Chapter 12
AEBON REXX
She walks in like the storm I’ve been waiting for—soft, quiet, dangerous in ways no weapon could ever be. No armor tonight. No stiff blazer. No badge clipped to her belt like a warning flare.
Just a dress—simple, dark, fitted in all the places that make me ache to ruin it. Her honey-blonde hair falls loose, curling slightly at the ends, and her lips are bare. No war paint. No mask. Just Aria. Unfiltered.
And fuck me sideways, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve laid eyes on in centuries.
I stand at the head of the long obsidian table, deep in the penthouse of the Virelli Club, a place carved into the stratosphere itself.
The air up here is thinner, cleaner. You taste less metal and more sky.
The windows—tinted to shield against the twin moons’ glare—reflect her back at me in a million fragments, like a shattered dream I want to piece together with my hands.
She doesn’t realize it, but she owns this room.
Eyes follow her. Not just because of that body—gods, that body—but because there’s a tension in her walk. Like she’s one wrong look away from eviscerating someone. And no one here can figure out how a Reaper like me got a woman like her to show up willingly.
Hell, I don’t even know.
“You’re late,” I say with a smile as she approaches.
“You didn’t give me a time,” she replies, sliding into the seat across from mine like it’s a throne.
I grin wider. “Details.”
A server flutters forward—young, neon-haired, barely legal—and offers her a drink list. Aria waves it off.
“Vakutan black,” she murmurs. “No synth. No foam.”
I raise a brow. “You sure you’re not secretly mobbed up already?”
She meets my gaze head-on. “If I were, you’d already be dead.”
There it is—that fire. That uncut steel hiding behind smooth skin and green eyes that see everything. It’s not just her mouth I want on me. It’s that mind. That fight. That fury.
We order food. Something extravagant and smoky. Flavors imported from three systems over. But I don’t taste a damn thing.
Because she’s talking.
And all I can do is listen.
She asks about the confession cube. Doesn’t accuse. Doesn’t demand. Just lets the question sit between us like a live wire. I twirl my glass.
“I called in a favor,” I say finally. “A big one. One I may bleed for later.”
“And the price?” she asks.
I lean in, slow and quiet. “I don’t pay in credits, sweetheart. I pay in promises.”
She swallows hard. I see the way her fingers tighten on the glass stem.
“And what promise did you make?”
“That I’d protect what matters.”
Her breath stutters. I don’t press.
The room fades. The music dims. The rest of the world slips away.
It’s just her. And me. And this cliff-edge we’re standing on, daring gravity to blink first.
Outside, lightning spiders across the glass, blue and violent. Inside, the air thickens with something older than desire.
And when she finally looks away, cheeks flushed and jaw tight, I know I’ve won something tonight.
Not all of her.
Not yet.
But the first piece of her soul is already mine.
The drink between us glows like molten topaz, refracting the storm-light from the windows, catching on the edges of her eyes. Her gaze flicks to it briefly—then right back to me. Never one to run. Gods, I respect the hell out of that.
“So,” she says, casual as a dagger up the sleeve, “how many skeletons would I find in your closet if I started pulling records from your early days?”
I smirk. “Depends. Are we talking literal or metaphorical skeletons?”
She rolls her eyes, but I see the curve of her lip twitch up. Just a little. It counts.
We’re tucked in a private alcove now, two seats angled toward each other, low lighting and velvet-drenched silence turning every word between us into something heavier. Her knee almost brushes mine beneath the table. Almost. Neither of us moves it.
“I don’t keep records,” I say. “Hard to feel nostalgic when half your youth is a blur of blood and indoctrination.”
She studies me. “Reaper upbringing?”
“Something like that. The Ishani don't raise kids. They forge weapons.”
She quiets, eyes narrowing just a touch. “And yet you run a casino and wear tailored suits. Not exactly the vision of a battle-forged war-beast.”
“You saying I don’t scare you anymore?” I tease.
“I didn’t say that,” she mutters.
Her voice drops lower at the end, huskier. Gods, that tone. Makes something primal inside me sit up and beg.
“I remember pieces,” I go on. “Little flashes. Training pits that smelled like scorched bone. A voice screaming over klaxons. The taste of iron—always iron. They used to strip us of names. Made us wear black until we earned color. I bled for every stitch of silver on my sleeves.”
