31. The Assassin #2
My gut isn’t usually wrong, so I make my move, darting around the table and closing the gap between us fast enough to surprise her.
She takes a step back but is blocked by a towering case of old tomes.
The forbidden section of the library. How fucking perfect.
Our eyes lock and I capture her wrists in one hand, pinning them above her head.
“Scar.” It comes out like more of a damned purr when I get a nose full of her scent.
The only smell I enjoy more than her hair is that of her arousal.
Like earlier.
Shit.
I hate that Hell was the reason behind her feeling it so intensely.
I want her to smell like that again, but without any other influence this time but mine.
Just me.
“Silver.”
There's a nervous edge to her tone now that floods my veins with a whole different form of magic.
It’s powerful, knowing she's as affected as I am.
She swallows, and a drop of the nephilim’s blood drips from the dagger, landing on her collarbone and trickling right through the center of the scales freshly tattooed on her skin.
We both look down, watching it roll over her right breast and disappear into her corset.
“Are you going to kill me now? Save me washing this corset.”
I can’t help but smile, like a fucking idiot.
She clears her throat. “How long have you been hiding among the shelves, anyway?”
“How long have you been an assassin?” I counter.
Silence.
I scoff. “Let’s not pretend that’s not what you are.”
“Who’s pretending? I told them at registration. It’s not my fault no one believed me.”
Fair.
“And how long have you been a thief?” I ask, plucking the dagger from her fingers and tossing it over my shoulder.
I don’t need eyes in the back of my head to know it will be perfectly soaring through the air, blade over hilt until the pointy end meets its mark, sinking between the spines of two hardbacks.
Her breathing changes as she watches my knife fly. She knows I could kill her, I wouldn’t even need my magic, but there’s a war taking place behind her eyes when she forces herself to meet my gaze again.
One that I don’t understand but desperately want to.
“Much longer than I’ve been an assassin,” she admits, and I know it’s true. She doesn’t lie, hates liars and everything about the act.
It’s one of the first things that intrigued me about her.
Usually, give the nephilim a day away from Virtus and they are lying, deceiving, drowning in cocktails.
Not her.
She tilts her chin up as I lean down, one hand still holding her wrists, the other palm flat against the books above her head supporting my weight.
Her mouth is inches from mine. It would be so easy to kiss her.
“Who taught you to do that?” Silence. “Fine, when you were an assassin in Virtus, who was your boss?”
“It’s not important.”
It feels important.
I drop it, for now.
“Do you slit the throat’s of all the men you fuck?”
“Why?” she counters. “Are you thinking we should carry on from where we left off earlier so you can find out?”
Lucifer, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.
Except…
“I already told you, I don’t fuck cadets.”
I can’t for the life of me remember why now though.
She’s bluffing anyway. She probably thinks I’m going to kill her or have her killed for committing murder in cold blood. She’s wise to think that, I should… but fuck me, I want to call her bluff, put her to the test.
My heart pounds. “Don’t tempt me to break my rule.”
“Shouldn’t you have killed me already? You obviously saw what happened here. You know what I am.”
“An assassin?” I give her an accusatory look. “And yeah, perhaps another Overlord would kill you. But have you already forgotten where I came from?”
She swallows, but I don’t need her to answer.
“I saw one of my cadets making sure that there is one less rapist roaming these lands when the fortress wakes tomorrow. These lands have far too much evil burdening them already, I can’t kill you for doing the right thing. I only wish one thing.”
“What’s that?” she whispers.
“That you had told me. That you could let yourself trust me enough to fucking tell me shit like that so I could have helped.”
“I don’t need help.”
“I can fucking see that,” I gesture to the dead tattooist. “But you were too quick. Too efficient. Together we could have made him beg for death. Chained him to a sink in the basement and had fun with him for hours.” Her cheeks pinken at the reminder of what Z had threatened to do to her.
“Better yet, make it days. Eurya and I did something much worse when we caught up with Lady Selmora a few years ago.”
“A sinner with no virtue does not deserve to live,” she says again, almost absentmindedly. When she’d said it to Elias, she’d prefaced it with saying her father was right.
I arch an eyebrow but she shakes her head. “Selmora was a rapist,” she clarifies. “She deserved whatever you two did to her.” Her eyes lift to meet mine and she clears her throat. “I only wish one thing.”
“What’s that?” I ask, but I’m already smirking, knowing exactly where she’s going with this.
“That I could have helped.”
I laugh. “Keep talking dirty to me like that, Little Nephilim, and I might not be able to resist carrying on where we left off earlier.”
Rather than scoff or panic and change the subject, she does the worst thing she could possibly do.
She bites her lip. “The kiss.”
Fuck it. We are all going to Hell here. My friends there will understand.
I tilt my head down and draw her bottom lip between mine, sucking before gently nipping her with my teeth.
“The kiss,” I murmur against her mouth.
She arches her back, pressing her breasts against my chest.
Then our lips collide, and unlike earlier, I don’t hold back.
Satan knows she can handle it.
My grip on her wrists tightens for a moment, a warning not to make me regret this next part, and then I let her hands fall free.
She doesn’t attack, instead she grabs my ass in her hands and pulls me closer against her.
As if it’s not close enough, she lets out a sound of frustration and wraps her legs around my waist and locks her ankles.
The kiss deepens. It’s intense and rough and completely out of control.
She rocks her hips against me and my cock hardens with the motion.
No fucking cadets.
I’m not fucking her.
But with the all-consuming way she's kissing me, fuck, I want to. I hadn’t lied to her earlier after she’d completed the fourth game.
Every stroke of her delicious tongue drives my ‘no fucking cadets’ rule further and further to the back of my mind. I wrap my fingers around her thighs, making sure she can feel my cock against her clit as it swells for her.
She lets out a moan against my lips and I get a lungful of her arousal. Magic floods my body in an addictive rush, setting every inch of my skin aflame.
Fuck me, she smells good enough to eat.
And I really, really want a taste.
“Gabriella save me,” she groans into my mouth.
Gabriella?
Fuck no.
That won’t do.
I break the kiss. “Your archangels won’t save you from me, Little Nephilim. Not even the Devil himself would dare right now.”
She smiles and I suck her tongue into my mouth with no plan to stop until I’ve explored every last inch of her.
Rules.
What fucking rules?