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Queen Boudica leaps onto his back and settles down, as if to say she’s claiming my kill for herself.
My chest heaves as Noah scrambles to his feet, holding Queen Boudica in his arms. He inspects the knife quivering in the wall. “You tried to kill me.”
“Serves you right for sneaking up on a dangerous woman.” I shrug, allowing my fingers to loosen their grip on the blade. I’m wound up so tight there’s a horror-movie soundtrack of anxiety-inducing violin music playing on constant repeat in my head. “You startled me. I’m not used to having people in my space.”
“Clearly.” Noah takes in the room again, his eyes appraising all the things I have come to care about in my solitude – my books, my knives, my music, my cat’s happiness. Even though the ballroom is literally the size of a football field, when he stands there like that, it feels tiny, like the walls are pressing us together.
Or maybe that’s the memory of his cock inside me as I brace myself against the steel of the panic room.
Yeah, could be that.
“What are you doing in here?” I snap. “I thought you were dealing with Eli.”
“I locked him in his room. He’s ready to bolt, but now he’s not going anywhere unless he’s eager to scale the side of the house, and he won’t risk it in the middle of track season. Eli’s dealt with, at least until he successfully Googles a lock-picking tutorial. I came to find you because I…” Noah touches his hair again. “I thought you might want to talk.”
I wind the sword through the air a few times. I feel slow, my fingers made of lead. Noah watches me with his intense gaze. “What gave you that idea? We’ve just spent the last fuck-knows how long talking, and all that happened was Gabe got drunk, you got weird, and Eli hates me.”
“I got weird how?”
“Before, when we…” I trail off. I don’t know how to talk about this crap. “I just told you I’m an imposter from a crime family trying to steal a house from the first girl you had a crush on. I just gave you all the ammunition you need to destroy me, and you want me to hand you a gun and induct you into the family. That’s weird.”
“Damn right I want in. Someone shot at us.” Noah’s hands curl into fists. “I’m helpless, and I hate it. The only time I ever felt helpless was when Felix died. He deteriorated so quickly – he took those performance enhancers for a couple of weeks, and suddenly he’s in the hospital, slipping in and out of a coma. And then one day he never woke up. When he died, I descended into this void of darkness, and I was just starting to claw my way out when you came back to school and shoved me back down there again.”
I cock an eyebrow. “And now?”
He runs his fingers through his hair. “You’re not Mackenzie Malloy. You have nothing to do with my brother’s death. And like Gabe says, you’re intriguing. You’re Claudia.”
He says my name in that dangerous voice of his, edged with sin and shadow. I’ve opened the door to a world where his desire for revenge is normal, where his ruthlessness is a gift and not a curse, where he can embrace the dark instead of running from it. I can’t blame him for wanting more.
Noah’s die had been cast a long time ago – the son of a senator bound for college and the life of avarice and cruelty only the rich can imagine. Now I’ve come along and stomped on the game board, and he has to start to rebuild with the broken pieces left behind. Noah stares at the sword in my hands, and there’s a vicious hunger in his eyes that makes my pulse race.
I drop the sword to my side and step towards him. He locks his eyes on me as I close the space between us, stopping only when my chest is inches from his. The sword clatters to the floor, sending chips of marble pinging across the room.
“You think you want to be part of this world.” I slide my hand past his ear, trailing my fingers through his curls. Noah’s jaw clenches, his coal-black eyes boring into mine as he fights against his better nature. He always has to be in control, but I can see the need in his eyes, can feel it pulling us together. I felt it back in the panic room – that moment when the tension sent his walls tumbling down and the monster inside was unleashed. Now, his monster rears up again, and the beast inside me snarls and snaps her teeth, ready for more. I cup my hand behind his head. I curl my lips back into a smile. “But are you willing to shed blood for it?”
My fingers clasp the handle of the knife. I yank it from the wall behind him. Noah flinches as the blade whips past his ear, and I laugh. I hold the knife over his heart, blade touching his skin. Noah’s chest constricts against the metal. But he doesn’t look down. He doesn’t break my gaze.
“I will bleed for you.” His words are a whisper, but they carry all his power. “I’ll kill for you. If you keep Eli and Gabriel safe. If you keep Grace safe.”
“Your stepmother?” I remember she was sent to the hospital after finding the words I wrote in Noah’s bedroom. His muscles tense as he thinks of her – the monster who loves as only a savage heart can, with brutal intensity and wild possession.
Noah nods. The movement draws the blade across his t-shirt, cutting open the fabric and revealing a hint of the skin beneath. A drop of blood rolls down the blade, scenting the air with violence.
“Claudia,” Noah whispers.
We snap.
We crash together, a tangle of lips and hands and heat. It’s as if something between us has broken open, and now we can’t keep our hands off each other. Noah catches my lip between his teeth, biting until I taste blood. I spill his blood and he spills mine. It’s filthy and hot as fuck.
My hand holding the knife gets jammed between us. Noah’s fingers wrap around my neck, tightening against my skin as he pulls me closer, grinding our bodies together, thrusting his tongue deep because a taste is not enough. I feel something wet slide over my fingers. I pull back slightly and see that I’ve nicked Noah again. A red line of blood blooms across his shirt.
Noah looks down at the cut with a cool detachment. “You did warn us that you have claws.”
I laugh, and he catches my laugh with his lips, swallowing me until I’m his. He walks me backward across the room, his muscled bulk impossible to resist even if I wanted to which, holy Jupiter, no fucking way. He shoves me down into the sofa, rough and commanding. Yes, this is the monster behind those coal-black eyes. This is the beast locked inside Noah’s heart-shaped box.
I grip the end of the sofa as he rolls my skirt up. My thighs still ache from what we did in the panic room, but I’m already wet for him, aching to be filled again.
Noah’s body presses against mine. He reaches around and pinches my nipple through my shirt. His fingers are bloody from touching his chest. I moan into the sofa cushion as he bites my neck, claiming me as his. I relish the pain, because I know I need it as much as he does. The two of us thrive in pain, we revel in it.
