Chapter 9
Nine
Mercy
“Ican’t believe you did that.”
Heart pounding, I burst from the steam room and immediately search for the habit, but pieces are strewn about. When I’d arrived and overheard Cisco about to make the biggest mistake of his life, I wasn’t exactly thinking about being neat and tidy. I just wanted to salvage the situation.
Turns out, I needn’t have worried. He was going to do what he wanted to do anyway.
“I had everything under control,” I grumble, pluck the black robe off the ground, and then throw it onto the pile with the wimple. I keep hunting. “I have the poison ring. I have the relic.”
Speaking of which. Wincing, I reach behind my back and slide the sword cautiously from its entrapment. It slipped an inch while I was in the pornographic fresco room. I may have given myself a teensy tiny cut.
Freed, I add it to the pile and twist to check my back in an ornate mirror hanging between wooden lockers.
No blood. Thank God. I catch Cisco in the reflection, arms folded, leaning against the steam room door.
His eyes still look black from here, but it could be the lighting.
Nerves skitter down my spine. He just devoured the sins of four men.
Shouldn’t he be exhausted, like last time?
“Well?” I ask, proud that my voice remains steady.
No answer.
My gaze flicks to the blade beside me on the floor, but I don’t reach for it. Not yet.
I turn and face Cisco. He is a picture of stoic and dangerous, all glistening hard muscle and ink.
Short, dark blond hair sticks to his face in little curls.
Piercing dark eyes. Jaw muscle flexing, but no black shadow ribbons snaking out to get me.
Just like in there, they wanted nothing to do with me, only the men.
Cisco sucks in a breath and holds it. The movement shifts the towel slung precariously low on his hips, drawing my eye to the tented bulge at his groin.
My pulse flutters. Maybe I am still worried.
Swallowing, I lift my gaze to his, and my voice comes out huskier than intended. “I told you not to take the bait.”
Those delectable lips curve, tugging at his scar, but still he says nothing. He just stares at me while his eyes slowly fill with heat.
We don’t have time for this. The guard I drugged could wake up at any moment.
I return to my clothing, hunt and find my veil on top of one of the Cardinal’s red vestments, a few feet away. I stride toward it.
“I had a plan,” I grind out, bending to pick it up.
“Now we have a clusterfuck of a mess. How are we going to prevent discovery while we’re still on the premises?
” I shake out the veil. “And don’t even get me started on the CCTV footage outside this room—or visitor logs.
Guaranteed there’s also a paper trail somewhere that we need to get rid of. ”
When I turn back, Cisco’s no longer by the steam room. He’s standing an inch away from me.
I freeze.
It’s the same chemical reaction that saves my life during battle.
Sinners spend years conditioning ourselves not to startle or to fear something unexpected.
Instead of triggering adrenaline, we release special hormones that pump the brakes on our nervous system.
Lately, I’m out of practice. That my body remembers this now, with a man who’s supposed to be my ally, makes me worried.
“Cisco?”
“They had it coming.” His voice is deep, gruff, and too quiet. His eyes track details over my body, skipping from bare shoulder to chin to cleavage to lower. It’s as if he’s committing me to memory.
“Maybe they did,” I agree. “But it wasn’t part of the plan.”
“They called you a whore.”
“Don’t put this on me.”
“I’m not.” He advances until he’s crowding my space, and I have no choice but to step backward. The cedarwood locker hits my spine, knocking the breath from my lungs.
I press my palm over my beating heart, willing it to calm the fuck down. This is fine. He’s just a little . . . wired. It happens to the best of us after a battle. Give him a few moments, and that exhaustion should kick in.
He leans in. My palms fly up to halt him at the chest, but I snag my towel, and it falls.
Cisco’s hips snap forward, catching the falling towel, but now I feel his erection as he presses his face to the crook of my neck and inhales deeply.
The rush of air against my skin tickles, and I shiver.
His lashes flutter, butterfly kissing me, scattering more tingles.
My whimper triggers a deep, rumbling groan in his throat, and he slams his palms against the lockers beside me, arms caging me in. He drags his nose along my cheek.
“You smell so good, piccola.”
He smells good, too, like clean male sweat and some kind of spice from the steam. His face rolls against my neck, lips moving on flesh, hands sliding down the door to grip my waist.
He pins me and rubs the ridge of his cock over my pussy.
I gasp at the sensations shooting into my body.
His grinding hips release the trapped towel, and it falls in a heap at my feet.
Cisco makes some kind of victorious sound of triumph, a growl caught between a cheer and a whimper, and every feminine bone in my body simmers with lust.
“Shouldn’t you be tired?” I murmur. “Last time you did this, you were exhausted.”
He gives a one-shouldered shrug and then slides his hands up my bare stomach, teeth dragging up my throat to my jaw.
“Maybe I’m just used to feeding now,” he whispers in my ear. “Or maybe I’m still hungry.”
My breath hitches. He tenses, as if sensing an attack. Or maybe he’s hunting with his gift through my sins, searching for all the juicy rotten things I’ve done so that he can eat them. My heart jackhammers beneath my ribs, and I force myself to exhale. Hard.
