2. Zane
TWO
ZANE
The surprise shatters my arousal, and rage follows quickly on its heels.
My hands fly up to grab at the man’s hands, and I claw at them with my dull fingernails. It’s not going to do anything to dislodge or even discourage him, but my mind isn’t working nearly as quickly as it should be.
A knife, I could’ve anticipated, or a gun.
But being strangled with the whip I’d been about to use on him? It hadn’t even crossed into the realm of possibilities.
I grab his hands, trying to pry them free even as I realize how little time I have to react. A few minutes at most, and I have to break free before the lack of air impacts my ability to think.
Panicking would only decrease the time I have, and this would-be assassin isn’t going to have that effect on me.
I can’t dislodge his fingers, so I reach for the whip instead. I try to pull it free from his hands, but his grip is surprisingly tight.
I’m keenly aware of my lack of breath, the ludicrous fact that I might die to a whip I haven’t even had the chance to use, and the fury stokes my adrenaline even higher.
My vision begins to swim.
My eyes land on his belt buckle and the tight, tight leather pants.
I throw a punch. He sucks in his gut and leans back to avoid me, but I wasn’t aiming for his belly.
I get him right in the crotch, and the man hisses sharply in pain. His hold on the whip loosens, and I finally wrest it away from him.
Air rushes into my lungs. I want to destroy him, but my entire body is focused on breathing.
“Fuck,” he snarls, rolling away from me and off the side of the bed. When he struggles to his feet, he glares at me with determination bright in those silver eyes. “Kind of low. I thought you were a gentleman.”
I want to utter a retort, but it’s all I can do to draw air into my lungs. The urge to lunge at him is strong, but he has the upper hand.
For now.
By the time I recover enough to make a play myself, I see the flash of metal in his hand. How the fuck did he get a knife in here?
And where was he hiding it?
Those are questions I don’t have time to think about, not right now. I can ream Gen out later for this.
The man dashes toward me. He must have incredible pain tolerance, to be able to move like that after I punched him in the balls.
How would he have taken the whip? Stoically? Grunting? I would have had to go much, much harder than eleven strokes to get a reaction out of him.
I move aside just in time to avoid getting my throat slit. He pivots immediately, and his knife catches the front of my shirt, leaving a long slice across the fabric.
“Ooh, I do love a man with fur on his chest,” he says, his eyes dropping to my exposed skin. “It really is a shame.”
“Shame you’re a fucking coward,” I snap back at him, grabbing for his wrist to wrench the knife out of his hand. My fingers only graze his skin, and I growl low in my throat.
I’m losing control.
I can’t lose control, not right now, not when the situation is as fraught with danger as it is.
But the idea of grabbing him has my blood pumping again in all the wrong ways.
If I catch him, will I throw him back on the bed? Wrestle him down and feel his body writhing beneath mine?
The thrill of the fight has my cock hard, and the wild light in his eyes only drags me deeper into the fantasy.
I want him.
Dangerous and deadly as he is, I want to break him.
“I’m the coward?” His pink, glossy lips spread wide.
“But then, you haven’t called for security yet.
Because you think you can handle me? Or…
” He suddenly gets in close and licks my cheek, sending a shiver down my spine.
“Is it because you’re ashamed? You don’t want anyone to know you brought a man into this room, ready to fuck him? ”
Yes.
But I’m not going to admit that to him.
Stefan knows about my predilections, all of them, and so does Gen. But anyone else at this party finding out…
No.
I can’t let that happen.
This time, I manage to grab his wrist, twisting hard. “So I’m a coward for handling you myself?” I bark out a laugh. “You have that backwards.”
I’m not admitting the truth.
Not to him, not to anyone.
He drops the knife, but catches it with his other hand. I have good enough reflexes to push him away from me before he can drive the knife into my gut. With how easily it had sliced through my shirt, it must be wickedly sharp. It would cut through skin like butter.
The knife would be better served cutting him, painting beautiful patterns into that creamy skin.
He denied me my fun.
It’s only fair that I deny him what he wants.
I kick at his knee, but he skips out of the way, getting out of easy reach. I both want to get my hands on him and keep him at a distance. If I can disarm him, I can grab him by that long hair and yank him back to the bed.
He wants to strangle me? Two can play that game.
He’ll look even more beautiful with my hands around his neck and his face turning bright red. I might even kiss him again as he gasps for air, teasing him with the breath I’m denying him.
He gets in close again, wielding the knife with deadly accuracy, but I anticipate the move. I grab his wrist and twist in a fluid motion, and the knife clatters to the floor.
I shove him, and this time I’ve caught him off guard enough that I can grab him around his stomach and slam him against the wall, right up against one of the many hooks.
I wrap my hand around his throat and imagine him collared and chained.
“You lost.” I smirk.
“I didn’t,” he responds, right as he slices my arm with a second knife I didn’t even know he had.
Fuck. I hiss in pain, but I don’t let go. The scent of copper fills the air. I use my other hand to punch him in the gut. His mouth parts, and he drops this knife, too. I kick it far away from us.
Exhilaration pumps through me, the feeling of being alive, and I kiss him hard. I can still taste the blood on his lips.
A sound registers in the background—pounding on the door—but I ignore it. I have this man exactly where I want him.
Well.
Almost.
“Tell me your name,” I demand when I break the kiss, staring into those gray eyes.
He licks his lip. Some red smears on his skin, and I was right: the color looks stunning on him.
“You can call me Sin,” he says. His eyes flick past me.
I grab his chin, getting his attention again.
“Don’t look away from me,” I snarl. “Sin.” The name suits him, fake as I know it is.
I slam his head back against the wall, only an inch away from one of the hooks. It would be a shame to kill him like that.
