Chapter 8 #2
His thumb shifts, brushing the place where my pulse should betray me completely.
Thank fuck, it doesn’t.
‘It is… wrong,’ he says, quieter now, as if the discovery irritates him.
I go still as his focus narrows, and my stomach drops.
So I drag my fear into something meaner and do the only thing I can.
I bare my teeth.
‘I have news about Lyra,’ I say, rage shaking through my voice before fear can claim it. ‘So what’s your plan, Don Moretti? To kill me before or after I give it to you? Personally, I vote before. But hey, logic has never been everyone’s strongest suit. Some men prefer senseless violence.’
He doesn’t give me time to breathe.
One second I’m pinned against the VIP wall, his palm searing the juncture of my shoulder, the weight of him a dark promise of violence.
The next, the world disappears.
No warning or shift of muscle.
Just motion. Violent, impossible motion.
Air tears past my ears as my stomach drops through my spine. The wine glass leaves my nerveless fingers and shatters somewhere below as the club vanishes in a rush of lights, black marble and stunned faces.
He’s carrying me.
No.
He’s flying with me.
Valentin Moretti launches from the rooftop with a force that splits the night open.
My hands slam into his chest, fingers digging into his shirt as the city drops away beneath us. Buildings blur. Wind claws at my hair. My boots leave solid ground, and my body does not understand what’s happening.
Every instinct screams one thing.
You’re going to die.
I grit my teeth hard enough to make my jaw ache.
I will not scream. I will not give him that.
He lands on the next rooftop with impossible grace, barely a jolt through his body, and before I can process it, we’re airborne again.
The city stretches below in glittering grids and endless black streets. Cars look like insects. People look like nothing.
A jagged, wheezing sound tears from me.
Because he isn’t breathing hard.
I am.
Every nerve in my body wants space. Every instinct screams he’s waiting for me to shove him away. My mouth is drier than a desert but in contrast my eyes are readying to water like jet streams. Not with tears though… because… fuck that. No.
So I stay still, my collared throat still in his hand, ignoring the flex of his fingers as the most powerful vampire in the world dares me into a silent game of chicken.
He soars again.
Lands again.
And again.
On the next leap, he glances down at me, silver eyes glinting in the dark. ‘You’re very quiet all of a sudden,’ he says mildly. ‘Nothing to say now?’
‘I’m conserving oxygen,’ I say through clenched teeth.
His mouth curves. ‘Admirable.’
We land on another building, higher this time. Still gripping my throat, he walks towards the edge, my boots scraping concrete.
Then he holds me out over open air, one hand resting nonchalantly in his pocket.
The drop is obscene. Definitely enough time for a long think before splat.
Wind howls between buildings. My coat snaps around my legs, and the city yawns beneath me, uncaring and endless.
I look down, then back at him.
His face is calm. Curious. Waiting.
I know what he wants.
Fear. Real fear.
My body wants to give it to him. My nerves are already shredding themselves, my fingers digging into his wrist as gravity tries to drag me from his grip.
Still, I lift my chin. ‘If this is a threat… or foreplay,’ I say, voice wheezy but steady through sheer will, ‘you need new hobbies.’
His grip tightens, more than enough to remind me how firmly I’m suspended between life and death.
‘You provoke with so very little care,’ he murmurs.
‘I respond to bullshit badly. As we’ve both learned tonight.’
A deeper flicker crosses his eyes, and I realise that Valentin Moretti might be exactly unfeeling enough to watch me perish in the name of this little experiment. He might wait until I give him what he wants, then drop me for the lesson.
So I let my gaze fall. Let my breathing hitch and my fingers tremble from the cold.
I give him a performance, complete with much more wheezing, because yeah, my air is seriously depleting.
When I chance an imploring glance at him, his eyes sharpen instantly. He leans closer, nose brushing near my hairline.
Inhaling. Testing.
Silence stretches.
Then that sensually curved, entirely kissable mouth tilts. ‘That,’ he says softly, ‘is not fear.’
Fuck. Busted. Damn him.
He hauls me back onto the rooftop in one brutal motion. My boots slam against concrete as my body collides with his chest.
There’s no need for pretence as I bend over and drag grateful shovelfuls of air into my lungs.
When I glance up, something electric surges between us. More savage than panic. More manic than rage. Hot, poisonous and deadlier than simple attraction.