She leans in slightly, not realizing she’s doing it. I take a sip, let the fire roll down my throat before I go on.
“But I left. Or tried to. Killed my handler and fled. Built a name for myself with blood and casino chips.”
Aria’s brows pull together. Not judgment. Not revulsion. Just... something close to sadness. Pity, almost. I hate it.
“You ever want to go back?” she asks.
“To the Ishani?” I laugh, sharp and bitter. “Hell no. I’d rather drown in antimatter. But the instinct... that never leaves. You can dress it up, bury it under silk and syndicates, but the hunger’s still there.”
She nods, like she understands more than I expected. “I get that.”
“You?” I arch a brow. “Didn’t think control-freak prosecutors had dark sides.”
“Oh, we do,” she says, tone clipped. “We just file them under ‘classified.’”
There’s a pause, not quite comfortable, not quite tense. Just... charged. The way still water goes just before it starts to boil.
I set my glass down.
“You think we’re opposites,” I say quietly.
“I know we are.”
I shake my head. “Nah. We’re both trying to win a war with our own nature. I want to tear the world apart for the ones I protect. You want to stitch it together with rules and order. Either way—someone bleeds.”
Her breath catches. Just for a second.
“You think you’re noble,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “But all you’re doing is feeding the machine with cleaner hands.”
“And you think you’re pure,” I counter. “But you’re sitting here, drinking with the devil, knowing exactly how hot hell can get.”
We stare at each other across the divide of everything unsaid. And I swear, in that moment, if I reached out and touched her, the whole godsdamn city would catch fire.
The bottle between us breathes out the scent of crushed blackberries, smoked wood, and something deeper—older. Wine aged in grav-oak barrels on a backwater moon. Rare. Expensive. Like most beautiful, dangerous things.
She laughs—soft, unexpected—after her third glass, and it slips from her mouth like a secret not meant to be shared. Her cheeks are flushed with heat, her eyes glossy with firelight and something softer than I’ve seen from her. It claws at me in ways nothing else ever has.
“You’re trying to get me drunk,” she says, pointing an accusatory finger across the low-lit lounge alcove.
“Trying?” I tilt the bottle, let the crimson liquid coil into her glass like a promise. “Sweetheart, I don’t try. I achieve.”
She snorts into her drink, but the sound’s unsteady. Her guard’s down. Not gone—never gone—but softened enough that I can see past the walls.
She’s not drunk.
She’s tired.
From fighting. From chasing ghosts. From pretending I haven’t already slid under her skin like a second pulse.
She stands to stretch, a little too fast, and the world tips. Her heel skids on the glossy floor. It happens in a breath—her balance falters, and I’m already moving.
I catch her.
Hands gripping her waist, solid and anchoring, and her breath catches as her chest brushes mine. She stiffens. Not in fear. In tension. In something primal that spikes between us like a live wire. Her fingers splay against my chest, bracing.
And then she looks at me.
Big, green eyes burning up at me, so close I can see the flecks of gold that only show when she’s not glaring. Her lips part, soft and breathy, and for a heartbeat I see it—want—laid bare on her face. Not lust. Not even need.
Permission.
But I don’t take it.
I don’t close the gap.
Instead, I bring my thumb to her cheek. Just one slow drag along the curve of her jaw. Reverent. Final. A caress instead of a conquest.
“Not tonight,” I murmur, voice rough with everything I’m not doing. “Not until you ask.”
Her breath leaves in a shudder. She blinks, furious and ashamed and wrecked all at once. I step back. Let her go. The loss of her heat is like ripping off my own skin.
I call her transport with a flick of my wrist, and we walk in silence to the exit corridor.
No words.
Just the echo of our footsteps and the hollow roar of everything unsaid.
At the threshold, I touch her again. Light. Ghosting down the line of her spine, from nape to sacrum. She leans into it before she realizes she’s doing it.
And then she’s gone.
Lift doors swallow her whole. I stand there, jaw clenched, wine and stormlight bleeding down the back of my throat like regret.
The restraint wounds us both.
But the wait?
The wait is going to make the fall that much sweeter.