by Rose Harper
Taking the stairs two at a time, I think of ways to talk myself out of this situation. In other instances, I could use my sexual prowess to get the desired effect I’m after, but something tells me that’s not what Carina is going to connect with the most. Instead, she’d be more likely to understand if I was a complete bastard toward her.
Making my way down the hall, I keep my eyes and ears peeled for anything different. She may be trained for tactical sleuthing, but I’m trained in a much different aspect. I was taught to lead, to be the person everyone looks up to. I’m not the type of person to hold a pretty slit’s hand while she mucks her way through psychological shit.
Coming to a stop in front of her door, I raise my hand to knock, only to have it jerk open before I make contact. My eyes land on that of the infamous Reap’s—their bottomless, soulless hazel depths.
“How did you know I was here?” I ask, smirking.
“I knew you were coming when you got to the top of the stairs, then I heard you breathing outside my door.”
She heard me coming from more than two hundred feet away? On carpet? She heard me fucking breathing?
Fucking hell, if we don’t kill each other, she may be a valuable asset.
“May I come in?”
Arching a brow, she looks at me closely. “Why?”
She may be Reap, but that doesn’t mean she owns this goddamn house. I do, and she’ll do well to remember who the top dog is around here. She may be lethal, but I can assure her, I can be just as deadly if I’m crossed the wrong way.
“Do I need a fucking reason?” I fume, shouldering my way past her.
My assertiveness can either backfire or give me a level of respect through her eyes only a few seem to obtain. I’m hoping for the latter. Because if not, it seems our little encounter is going to get bloody. I’m not the one to bow out of a fight. Never have; never will. Doesn’t matter if that fight’s against a woman.
“Well, just make yourself at home,” she deadpans, shutting the door behind her.
“I intend to. Now, Vinny had some enlightening news to share with me. Do you think you could be a good girl and explain to me what that might be?”
“Good girl?” she asks with narrowed eyes. “Do you actually believe I can be that sort of thing?”
“Spill it. Now.” I know pushing her may not be the best course of action, but it will most definitely give me the desired results.
I keep my back turned to her as a show of fearlessness, but my gaze snaps to her as I watch her make her way around me. Of their own accord, my eyes drop down to the soft swell of her ass as it sways back and forth under her tight summer dress. A bout of lust warms me and takes my reaction as free reign to roam my hungry eyes over the rest of her body, seeing her in fuck-me, skyscraper heels. It never fails when I’m around her. Just her presence is a direct line to my cock, making me ache ever since the first time we were almost together.
“Quit staring at my ass, Mateo. Being a slut is very unbecoming of you.”
The sass in this one. Fuck me, it’s almost hotter than she is.
“Quit being a bitch and maybe we’ll both get what we want.”
“Bitch?” she laughs, and the sound is as emotionless as her eyes. “Now that’s something I can work with.”
In all my years in this world, I’ve never seen an individual so emotionless. Have to admit, it kind of gets my dick hard knowing Carina is Reap, and I’m going to be married to her. At first, it completely fucked me up in the head. I didn’t know which way was up, down, right, or left. I didn’t think it could be possible for her to be the person behind the stories parents used to scare their children into flying right. Now, though, I can see the opportunities before my very eyes. We don’t love each other. Just like me, she’s incapable of love. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use each other.
“Just a question. Am I speaking to Carina or Reap at the moment?”
Shooting me a smile over her shoulder, I see the cold death emanating from her dilated irises. “How did you know?”
Smiling, I shoot a wink her way before making my way closer. “I have my ways.”
“Hmm, was your way Vinny? He’s positively scrumptious, isn’t he?”
She makes a deliciously low sound in the back of her throat while closing her eyes in pure bliss. I don’t want to acknowledge what she’s doing is getting a rise out of me, but it is. I hate the thought of her thinking of anyone else but me. I’m the man she should be worried about drooling over, not my brother.
Growling under my breath, I narrow my eyes at her. “Watch it.”
“Or what?” she asks, turning to square up with me. “You’ll make me regret it?”
Nodding, I reply, “Something like that.”
“Well, baby, let’s dance.”
5
CARINA
Just as soon as the words leave my mouth, Mateo completely changes right in front of me. His eyes darken, and a ruthless—yet, deliciously sinful—smirk tugs at the corners of his lips. I try hard not to swoon, but it’s useless.
So. Fucking. Useless.
“Are you sure you know what you’re asking, kitty?” he asks, stepping toward me. “Do you think just because you’re what everyone fears that I’ll fear you, too?”
Um, yes! I scream to myself. Everyone that knows about me—whether figuratively or through stories—is scared of me and what I’m capable of, and he should be too. Only, it looks like it excites him more than it frightens him.
“You don’t look scared,” I muse before I can catch myself.
I don’t move a muscle as he comes closer, but something in the back of my mind is telling me to stay still, that I don’t have to fight him. He’s not going to hurt me, or he would have already.
Coming to a stop in front of me, he’s so close I can smell the muskiness of his cologne and natural body scent comingling, causing my mouth to water. I start when he raises his hand but manage to hold myself steady, if only just barely. His fingers trail from my chin to the nape of my neck. My eyes hold his while he weaves his fingers through my hair, but before I can stop him, they tighten, and he pulls me flush against him. His eyes trail over my face as I feel his heated breath wisp across my skin, the feeling warming me from the inside out.
