Chapter 19
ANNIE
My anger was a tangled mess. It was aimed at Cipher, naturally, for dragging me here, for the casual murder he was committing as if it were nothing.
But it was also aimed at Velocity. That smug, stupid boy-Hero.
He’d broken the rules. You don’t call a civilian in Villain custody a whore.
You don’t degrade them. He’d shattered half a dozen regulations in one breath.
It was completely unprofessional.
My stomach twisted when I realized I was mentally tallying Alliance rules to justify a man’s murder. A man who had only insulted me. The part of me that was Annie Bishop, Keeper, was screaming in horror at my own detached pragmatism.
The door opened and Cipher stood in the doorway. It had been less than five minutes.
“What the hell is your problem?” I rounded on him. “I’m nothing to you. A distraction. A prop for your ratings. So why? Why did you kill him just for insulting me?”
He just reached up, gripped the edges of his mask and pulled it off. His face was a study in cold fury. His silver eyes were icy, his jaw locked so tight I could see the muscle jump beneath his skin.
He advanced on me and I took a step back, my shoulders hitting the wall beside the tiny window.
“My problem,” he said, his rich baritone dropping lower, “is that you don’t understand what you are.” He slapped his hand against the wall, bracketing my head while he brought his thigh between mine, parting my legs and trapping me.
“Masked as my ally? You are mine.” His fingers traced the edge of my mask. “Unmasked in my custody? Mine.” He peeled the mask off my face and tossed it onto the desk with a sharp clatter. “Forced to work together?” His lips brushed against my temple. “Still mine.”
His fingers captured my chin and tilted my face up to his.
“No matter what role you are playing, Annie,” he breathed, his hypnotic gaze dropping to my mouth, “you are fucking mine.”
His thumb dragged over my lower lip, slowly, pressing into the soft flesh.
“No one touches you. No one hurts you.” His lips ghosted over mine. “That is my right.”
“I don’t want to be the reason someone dies,” I whispered. I clawed for the moral high ground, but I was slipping.
Cipher’s eyes hardened. “You aren’t the reason for his death, Annie. Velocity was a grown man who made a fatal error in judgment. He insulted something that belongs to me. The only person responsible for Velocity’s death is Velocity.”
Cipher ghosted his lips from my mouth to my jaw, inhaling deeply at my neck.
“I can smell how wet you are,” he murmured.
“I’m not turned on.” I don’t know why I lied to him. He’d seen through me every time I’d lied so far and this time wouldn’t be any different. But admitting I was turned on by his possessiveness seemed like a really bad idea.
“No?” he challenged softly and sank to his knees.
“You’re trembling,” he noted, his perfect, arrogant face hovering inches from my crotch. “And your heart is beating so fast I can see the pulse in your neck.”
I refused to speak because I didn’t know what would come out of my mouth if I did. Seeing him on his knees for me caused every rational thought in my head to go right out the window.
He leaned forward and pressed his face into the curve of my stomach. He inhaled a long, slow drag of air. “You smell like fear,” he murmured against the fabric. “And something much sweeter.”
He turned his head, his cheek rubbing against my stomach. Then he moved lower and buried his face between my thighs and inhaled again.
He pressed his mouth directly against the seam of my leggings, right over the throbbing ache of my clit, and exhaled. The hot breath penetrated the material, scalding the sensitive skin beneath.
It was both too much and not enough.
I whimpered and jerked my hips forward, seeking more pressure, chasing the heat of his mouth.
Cipher growled, a low, animalistic sound. He turned his head slightly, and I felt the scrape of his teeth through the fabric, a grazing bite that promised both violence and pleasure.
“So responsive,” he whispered against me, the words hot and damp on the material. “I haven’t even properly touched you yet, and you’re already ruining your clothes for me.”
“I’m not.” My voice was a whisper even as I tangled my fingers in his dark locks and held him there.
“Liar,” he rasped.
His lips moved against the sensitive nerve endings of my clit and took the fabric and the flesh beneath it between his teeth and gave a tug.
“Cipher,” I choked out. My head fell back, hitting the metal wall with a dull thud. I didn’t know if I was pleading for him to stop or begging him to rip the leggings off.
He released the bite and soothed the spot with a broad sweep of his tongue. The fabric was soaked now and the friction maddening. He settled deeper between my thighs, his shoulders pressed against my inner legs, forcing them wider.
He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of my leggings and dragged them down my thighs until they bunched around my knees, taking my underwear with it.
