Chapter 14 #3
At the threshold Rocco twisted and found Mariah with his eyes. Blood had made tracks through his hair. Hate and hunger burned in the same look. “You’ll regret it,” he said, voice raw. “You’ll miss me when he puts you on a shelf like the rest of his pretty things.”
She rose, stepped into the water pooling on the floor, and walked close enough that the collar of his shirt brushed her shoulder. “I’m not a thing,” she said quietly. “I’m the reason you’re leaving this place alive.”
Leif’s hand slid around her waist and drew her back against him, claim and shield. “Out,” he told the men. The door opened. The storm outside swallowed Rocco like a mouth.
Silence fell in stages. Someone shut off the sprinklers. The rain stuttered and died. The piano man swore and lifted the lid to assess the damage to his day’s work. The server in the kitchen took a first unbroken breath. People started laughing the way people laugh when they didn’t die.
Leif didn’t move for a heartbeat. His body became a wall behind her, heat and strength and the kind of control that made the inside of her thighs ache. He lowered his mouth to her ear. “You did well,” he said. It wasn’t praise. It was a verdict.
She turned in his arms, slid her hands up his chest, and fisted them in his shirt. “I want to go home,” she said, meaning his home, meaning the place where his hands would finally do what they’d promised since he’d walked into her life.
He looked at her like he was choosing to live and already knew how. “We’re going,” he said. He glanced over her head. “Settle the room,” he told Magnus. “Pay everybody’s bill. Double the server’s wages for the night. Make the cameras forget.”
“Already in motion,” Magnus said, amused and efficient. “And the car’s at the back. Dry.”
Leif took her hand and laced their fingers so their brands met.
Heat flared, a private lightning. She squeezed back because she had to.
They walked through the ruined dining room, past the glittering wreck of glass and water, past the people who didn’t know what they’d almost been inside of.
The server who’d had a blade against her ribs met Mariah’s eyes.
Mariah stopped, reached, took the girl’s hand in both of hers.
“You’re safe now,” Mariah said. “Go home. Don’t come back until you forget tonight.”
The girl nodded, shaking. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Mariah said. “Thank him.” She tilted her head toward Leif.
The woman looked. Whatever she saw in his face made her eyes go big and then calm. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Leif only inclined his head. He didn’t do humble. He did truth. “Go,” he told the girl.
They stepped into the back hall, dry and humming with utility. The noise of the dining room fell away. The corridor smelled like coffee and bleach and expensive food. Her heart was a drum. His hand didn’t let go of hers.
He pressed her into the wall before they reached the door, not hard, just enough to shield her with his body from anything that might come down the passage. His mouth hovered above hers, not touching, cruel and kind in the same way he always was with her.
“You scared me,” he said, low, as if admitting it cost him blood.
She tipped her chin, accepting the confession like a jewel. “Good,” she said. “Now you know what it feels like.”
His laugh was harsh. “I want you,” he said. “Right now.”
“Then take me,” she whispered.
He didn’t. He leaned forward and breathed her in, a claiming that was somehow worse and better than his hands. “I’ll make you shake when we get home,” he promised. “I’ll make you forget your name.”
“Just make me remember yours,” she said.
He kissed her then—quick, brutal, perfect—and pulled back before she could fall through it. “Car,” he said, voice scraped. “Now.”
They hit the door like a single body. The night outside was steam and streetlight, wet pavement shining, the city trying to look ordinary again. Tomas held the back door of the car. Magnus’s silhouette was at the alley mouth, watching the world decide whether it wanted to try them again tonight.
Mariah slid into the leather and the brand in her palm went hot, then settled.
Leif followed, closed the door, and the car became a small universe where only their breathing mattered.
He didn’t touch her. She didn’t touch him.
They stared at each other like two animals in a trap that had accidentally let them live.
“Home,” he told Tomas.
The car moved. The city slid by. Mariah let herself lean into the seat, into the hum of an engine that meant safety, into the gravity that was Leif Severin looking at her like she was a problem he intended to enjoy solving.
“Tomorrow,” he said softly, “we open your brother’s river and pour out everything that doesn’t belong.”
“And tonight?” she asked, a dare.
“Tonight,” Leif said, “I prove you’re mine.”
Her pulse blew her open. She smiled at him the way a woman smiles when she knows exactly what’s coming. “Then hurry.”
The city lights ran like rain down glass.
Behind them, Voss & Vine drained, mopped, resumed pretending.
In front of them, a penthouse and a bed and a man who’d just shown her what he was willing to do to make sure she lived.
She wasn’t a parcel. She wasn’t a thing.
She was his problem and his pleasure and tonight she planned to be both until neither of them could walk.
Mariah lifted his hand and set her mouth against the brand in his palm. Heat jumped between them like a line pulled tight. He hissed softly, the sound that always undid her. His fingers closed at the nape of her neck and held.
“Later,” he said again.
“Soon,” she corrected.
“Soon,” he agreed. And the car took them into the kind of night you only get after you don’t die.