to the back of my head, his fingers tangling roughly in my hacked-off hair.
He pulled backward, tilting my head up and exposing the long line of my throat to him.
I stopped fighting the invasion and started returning it with a frantic, desperate energy, my nails scraping harshly against the bare skin at the back of his neck as my knees finally gave out.
He held my entire body weight up effortlessly, crushing my chest against his.
"Taste it," he ordered against my lips, breathing heavily.
"Andrei, please..." I begged, though I didn't even know what I was begging for. To stop, or to keep holding me together.
"Tell me you belong to me."
I couldn't speak. I just dug my nails deeper into his neck, letting out a ragged breath as he finally broke the kiss.
He pulled back just enough to breathe, resting his hard forehead heavily against mine.
Our breaths mingled in the cold air, hot and ragged.
He kept his hands locked in my hair, his hooded eyes staring down at me with a terrifying, pitch-black affection.
He looked at the blood-soaked, feral mess he had orchestrated and a small, deeply predatory smile curved his lips.
He shifted his hand, his blood-stained thumb brushing against my cheekbone to wipe away a single, traitorous tear that had spilled from my eye.
"Now you know what you are," he whispered.
"What am I?" I asked, my voice completely devoid of the fight I'd had ten minutes ago.
"Mine," he answered, his voice devoid of doubt. "My little shadow. My reaper."
Down the dark corridor, the heavy mechanical gears of the service elevator suddenly groaned to life, the rusted cables grinding against the silence as the car began to descend.