Kite had confirmed, in our brief chats, that Jacob was out looking for information. That had thrilled me. It meant I was getting closer to my ultimate purpose.
Kite didn't seem worried about where or what Jacob was doing. But I suspected that, like me, he was uneasy and wasn't showing it.
Was it weird to worry about Jacob? No, I told myself. You need him. That's why you're nervous. If something happens to him before this is all over with, you don't get your revenge.
I needed Jacob. I needed Kite.
That's the only reason I'll worry about either of them, I told myself.
I hardly believed my own words.
Eyeing my reflection, I filled my chest with air. I had to calm down. Among monsters, you had to pretend to be one yourself. It kept you safe. They couldn't hurt you or get at your weak spots.
Touching my lips, thinking of how differently the two men kissed, I shivered.
Three days.
- Chapter 14 -
Kite
––––––––
My own home had become a prison.
I walked and breathed like a cursed man. It was a ridiculous, suffocating experience.
Marina Fidel was eroding my senses.
When I dreamed, I tasted her throat and heard her screams. The fact I didn't need to imagine those things made it worse. I'd buried myself in her welcoming thighs, gripped her firm ass and held on for dear life.
Marina was all I wanted. And I might need to kill her.
Sitting on the edge of my bed, I heard her walking in the hall. I knew her footsteps. I could even count down the time it took her to go into my kitchen, heat herself up some water, and then sit down for her morning cocoa.
She brushed her teeth for a minute and forty seconds every morning. Her showers lasted as long as it would take me to clean my gun five times. Obsessed? Me?
Of course I fucking was.
This woman was a hazard. My heart rate had reached dangerous levels since she'd walked into my life.
Lifting a hand, I studied my palm; my knuckles. My tattoos were the same as ever, but the rest of me felt... off. It had begun the night I'd given in, when I'd coiled Marina in my claws and tasted the slickness of her *.
I don't know that I regretted it. I knew I couldn't resist her forever. I wasn't ashamed of that. It was just... the damn aftermath.
Clenching my fingers, I pictured the flash of terror in her eyes when I'd slammed her temple on the car window, putting my gun to her skin. The look she gave me, it thrilled me to my core. That fear was tangible. Exciting.
Depressing.
That was the face she would make soon enough. Whether it was from my hand, Jacob's, or her mystery target... Marina would find a violent end. I was starting to suspect she knew it, too.
The accusation in her eyes when she looked up at me as we fucked wasn't an illusion.
Why do this when you know it won't last? That was what she'd asked me.
My answer was so shallow. Nothing lasts. That's reality.
I'd kissed her because I wanted to. Because we all die eventually. Because I'm a terrible excuse for a human being.
Because I'm selfish.
The tattoos on my knuckles proclaimed 'swim.' Swim in the river of soulless murderers and drown, or cross to the other side and reach freedom. Jacob truly believed that.
And I believed in him.
Marina was an anchor, she'd pull us under. Jacob would never agree to letting her live. Not to mention that, according to our last conversation, he wanted more from her.
Jacob wanted Marina the way I wanted Marina.
Sharing her was the logical option. The severity of our rules—the oath of Blood Brothers—was built into my marrow. I refused to fight with Jacob. As long as I could keep suffocating in her existence, I didn't need to be greedy.
Falling on my back, I covered my eyes with an arm. I was a tiger, penned up in a crate and anxious to run free. But outside my cage, Marina waited.
Whenever she spoke to me, I struggled to pay attention, eager to shut her up with a long kiss.
I needed to find a balance between indulging in her heat, and accepting her murder was inevitable.
Rolling on my side, I tried to think of a solution. I'd wasted three days doing nothing but slinking around, avoiding her. I'd excused it by saying I needed to help at the bar. A few times I'd told her I was going for a run, and I'd ended up sitting in my car in the garage instead.
Being in my Mercedes wasn't helpful. It made me recall how I'd driven her down that backstreet, handed her my gun and demanded she shoot the sleeping man at the bus stop.
That night... the sex had left me aching for more of it. More of her.
The reality of how this girl was going to die had spiraled me into a dark pit. She could fire a gun at a paper target.
That wasn't enough.
It had taken me and Jacob years to become who we were. The rough, fucked up shit that made us into us couldn't be replicated.
She thought she could put a bullet in someone's head the first time she pointed a gun at them, and then stroll away? Impossible.
Marina was going to fail.
She was going to die.
“Kite?” Her voice was hesitant, soft through my wall.