“Sin,” I whisper, “I don’t want that. I want you to be with me because you want to, not because you need to.”
He presses his forehead against mine as he rocks our bodies side to side. “Can’t it be both?”
The sound of a knife being unsheathed captures my attention.
“Sin!” I scream, just as a blade plunges through his shoulder blade. He roars, unintentionally pushing his body further into mine, as the girl I saw before—the one with the fake tit—retracts the blade, smirking maliciously.
“Sorry, sugar.” Her voice is saccharine sweet, which makes me hate her even more. Those types of people…they’re fake as fuck. “But you’re not my target.”
Shoving Sin out of the way—bad move on her part—she advances on me.
But I refuse to cower before an assassin again.
My power explodes out of me like a firework. It runs through my veins, burning me as effortlessly as Sin just did, before surrounding the knife-wielding brunette. Her eyes are wide in shock and confusion as my power caresses her skin. Her tank top strap slides down once more, freeing that nasty tit of hers, just as my power enters her body. She screams in anguish, collapsing to the ground and writhing in pain. Tears flood her eyes as her body shakes and convulses.
“She tried to hurt you!” Sin bellows, flames dancing on his hands. Blood drips from the wound on his shoulder, but I know that he doesn’t give a damn about it at the moment.
“She’s an assassin,” I reason, smug satisfaction filling me when she curls in on herself like yellowing, centuries-old paper.
“Is this the bitch who made you feel inferior?” Sin demands. At my nod, he eyes her over with obvious distaste. “Really? Her?”
He glances pointedly at her bare tit, a sort of saggy looking thing with a rather large areola and a dark nipple, and there’s no way I can be jealous with the look he gives her—as if he wants to vomit in his mouth.
“That’s mean,” I say automatically. “She’s not that bad.”
Sin glares at the sobbing female before he tosses a fireball on her without preamble. Immediately, her body goes up into flames, bare tit and all.
My God of Flames resembles an avenging angel in the sparse moonlight. With his lithe body, broad shoulders, and shaggy blond hair, he looks beautiful and dangerous, like death himself has climbed out of the woodwork to destroy the fucking world. He looks more like the God of Death than Avery ever has.
When he turns towards me, there’s a dark, angry smile on his face, one imbibed with karma and the need for combat.
“She shouldn’t have stabbed me,” he growls. “She shouldn’t have hurt you. And she definitely shouldn’t have made you doubt my love.”
And it’s wrong and fucked up, but my pussy clenches once more at his words. There’s a burning girl mere inches from me, for fuck’s sake, and yet I want to strip Sin down and ride his hard cock.
“Never again,” I vow, staring into his hell-fire eyes. These men love me more than life itself. They’ll destroy the entire Earth if that’s what I want.
“Never again,” Sin repeats with a decisive head bob.
Never again.
CHAPTER 24
The ride home is engulfed in silence.
It’s a pregnant, heavy sort of silence, like that moment when your finger rests on the trigger of a handgun. With just the slightest application of pressure, the gun will go off, disrupting the tranquility you once found yourself in.
And maybe killing a few people in the process.
I sit in the backseat between Avery and Sin. The former has his hand on my knee, idly drawing circles into my bare skin. The latter is using a pen he found in the car to doodle on my hand; surprisingly lifelike, black flames are now etched across my knuckles.
“This was a bust,” I huff, finally daring to push down on that precarious trigger and implode the silence.
Desmond swivels around in the passenger seat to stare at me.
“So obviously, that was a trap. Rebecca wasn’t there.” He taps a long, elegant finger against the stubble on his chin. “We need to figure out how she knew—”
“My brothers told her,” I whisper, squeezing my hands into fists. Sin immediately makes a sound of annoyance, unclasping my fingers to resume his diligent doodling. “I don’t think they had any malicious intentions…”
“But they didn’t know we broke into Rebecca’s apartment in the first place,” Avery breaks in. “So they couldn’t have told her.”
“Fuck.” I drop my head back and squeeze my eyelids shut. “I feel like we’re missing something. Something important.”
“Well, we don’t have to figure out anything now,” Helio assures gruffly. His knuckles are white where they clench the steering wheel. He’s still shaken up over what happened with the female assassin. All of my men are, sans Sin. She’d been right under our noses. I mean, who would’ve suspected her in the first place?
But Helio, out of all of them, blames himself for not protecting me. I don’t need to be a mind reader to know that he regrets letting me leave with only Sin. I hate the burden he’s placed on himself, all in the name of protecting us. It’s not fair, and I wish desperately that I can do something, anything, to lighten the load.
And of course, there’s the fact that once again, we don’t have anyone alive to interrogate. Burke’s dead, so who is paying for these assassins? Did Burke pay for them before he died, and they’re only now coming out of the woodwork?
Or did the mastermind behind this all realize her original plan failed and she needed to resort to plan B?
When