“I have no reason to be scared of you, Carina. You won’t hurt me,” he says, closing the distance between our lips. One light brush of his sensually full lips against mine has me fighting to keep my resolve. “You and I are cut from the same cloth. We both know what the other needs, now don’t we?”
I can’t tell if he’s trying to soften me toward him, so he can take advantage, or if he really means that. We’re not cut from the same cloth—never will be. He wasn’t trained at a young age to be able to dismember a person and hide the pieces. He wasn’t trained to dispose of a life as if it didn’t mean anything to begin with.
What he’s been trained in doesn’t require that of taking a life. It requires that of running an empire. He has no clue the tarnished and tainted cloth I was cut from, and it pisses me off that he thinks so.
Narrowing my eyes, I push him away from me with so much force he falls back a few steps. “You have no idea where I came from! You don’t know me or what I went through; don’t act as if you do!”
“Carina.”
“No!” I yell, stalking toward him. “You don’t get to say that shit. You don’t get to stand there and try to use your sensuality against me. I’m not a fucking person you should play with, and that’s exactly what you’re doing right now!”
Rage simmers so harshly everything comes to a head, forcing it to rush to a roaring boil. Swinging my fist, I land a haymaker to the side of his face, watching the stunned amazement pass his features as his head snaps to the right. Blood begins to trickle from the corner of his mouth, and all he does in response is raise his fingers to the spot, running them through it. Pushing his tongue against the inside of his lip, he pulls his bottom lip into his mouth, tasting the coppery proof I did
what no other person has enough balls to do: knock Mateo Calvetti back into his place.
He jerks soulless, heated eyes up to mine as a soft growl reverberates through his chest. Gathering my stance, I rear back my other arm, lost to the rage zapping through my entire body. Throwing it, I growl like a wild animal when he bats it away with his hand as if it’s nothing. With everything in me, I swing my other arm, nearly screaming out in frustration when he bats it away once more.
I want him to fight me. Prove there is a small chance we’re one of the same. If he was going to prove that, right now would be the time for him to step up, verify his words aren’t complete and total bullshit. Or I swear on all that is holy, I’ll eat him alive.
One of the things I hate the most is being lied to, and that’s what’s been happening since before my father started my training. Enough is e-fucking-nough. I refuse to have Mateo lie to me, too.
“Carina,” he says my name in warning as he starts to walk around me. My eyes never once leave his as I turn with him. If he thinks he’s going to catch me off guard, he has another thing coming. Only suckers would allow that, and I’m no sucker. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“You have no idea,” I bark. “You talk all this mad shit about being ‘cut from the same cloth.’ I didn’t see you at the dinner table growing up! You were probably here being coddled like a little bitch sucking on your mom’s tit.”
Before I can react, he forcefully pushes me up against the wall with his body weight. His hand flies up to my throat, leaving me gasping for air. Pushing me further into the wall, drywall starts giving way under the pressure as wheezing gasps fall from between my parted lips. Stepping between my thighs, he hoists me higher until the only thing touching the floor is my tiptoes. Still, no amount of pain he can deliver is going to break me. If anything, it’ll only make me want more.
A smirk tugs at the corner of my lips as my eyes beam down at his. Mateo’s fingers start tightening in warning, but instead of the desired effect, it makes me smile more, displaying my straight white teeth.
“First of all, don’t forget who you’re talking to.” He squeezes until I’m sure my face is going to burst. “Secondly, never call me a son of a bitch. That will be your only warning.” He tilts his head, peering over my reddened face. “It’s so fucking cute you think you’re the one in charge here. Let’s get something straight, you don’t get to throw your fucking weight around. I’ll toss your ass in the basement faster than shit if you even try.”
The word “basement” has my eyes thinning in irritation, the smile falling from my lips. He fucking knows I hate any goddamn place that remotely resembles the hell I was forced to endure most of my life.
“Fuck you, you son. Of. A. Bitch.” I grind out.
“You really want to die, don’t you?” he whispers, pressing himself against me.
I release a ghost of a laugh as I stare back at him, meeting his cool eyes head on. “I’ve wanted to die since I was ten—that’s nothing new.”
The entire time he searches my face for answers I’ll never give him, I’m looking for a way to dislodge his hold on me. If he were trained like me, there wouldn’t be. But since he isn’t, I find it easily, and it comes in the form of him not protecting his cock—like an amateur. Thrusting my knee up, I catch him dead center. But to my amazement, he doesn’t falter in his hold on me. Instead, it grows tighter—more threatening—as his face grows unbelievably red.
“You actually believed that would work?” Instead of answering, I stay silent, which further pisses him off. “Answer me, goddammit! You think I’m like one of your puny little targets, don’t you? That I’ll be easy to take down from a kick to the groin? Well, I’m going to let you in on a little secret, kitty. I’m not like most men you’ve ever met. You’ll do well to work with me, instead of against me. I don’t give a fuck what happened to you when you were younger. No one gets pity from me.”
