Then he adds, lower: “No one gets in. No one walks out. Unless I allow it.”
I swallow, suddenly very aware of the silk against my skin and the sheer power sitting across from me. He’s not just preparing for battle. He’s writing a massacre with clean lines and sniper rounds. It doesn’t surprise me the slightest, but it always reminds me of the man I share a bed with.
“Jesus,” I breathe.
He studies me for a long moment, then shifts slightly in the chair, the leather groaning under his frame. His voice drops lower, almost thoughtful.
“He was surprised to see me.”
I lick my lips, ‘‘Yeah, I’d be surprised too, considering you have been declared dead.’’
“So now Malik knows,” I say quietly. “That you’re alive.”
“He knows enough to keep his mouth shut. And that if anything touches you from the sky, he dies first.”
I laugh, “You’re so utterly fucked,Diable.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Just stares.
Long and deep, like he’s reading the parts of me I haven’t spoken aloud yet. The kind of stare that could pin a woman to a wall without lifting a finger. His gaze drags slowly down to my mouth, then to the silk draped over my hips, then back to my eyes like he’s deciding what part of me he wants to ruin first.
I take one step closer, close enough to feel the tension radiating off him like heat from coals. My hand lifts, slow, and I press two fingers against the center of his chest, right over his heartbeat.
“You love me way too deep,” I whisper. “That’s your problem.”
His jaw tightens slightly. But he doesn’t deny it.
He tilts his head, eyes sharpening, heat creeping into them like smoke curling under a locked door.
“Diable,” he murmurs, tasting it like it’s something he wants to bite.
I smirk. “You like how it sounds in my mouth?”
“I like it best when it’s the last thing on your tongue,” he replies, voice low and rough now, “right before you forget how to use it.”
My stomach coils.
He rises, slow and lethal, the chair groaning as he leaves it behind. He steps into my space like he owns it, because he does. His hand lifts to cup my chin, thumb brushing just beneath my bottom lip.
“And when I say your name, Isabella…” he murmurs, voice a rasp against my skin, “I want it to feel like a prayer you don’t want answered.”
My neck cracks from the angle as I tilt my head back to meet his gaze. He’s towering over me now, and I swear the space around us shifts, pulling tighter, darker, quieter. Like the air knows what’s about to happen.
He doesn’t kiss me. Not yet.
He just stares, like he’s memorizing the shape of me before he ruins it. Like I’m already marked, already owned, and he’s deciding where to start tonight.
Then his thumb drags over my bottom lip again. Lower. Across my chin. Down the line of my throat.
I feel it when it happens—his shift. The surrender of restraint. The choice to take.
His hand slips around the back of my neck and pulls me to him, rough, sudden, like I’m not something fragile but something his. The kiss crashes into me like a match striking dry earth. Heat, instant and consuming.
I open for him without hesitation.
His tongue sweeps into my mouth with the kind of hunger that makes my knees give, and he catches me, one hand gripping my hip, the other tangled in my hair, keeping me close while his mouth tells me everything he hasn’t said in days. It’s not just lust—it’s war declared on silence.
When he pulls away, I’m gasping.
