Chapter 8
Ican feel Tomas watching me from the doorway, his gaze burning hotter than the blood still drying on my hands. Six kills today, and all I can think about is how desperately I need him inside me.
My fingers move over the weapons, checking magazines, counting rounds, but every movement is for him.
Every deliberate action is a performance, showing him what I've become.
The metal is cold under my touch, but my body burns everywhere his eyes track.
The person I was three days ago would be building cases against the woman I am now. The thought makes me smile.
"Silent Night" threads through my lips, the melody automatic as my fingers work.
Holy night, all is calm. Except nothing is calm.
My pulse races, adrenaline still burning through my veins hours after the last shot, metallic and sharp on my tongue.
All is bright. The blood on my hands catches the fluorescent light, dark and damning and somehow beautiful.
I killed for him. For us. And the wetness between my thighs says I'd do it again.
His breathing changes behind me, rougher, less controlled. From down the hall, Leonardo's labored breathing reminds us we're not alone, that consequences wait beyond this moment. But right now, all that exists is the electric tension crackling between us.
"You're still humming," he says, voice rough as gravel.
"Nervous habit." I set down the rifle I've been checking, but don't turn around. Not yet. Let him look. Let him see what his darkness has created. The icy metal of the weapons rack presses against my palm, grounding me. "Though I'm not sure what I'm nervous about anymore."
"You should be nervous." His footsteps are deliberate, measured, predatory. Each one makes my core clench with anticipation. "You just became something else today. Something dangerous."
"Something like you?"
"Something perfect."
The word sends heat flooding through me, makes my knees weak.
Perfect. Not despite the killing, but because of it.
I finally turn to face him, and what I see makes my breath catch.
He looks feral. Blood spray across his shirt, hair wild from combat, eyes black with something that has nothing to do with violence and everything to do with hunger.
The same hunger that's been building in me since I pulled that first trigger.
"Six kills," he says, moving closer, and I can smell him now. Gunpowder and blood and that subtle cologne that makes my mouth water. "Clean shots, no hesitation. You were magnificent."
"I was protecting what's mine." The words come out steadier than I expect, carrying a possessiveness that would have horrified me days ago.
His laugh is dark, appreciative. "Say that again."
"You're mine, Tomas Rosetti." I lift my chin, meeting his predatory gaze, feeling power surge through me at the way his pupils dilate.
He crosses the remaining distance between us in two strides, backing me against the weapons rack.
The metal is cool against my spine, a shocking contrast to his furnace-hot body as he cages me in.
I can feel his erection pressing against my stomach through our tactical gear, hard and insistent, and it makes me even wetter.
"Careful, prosecutor," he growls, but his eyes burn with approval. "You understand what this means? The family doesn't let people walk away. Once you're blooded in, you're ours forever. Blood oaths, family trials, the marks they give you to show you belong."
"I am the fire now." My hands find his chest, feeling his heart race under my palms, matching the violent tempo we've set. "We both are."
He kisses me like he's trying to devour me whole, teeth and tongue and desperate need.
My tactical vest is still on, pressing between us, and he growls in frustration as his hands struggle with the straps.
The taste of copper and gunpowder mingles between our mouths.
Blood from where I bit my lip during the firefight, residue from weapons we both handled.
"Off," he demands against my mouth, yanking at the vest. "Need to feel you."
But I'm done being passive, done being the one things happen to. I bite his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, feel him jerk in surprise, then groan as I suck the wound. His blood tastes like violence and power, and God help me, it makes me clench around nothing, desperate to be filled.
"Mmm," I murmur against his bleeding mouth, then grab his shirt and spin us, slamming him back against the wall with strength I didn't know I possessed.
"Fuck." His hands tighten on my hips, but he lets me control this moment. "What have I created?"
"Your equal." I tear at his shirt, buttons scattering across the concrete floor, revealing the chest I've mapped with my tongue but never while covered in someone else's blood. "That's what you wanted, isn't it? Someone who could match your darkness?"
"Yes." His admission comes out raw, desperate. "Christ, yes."
My vest finally comes off, the tactical gear hitting the floor with a heavy thud.
His hands immediately find skin, rough and demanding as they map my body through the thin shirt underneath.
But then something shifts. He captures my bloodied knuckles, brings them to his lips with unexpected gentleness, kissing each one like he's blessing the violence they've done.
"My deadly angel," he murmurs against my skin, and the tenderness breaks something in me.
"Show me," I demand, nails raking down his chest hard enough to leave marks, needing him to understand that gentle isn't what I want right now. "Show me how dark we can go together."
His control snaps completely. He lifts me, wrapping my legs around his waist as he carries me through the cabin.
We should check on Leonardo, should listen for vehicles approaching, but all that exists is this desperate need.
We crash into walls, knock into doorframes, both of us too lost in each other to care about navigation.
I can feel his cock pressing against me through our clothes, and I grind against him shamelessly, chasing friction.
The bathroom door gives way under our combined weight, and we stumble inside.
He sets me on the counter, hands already working at my pants, yanking them down.
The cold marble against my bare skin makes me gasp, but then his fingers are there, sliding through my wetness, and the sound he makes is pure animal satisfaction.
"So fucking wet," he growls. "From the killing. From becoming what you were meant to be."
"Look," he commands, turning my head toward the mirror.
What I see stops my breath.
We're a violent opera made flesh, all passion and tragedy and devastating beauty.