Leaning closer, he presses his lips to the shell of my ear, earning a shiver in return. Right now, I can’t decipher if that’s a shiver of revulsion or need. Mateo causes me to feel shit I don’t want to feel. When not in his presence, I’m my emotionless self. But, when he’s around, it’s like I’m who I was before my father made me kill the only person I loved.
“I never asked for your pity, asshole,” I seethe. “I’d rather slit my own throat than have anything from you.”
“You want the knife?” he asks, removing something from his waist. “Because you sure as fuck don’t have a choice in the matter when it comes to me.”
Everything stops in its track. The world shifts on its axis as I take stock of everything around me. His words. His actions. My words. My actions. The fact a very rigid cock is pressed firmly against my pussy, and the fact I actually like it even though I’ve never felt anything like it before. Hell, I’ve never seen or felt a dick before, so it amazes me how much I like it being there.
Everything fucks my world up.
“What are you saying?”
“You belong to me, goddammit, and I’m going to do whatever I need to get the disobedience out of your pathetic little body, whether you want it or not.” He growls, nipping at my flesh. “I know the reason you’ve been holing yourself away up here. And, gotta admit, it’s kinda cute—you being jealous and all.”
“I’m not fucking jealous,” I seethe, narrowing my eyes.
Smirking, he replies, “Call it what you want, but we both know what it is, and you couldn’t be more wrong. Fuck Camille. Kill her for all I care. She’s been a thorn in my side since the beginning. But there is one thing you’re going to accept here and now, Carina. I don’t care what the fuck you do, but you will never do this.”
“That is?” I inquire, quirking a brow.
“You will never own me. So, don’t even fucking try.” The stench of a challenge sifts through the air as I bite my tongue, tasting the sweet tinge of copper spread across my palate.
His words have my eyes narrowing, my blood boiling for a completely different reason. It lights a fire inside of me, causing bittersweet emotions I wish would just stay dormant like they have for many years.
He still thinks I’m the one that belongs to him. He is naive to think I will never own him in return. Such a sweet, innocent man. He has no idea he’s just awakened the devil, and she’s going to screw his entire world up one fuck and kill at a time.
The best part is … he’s not even going to see it coming until it’s too late.
6
CARINA
Without saying a word, he removes his hand from my throat and steps backward. I ready myself for a fight, but before I can, he turns me around and scoops my hair out of the way. My features twist in confusion, but I allow him, not knowing where he’s going with this.
Honestly, nothing’s ever happened like this before, so how could I know. If it had, I could be better prepared than I am now. Instead, I’m silently calculating which angle he’s coming from, not knowing his end game in this tug of war between us.
Taking the zipper of my dress, he slides it down painstakingly slow—his rough knuckles skimming over the ridge of my spine in the process. Feeling his course flesh graze my softness is something I could become addicted to if I don’t watch it.
No! Shaking my head, I will my mind to stray away from that part of me. The part that’s no longer supposed to exist inside of me—yet, it’s the part that’s always dominant when Mateo is around. I can’t focus. Can’t push it down into the deepest parts of me anymore. It’s free—no longer hiding behind the bars that have been caging them for almost thirteen years.
My mouth falls open at the same time my mind screams to step away from him. But no matter how much my mind rebels against his touch, my body is a slave to his.
His touch feels like little jolts of electricity zipping over the surface. I want to stay pissed at him, make him pay for ever thinking he has such a right to touch me, but I can’t. The only thing I can do is feel.
Feel … when
so long I’ve blocked that part out.
Pulling my bottom lip into my mouth, I bite down hard until I taste the barest hints of crimson flourish hitting my palate. I can’t let him know that what he’s doing feels amazing, even if he’s only using his fingers. I’d rather die than admit something like that.
“What are you doing?” I whisper breathlessly once he’s hit the bottom of my dress.
The straps fall off my shoulders as the top of the dress falls to my waist, baring my swollen, aching breasts to the wall I was just up against. He presses against me, and I swallow hard and close my eyes when his strong chest and rigid stomach press against my naked back. Leaning forward, his lips rest against the shell of my ear as he takes me by surprise and flicks his tongue against it.
“Whatever I want, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he replies, his voice thickened with arousal.
“I can kill you,” I retort, already knowing that’s a bunch of shit. This stupid fucking traitorous body isn’t going to allow me because she’s already on team Mateo.
A chuckle in a low timbre floats into my ear, and I can’t stop the tremble no matter how much I will my control to stay in place. “Mmm, I love it when you talk dirty, kitty. Fight me. Draw blood. I want you to. That way when I take you, your downfall will be sweeter than any type of submission you succumb to.”
I’m so lost in every sensation I almost miss what he says. I can’t help it. There’s something about Mateo that causes me to go stark-raving mad with feelings, and as much as I hate to admit it, I yearn for more.
However, his words break through my lapse in judgement. My downfall? He thinks he can force submission on me? Bull. Fucking. Shit. What the hell kind of world does he live in where I—the one who stars in the scary stories people tell—would ever lie down like a subservient little lap dog?
You can’t conquer a queen who has her heel against her king’s throat. It doesn’t work like that, and never will.