Hell, it would be a shame to kill him at all before I’ve fucked him senseless.
Could he be someone I lose control with, who can see the barely-restrained violence beneath my carefully crafted demeanor?
His eyes glitter with amusement. “I don’t see anything worth looking at, though.”
I get a better hold on him so I can spin him around, shoving him face-first against the wall. “Then stare at the wall,” I tell him. If only I had a set of cuffs on me.
I grind my cock against his ass, groaning at the feeling. His body shudders underneath me.
His hair falls to one side, giving me a clear view of his bare shoulder. A very obvious scar fractures across his skin.
A bullet wound.
I wonder how many scars he has.
I want to add more, to cut him deep and leave my mark forever on him, but if I go for the knife, I’ll lose him. He’s too slippery, and it’s all I can do to hold him against the wall as it is.
I lean in to bite his shoulder anyway, breaking the skin with my teeth. Copper explodes on my tongue.
Fuck.
It’s a pity he has to die.
“I’m going to fuck you before I kill you,” I whisper against his ear.
He shivers and lets out a small laugh. “You won’t,” he says. “You’re going to let me go.”
The smirk spreads across my lips. “I don’t fucking think so.”
Something cracks behind me, and it takes me a second to realize it’s the door.
I glance over my shoulder right as the door slams open.
Sin slams his head back into my jaw, and I’m caught so unaware that I release him. As I stumble in pain, he dashes away.
“Boss!” Stefan calls out.
My eyes are on Sin as he dashes to the window.
The open window.
Sin blows a kiss at me before he jumps.
The would-be assassin is gone, just like that, and even though I rush after him, it’s too late. The two-story fall should have slowed him down, but I don’t see anything below the window except bushes. With the dark and how large the property is, he could easily have found a place to hide.
“Motherfucker,” I snarl.
Stefan comes over to me. “Shit. What the fuck happened? Why was the door locked?”
“Because I locked it, obviously,” I snap at him. “Fuck. I wasn’t expecting one of Gen’s guests to try to kill me.”
I absently touch my arm, and my fingers come away slick with blood. Shit. I’d forgotten he’d managed to cut me in the scuffle, and from the feeling of it, it’s not just a scratch. I glare down at it.
It wasn’t supposed to be my blood that had been spilled.
“The same woman from earlier?” Stefan looks out the window and grimaces. “I’ll talk to Gen. We’ll do a full search of the grounds.”
It’s going to be too late to find him here.
That’s not going to stop me from finding him. He might be gone for now, but either he’ll be back to try to finish the job or I’ll catch him first.
“Him,” I say, exhaling slowly. “He gave his name as Sin. Gen should know more. There’s no way he should’ve been able to get into one of these parties without being thoroughly vetted.”
Stefan’s jaw twitches. “You locked yourself in a room with a man? I should have been here.”
Like I’d have let him stick around to watch me whip and fuck another man. He knows that wouldn’t have been an option.
“No, you shouldn’t have been,” I say.
I hear footsteps, and I turn quickly to see Gen approaching.
She surveys the damage to the door, then looks at me. Her eyes widen when she sees my arm, which is still dripping with blood. “What happened here?” she demands.
“I should be asking you that,” I retort. “Mind explaining how one of your guests got through security with two fucking knives?”
Her lips part, and I can tell she’s thoroughly stunned by the question. “The woman you came in here with?” she asks.
“Man,” I correct.
Fuck. If even Gen didn’t know that Sin was a man, her vetting had thoroughly failed.
She stares at me for another several seconds. “I’ll find out more,” she says. “Heads will roll for this.”
I reach up to touch my bruised throat. “They’d better,” I say. “Because that never should’ve happened.”
“Yes, Zane, I’m aware,” she retorts, pulling her phone out and tapping at the screen. “How the fuck did he get out of here?”
I gesture to the open window. “He must’ve opened it when he got in here,” I say. I’d noticed the curtains fluttering, but I hadn’t connected the dots. “I don’t know how he managed to land without breaking something and get out of here so quickly.”
“There’s lattice underneath the window,” she says, though she’s barely paying attention to me as her fingers tap away at her screen.
“It should’ve been impossible to set me up like this,” I tell her, my voice hard. “They should’ve thought they’d need to send a woman to catch me off guard.”
At that, Gen looks up at me. “How many people even know you’re bi?”
“Very few.” Few enough to where I might be able to track down a leak.
But I’m always so careful, so suspicious, and it feels impossible that someone I trusted enough with that knowledge could’ve gotten past my own security checks.
“He could’ve been counting on you not realizing until it was too late,” she ventures.
I shake my head. “He made it clear from the living room that he was a man.”
He’d even pretended to walk away from me. He’d know that would entice me more than easy, simpering submission.
Stefan lets out a disgusted sound.
I glare at him. “Don’t,” I warn him.
“Women are safer,” Stefan says, as if that’s his only complaint. “Ms. Boudreaux, call your security and have them do a sweep.”
Gen gives him an unamused look. “Already in progress,” she replies. “I know my responsibilities, and I suggest you remember that.”
I arch a brow at her, but then I shake my head. “Do you have a first aid kit?” I ask, lifting my still-bleeding arm.
She gives me a quick once-over. “Where else were you injured?” she asks, beckoning for me to follow her.
I glance down at my stomach. The shirt has been slit, but there’s no blood there. “Only the arm,” I say.
And my pride.
She nods, and I follow her out of the bedroom with Stefan right on my heels.
I’m going to have a hard time shaking him for a while, which is going to make it difficult to get my hands on Sin the way I want to.
It’s fine. Once he’s chained down, he won’t be a threat to me anymore.
I will get what I want, one way or another.
Then, no matter how much of a waste it’ll be, I’ll end him.