I shove it down immediately. ‘You’re disappointed,’ I say. ‘Should I try harder? Cry, maybe?’
He stares at me with a lethal intensity that threatens exposure. ‘Humans beg as incessantly as they breathe,’ he says, voice level, almost reflective.
‘And I will too, I’m sure. Just give me a hundred or so years.’
His head tilts slightly. ‘When you are a corpse in the ground?’
I shrug. ‘Oops.’
I step back. He lets me, but for one second, I think he might close the distance again.
Instead, he watches me. Then he moves. This time there’s no rooftop arc, no graceful leap through the skyline.
He snatches me and drops straight down the side of the building.
My scream tears out as wind explodes against my face, the world flipping vertical, concrete and glass rushing past in a blur.
We’re falling… and he isn’t slowing.
This is it. This is how it ends.
My fingers claw into his shoulders, instinct stripping pride from my bones as the ground surges upward and windows streak past in flashes of reflected light.
Five floors. Three. Two.
He stops.
Midair.
The halt is so abrupt my body keeps falling in memory even as his arm tightens around my waist and he swings us towards a rusted fire escape, gravity apparently a suggestion he rejects on principle.
My legs buckle but he keeps me upright effortlessly.
For one suspended heartbeat, I’m certain he’s going to let go just to watch what happens.
Instead, he studies me.
For the first time since this unholy escapade started, he looks unsettled.
Subtly. A tightening around the eyes. A shift in focus, something closer to distraction.
His gaze drifts to my mouth. My throat. The collar at my neck and something sharp flickers behind his eyes.
Irritation. At himself?
His jaw hardens, and he releases me completely, stepping back with a suddenness colder than the wind.
‘That was unnecessary,’ I manage, steadier than I feel.
‘Yes,’ he rasps with zero amusement. ‘But somewhat fruitful.’
I can’t stop the shudders still wracking my frame. I want to run, fast and now, but I lock my knees and keep my feet planted. ‘How so?’
He studies my face like a cartographer scouring a map.
Selphine’s screeching somewhere in the back of my skull about every idiotic thing I’ve done tonight.
‘Now I know the true scent of your fear,’ he says eventually.
He turns away, shoulders rigid beneath his jacket as if physically locking something back into place.
Not something.
Dark impulse.
I provoked him into a momentary lapse. My refusal to bow and scrape hit the wrong nerve so hard he forgot himself.
For several long, dangerous minutes, Valentin Moretti forgot why he summoned me. Forgot Lyra. Maybe even forgot he was a Don hunting a missing girl for reasons known only to him.
He became base predator.
And judging by the cold tension vibrating off him now, that lapse unsettles him more than anything I’ve said tonight.
I would laugh if I didn’t know in my bones that the cost will be exacted with the kind of ruthlessness that gets written into forbidden histories.
When he turns back, the heat is gone, sealed beneath something colder and infinitely more dangerous. ‘As I told your superior, you will relocate,’ he says evenly. ‘Immediately.’
My spine straightens. ‘No.’
‘You will live beneath my residence,’ he continues as if my refusal is ambient noise. ‘You will not accept external assignments without my approval. You will not conduct inquiries about me.’
I let out a disbelieving laugh. ‘You don’t get to cage me because you lost focus.’
His eyes flash, silver sharpening to something lethal. ‘I do not lose focus.’
‘You just did.’
Jesus, Eira. Take the win. Shut the fuck up.
The silence stretches long and razor thin.
He steps towards me, slower this time, deliberate in a way that feels far more dangerous than the earlier violence.
‘I summoned you for one purpose,’ he says quietly. ‘You will remember it and not stray from it.’
‘And if I do?’ I ask, refusing to break eye contact.
His gaze drifts briefly towards the skyline before returning to mine. ‘Then I will remind you. And the next time you will scream until your voice forgets how it works.’
The air shifts again, physically and viscerally, something older coiling through it. Something that hums against the edges of my awareness and makes my nerves tighten.
This time, he isn’t playing.
He extends his hand, palm open, not in invitation but expectation. ‘Come,’ he says.
He’s back to calm and commanding, not a trace left of his earlier slip. It would be awe-inspiring if it wasn’t stone-cold chilling.
Across the city, his black tower cuts into the night, a vertical promise of confinement and confrontation.
As I stare at it, breath still uneven, I realise something with slow, sinking certainty.
The night isn’t done with me.
Not even close.