“Look at you,” he breathed. The words were hot against my inner thigh. “So fucking wet for me.” His tongue swept the length of my pussy in one long, devastating stroke and I stopped breathing altogether. If the wall hadn’t been behind me, I would have collapsed.
“Sweet. So fucking sweet.” He drank me down like a man dying of thirst, licking up the slickness, savoring the taste of my arousal.
He sucked hard on my clit, and my vision blurred. A high, embarrassing sound tore from my throat. My hips jerked, trying to grind against him, desperate for his mouth. I needed him to stop the ache that was hollowing me out.
I was so fucking close. The tension in my body coiled tighter.
“Cipher,” I begged. “Please.”
He pulled back just enough to look up at me. His face was wet with me and his silver eyes were blown wide, the pupils swallowing the iris, dark with a hunger that looked like madness.
“Say it.” His breath ghosted over my pussy with each word. “Tell me who owns your cunt.”
I opened my mouth to answer. To give him whatever he wanted.
“Sir.” A voice crackled from the intercom.
I shrieked at the sound and scrambled to cover myself despite the fact that there was no one in the room with us.
“Incoming transmission,” the voice continued. “It’s flagged priority by the League. It’s Baron Ash.”
For a heartbeat, Cipher didn’t move. His breath was still hot against me. Then a low, vibrating growl started deep in his chest. Cipher stood and towered over me, his chest heaving.
I scrambled to grab the waistband of my leggings, desperate to pull them up, to cover the slick mess he’d made of me.
Cipher stopped me. “Don’t fucking touch them.” He grabbed me by the waist, and hauled me up.
“Cipher, what—”
“Quiet.”
He sat down at the desk and pulled me onto his lap. My leggings were still bunched around my knees and my pussy was exposed.
He grabbed his mask and slid it into place, his silver eyes disappearing behind it. Then he grabbed mine and placed it on my face.
“You are going to sit there,” he commanded. “You aren’t going to move. You aren’t going to make a sound. Do you understand?”
I stared at the black void of his mask and tried to understand what was going on but my brain was misfiring. I was sitting on his lap, half-naked, trembling, and about to be part of a conference call.
“Cipher, I can’t—”
His fingers dug into my hip, a sharp warning. “Do you understand, Bishop?”
“Yes.” I didn’t understand anything.
He tapped the console and my stomach dropped as the holographic display came on.
The screen revealed Baron Ash’s face, or what passed for it beneath his signature molten-rock mask.
There was a smaller screen in the corner showing what Ash could see on his end.
At least the desk hid everything below my waist.
“Cipher,” Ash growled.
“Baron,” Cipher replied, his tone so casually bored it bordered on insulting.
His hand slid up my thigh and I fought to keep my breathing steady as his fingers traced slow patterns against my inner thigh.
“I see you’ve still got your little pet,” Baron Ash sneered. “Enjoy her while you can. In a week, you’ll be nothing but ash yourself.”
Cipher sighed theatrically, but under the desk, his thumb brushed against my clit. I stiffened as I realized why he’d told me to keep my pants down.
“What do you want?” Cipher asked. His other hand cupped my ass and squeezed. “I have more important matters to attend to than listening to your recycled threats.”
Baron Ash’s mask glowed brighter, the cracks widening with his fury. “This isn’t a threat. It’s a promise. I’m going to kill you, Cipher. The League may have their rules, but accidents happen. Especially to those who forget their place.”
Cipher’s fingers stroked my pussy once and I did nothing to stop him. I told myself it was shock, that I simply couldn’t believe he was going to play with my pussy while on a call. But a part of me knew that deep down, I wanted him to finish what he had started, the call be damned.
“My place?” Cipher chuckled, the sound low and dangerous. His middle finger slid through my slick folds and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from gasping. “Perhaps you should worry about yours. After all, you’re the one who’s been... what was it? Ah yes, ‘slipping in the rankings.’”
Baron Ash slammed his fist down and flames licked at the edges of the frame. I barely registered it, too focused on trying to stay calm as Cipher’s thumb circled my clit. My hips bucked involuntarily and he dug his fingers into me to keep me still.
“You think you’re untouchable?” Ash snarled.
“The crowds love you. The Syndicate favors you. But I know what you are.” He leaned into the camera.
“You’re a fraud hiding behind a pretty mask.
You think your little toys and gadgets will save you?
I control fire itself. What do you control? Glorified calculators?”