I gently push him back so I can see his face, but he’s still looking down—at the rise and fall of my breasts, now bare and free, nipples hard.
“Cisco . . . you’re not . . . going to eat me, are you?”
Dark eyes clash with mine, a wolfish grin splits his face, and then he bends down to latch his mouth onto my breast.
“Fuck!” I gasp, arching into him.
He rolls his tongue around my nipple with lazy swirls until he draws a moan from somewhere deep in my throat.
I thread fingers through his damp hair.
“Cisco, we shouldn’t—”
He drops to his knees, biting me on my stomach.
“So good,” he mutters.
His face meets my pussy, and he inhales through my panties, shoulders shuddering, fingers flexing on my hips with bruising force. I freeze again, fighting my instincts for logic. Behind him, the steam-room door is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.
We’re not even dressed. It’s almost lunch, and if we want any hope of infiltrating the scavi and grottoes without detection, now is the best time. Staff will be taking breaks, and guards will be changing shifts.
Cisco growls against me, renewing his grip when I try to pull him off.
“We really should—”
He yanks my panties down, shoves his tongue through my pussy lips, and gives me a hard lick.
I cry out as pleasure hits. My reaction emboldens him, and he holds my hips against the locker, his tongue delving deeper on the next lave.
“Cisco . . .” I groan, but no more words come out. His tongue circles my clit, leaving liquid fire in its wake. My vision blurs. My limbs go weak. I’m a panting, mewling mess by the time I remember to tug him back by the hair.
“Mm.” His eyes flick up to capture mine as he continues to feast.
God, the carnal heat in them. It’s the pure ego of a man who knows how to make a woman scream, and it’s wrong belonging to a priest. It definitely belongs to the other half of him, the one I should be worried about.
When I forget to finish my sentence, his eyes crinkle, and then shutter as he gives himself over to the taste of me. He licks every part of my intimate flesh, tongue probing deep as if I’m the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted.
“Wait . . .” I moan.
“Tell me to stop.” His tongue flutters against my clit.
“Go harder,” I demand, thrusting my hips into his mouth.
He tosses my right leg over his shoulder, exposing me further. His eyes light up at the sight, and he swipes his fingers through my wetness, exploring my pussy as if we have all the time in the world.
“Why did I wait so long to taste this?” he murmurs roughly, and then his mouth is on me again, taking me more ravenously than before.
Pleasure sparks and spreads to my limbs like wildfire.
“Fuck me, you’re good,” I groan out.
I’m going to want this morning, noon, and night. I’m not going to care if we’re dancing in the blood of our enemies or being flayed alive. I just want this. The touch of him, the warmth, the little sounds he makes, the way he’s all in. He keeps mumbling in Italian about how incredible I taste.
I can’t believe I worried that he’d hurt me. He brings me to the brink in seconds.
My muscles tense. “Oh, God. I’m about to—”
“No.” He snaps back to glare up at me. “Not yet.”
“What?” I blink, gasping and dizzy from the abrupt pull back from the edge.
“Not yet.” He kisses my inner thigh by way of apology and then slides a finger inside me, knuckle deep. He presses his thumb against my clit. Once. Possessive, feral eyes lock with mine as he explains. “I haven’t had my fill.”
“Fuck you, Cisco.” I grip his hair, pulling hard. “Don’t play with me.”
He grins like a maniac and inserts a second finger, stretching me deep.
“Sei tutta mia,” he whispers. You’re all mine. “I will play with you how I want.”
Before I can correct him, he drops his mouth to my clit and sucks hard, fingers pumping in and out.
“Oh God, yes,” I whimper.
His rhythm picks up speed, harder and deeper. He doesn’t let up until I’m back on the precipice, panting and grinding into his face, pleasure building to a breaking point.
The orgasm hits me with a blinding force, robbing me of vision, sound, and any sensation except for wave after wave of bliss.
Through it all, he makes little sounds of need, lapping until the quivering in me eases. Only then does he relax his hold, allowing my body to slide down the cabinet. I fall in a boneless heap on the clothes beneath us, heaving breaths, and struggling to pull my thoughts into a straight line.
He rears back on his haunches, and I spread my thighs so he’ll take the hint and fuck me, but he doesn’t. He sits back, his posture growing tense, his eyes widening as he blinks rapidly. He looks around at the mess, at the closed steam room door, at my disheveled and naked body.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
My smile drops. “I’m not.”
“I shouldn’t have—” He curses. Runs his fingers through his hair.
What the hell?
I push up on my elbows, open my mouth to speak, but he grabs the robe and hands it to me.
“We have to go,” he says gruffly, avoiding my eyes. “You were right.”
Frowning, I take it and sit up.
He dresses with sharp, jerky movements, all business. He’s still erect, but he still refuses to look at me.
It’s not until he’s trying to put his Roman collar on with shaky hands that I see the problem. The guilt.
You are not his salvation.
A lump forms in my throat, and I get dressed.
You are his relapse.