Blood streaks across both our faces, our clothes torn and stained.
His chest bears the scratches I just gave him, already beading with blood.
My throat shows the perfect imprint of his teeth from earlier.
We look like we've been through war, because we have. We look like killers, because we are.
We look perfect together.
"See?" His hands frame my face, forcing me to maintain eye contact with our reflection. "This is what you are now. The Rosettis mark their own with blood first, always. You've earned that mark today."
He pushes two fingers inside me without warning, and my head falls back with a gasp. "And you're so fucking wet from it. Your pussy is dripping for me, isn't it? From the killing, from the blood."
I force myself to watch in the mirror as he works me with his fingers, see my own face contort with pleasure.
The woman in the reflection isn't the person who walked into this cabin days ago.
She's something else entirely. Formidable, powerful, his.
Like watching myself perform in the darkest opera ever written, where the heroine doesn't die but transforms.
"Keep watching," he commands when my eyes start to flutter. "I want you to see yourself when I make you come. See what you've become."
His thumb finds my clit, circling with perfect pressure while his fingers curl inside me, hitting that spot that makes me see stars.
In the mirror, I can see everything. The blood on our skin, the desperate hunger in both our eyes, the way my body responds to his touch even covered in evidence of violence.
"I need you inside me," I gasp, fumbling with his belt, desperate to free his cock. "Now, while we're still like this."
He doesn't make me wait. His cock is hard and ready when I free him, and he thrusts into me in one smooth motion that has us both groaning.
The stretch is perfect, the fullness exactly what I've been craving since I pulled that first trigger.
In the mirror, I watch us move together.
Watch the muscles in his back flex, watch my legs wrap around his waist, watch ourselves become one creature made of blood and desire.
"That's it," he growls, setting a punishing pace. "Watch us together. Look at what we are."
"Beautiful," I breathe, maintaining eye contact with our reflection as he fucks me against the bathroom counter. We're beautiful in our monstrosity, perfect in our violence.
His hand wraps around my throat, not squeezing, just holding, feeling my pulse race against his palm.
"Come for me," he demands. "Let me watch you fall apart."
The orgasm crashes through me like the climax of Wagner's darkest opera, sharp and violent and perfect.
I watch myself in the mirror as I shatter, see the exact moment I stop being who I was and become something entirely his.
Entirely ours. My pussy clenches around him, pulling him deeper, and I've never felt more powerful.
He follows immediately, burying himself deep with a growl that sounds more animal than human. In the mirror, our eyes meet, and I see the same recognition in his that must be in mine.
We're the same now. Two halves of one monster.
The second encounter happens against the bedroom door when we can't make it all the way inside, my back pressed to the wood while he takes me with desperate intensity.
I can hear Leonardo's breathing change in the other room, still alive, still stable, and somewhere distant, the sound of snow sliding off the roof.
Time is passing. Leonardo could wake any moment.
"Could fuck you forever," he says against my ear. "Never get enough. Never stop wanting you like this."
I press back against the wood, taking him deeper. "Then don't stop. Don't ever stop."
The words make him wild, his thrusts becoming erratic, hitting so deep I feel him in my throat. But then something shifts. He touches the scar on my palm, the one from trying to grab a knife my first night here, with such reverent gentleness that tears prick my eyes.
"My brave woman," he murmurs, and it sounds like a prayer.
Later, in bed for our third and final round, we move together with less desperation but no less intensity.
My body aches from combat and sex, muscles screaming, but I need this last claiming.
He moves over me slowly, deeply, like he's trying to memorize every sensation.
Each thrust makes me gasp, my oversensitive body caught between pleasure and pain.
"I want it all," I gasp, meeting his eyes. "Your darkness, your violence, your family. No more secrets."
His rhythm falters for a moment. "You don't know what you're asking."
"I killed six men today. I've earned the truth."
He rolls us over and pulls me up so I'm straddling him, never breaking our connection. One hand wraps gently around my throat while the other slides between my legs.
"The truth weighs heavy."
"I don't care," I moan, rolling my hips, chasing the building pleasure. "I want it all. Every secret. Every violent truth."
"Even if it means never going back? Never being that prosecutor again?"
"Especially then." I'm close, so close, balanced on the edge. "I was born for this. For you. I've always been drawn to your world. I just didn't know why until now."
His fingers press harder, circle faster, and I fall apart with a cry that echoes off the bathroom walls. He follows me over, my name a prayer on his lips as he empties himself inside me.
As we finally collapse into bed, exhausted and sated. The room smells like sex and gunpowder, blood and us. My pussy still throbs from the intensity of it all, and I can feel his release leaking out of me, marking me as his even in this.
"Twenty bodies," I murmur against his skin. "What will the police think?"
"There won't be any bodies by dawn. Like it never happened."
"Except it did. I did." I trace patterns around the tattoos on his chest, feeling his heartbeat steady under my palm. "I crossed every line today."
"Regrets?"
I think about it, really consider what I've done, what I've become.
The woman who walked into this cabin five days ago would be horrified.
But that woman never felt this alive, this powerful, this complete.
That woman died today, buried under six bodies in the snow.
What rises from her ashes is something stronger, darker, more honest about what justice really looks like.
"My father wanted the guilty punished," I say, pulling him down for a fierce kiss. "Today I punished six guilty men. They wanted to kill you. Torture me, probably. That's the only justice that matters now. So no," I answer. "No regrets. I'd do it all again."