"Nico!" she screams. Her nails drag violently down my back, leaving deep, stinging red scratches across my tattoos.
Her pussy clenches down on my cock with crushing force. She milks the heavy length of my shaft, convulsing around me as she hits her second massive climax. The tight, wet contractions of her walls squeeze me with agonizing pressure.
I cannot hold back anymore. The need to claim her completely takes over.
I pull back one final time and slam my hips forward with everything I have. I bury my cock to the hilt inside her screaming wetness.
A deafening roar tears out of my throat.
My balls clench tight. I pump a massive, boiling flood of seed deep into her clenching walls. The hot jets of cum shoot into her, filling her. I empty every ounce of the obsession that has owned me since the day I first saw her. Marking her from the inside out. Claiming her down to the cellular level.
I hold myself buried deep inside her, riding out the shuddering aftershocks of the climax. I collapse forward, crushing my sweat-slicked body directly over hers. I bury my face in the crook of her neck, inhaling her.
The oak workbench creaks as we slowly come down from the blinding high.
I do not pull out. I refuse to pull out. I stay buried to the hilt inside her tight, wet heat. My arms wrap around her, anchoring her securely beneath me. She strokes the salt-and-pepper hair at the nape of my neck. Her heartbeat thumps against my own.
She is here. She is alive. She is mine.
For the first time in twenty years, the phantom image of the empty chair at my father’s table doesn’t flash behind my eyes.
There’s only her.
We stay locked together in the cold, harsh light of the armory. The silence of the safehouse wraps around us. I’m ready to stayin this vault forever. I’m ready to lock the steel door, weld it shut and let the Costa-Bellanti war annihilate itself in the streets above us.
Then, the sudden, piercing shriek of a klaxon rips through the quiet.
My head snaps up.
The blaring sound comes from the surveillance war room down the hall. It is the high-decibel proximity alarm wired into the encrypted street-level sensors outside the safehouse.
Red emergency lighting begins to flash wildly in the hallway beyond the open vault door.
The perimeter has been breached.
The lover between her thighs vanishes. The soldier takes his place. I pull out of her. The cold air hits my wet flesh.
I grab the loaded AR-15 off the ready rack and chamber a round.
The war just followed us home.
EPILOGUE
PRIYA
The high-decibel proximityalarm severs the air of the armory vault.
Red emergency lights pulse from the ceiling, painting the scarred oak workbench in brutal crimson flashes. The sound is brutal. It drills directly into the eardrums, designed to shock and disorient.
Nico doesn't flinch.
The man hovering over me vanishes. The enforcer snaps back between one breath and the next. He rolls off the bench, bare feet hitting concrete without a sound. His body is a map of violence—tribal ink, rigid muscle, a violently scarred torso slick with my sweat. His right hand is already wrapped around the grip of the tactical rifle he chambered the moment the alarm hit.
He steps squarely in front of me. He creates a human shield out of his own flesh and bone without a single hesitation.
The monitors mounted on the far wall flare bright white, cutting through the red strobe. Four camera feeds stitch together a seamless view of the street outside the safehouse. Three massive,matte-black armored SUVs form a blockade across the asphalt. Heavily armed men pour out of the vehicles.
My bare skin prickles in the sudden drop in temperature. I slide off the workbench and snatch the tactical shirt he tossed aside earlier, pulling it back over my head. The fabric hangs loose around my body, torn at the collar from Nico’s hands. My clinical training tries to categorize the spike of adrenaline in my bloodstream, demanding logical action to counteract the fight-or-flight response. Ground the joints. Stabilize the core. Breathe through the nose.
