A Righteous Kill (40 page)

“Yes!
Yes
.” Vince’s breathless, straining voice burned like lava in his ears. “Angle to the left…Yes… That’s good…
Fucking
hell.”

“Like this?” Hero’s throaty response was equally as breathless.

“Just like that. Brace your hands there and I’ll do all the work.”

Time slowed, and a peculiar yet welcome rushing sound pulsed into Luca’s ears, blocking out their voices. His skin was hot, but his veins flowed with ice. He couldn’t say how he got from the entry across the loft to her bedroom, but when he wrenched the door open, the handle almost came off in his hand.

Vince stumbled backward a bit, as he’d been bracing himself against the closed door. To Luca’s surprise, he was not only completely clothed but smeared with paint.

“Thank God you’re here!” Vince smacked his shoulder. “Warm up, man. This thing weighs as much as your mom.”

Wordlessly, Luca turned his head to see Hero’s brand-new gigantic wooden bed frame blocking the bedroom door.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘But Hero just had this delivered the day before yesterday.’ And you’d be right, my man.” Good-natured sarcasm dripped from Vince’s voice.

“When you’re done with your bitch circle, I’m ready to move this bad Oscar,” Hero’s muffled, teasing voice came from the blocked entrance to her room.

“I’ll go around and push, you get it from this side.” Vince paused, his expression turning to puzzlement as he noted Luca’s face. “You okay?”

Luca stared at him uncomprehendingly for what felt like a full minute and waited for the red to wash from his vision. It didn’t, even though he registered the situation. Violence still vibrated through him with each palpitation of his pounding heart.

“Something happen?”

“I—” Luca blinked at the bed frame again, turned on its side to fit through the door. “I didn’t smell paint.”

“It’s non-toxic,” Hero said proudly. “I bought the kind with zero volatile organic compounds.”

Of
course
she did.

“We just moved the bed frame into the middle of the room while we painted the walls,” Vince informed him, still unaware of how close he’d come to a beating. “But now
someone
wants to do the ceiling, so we have to shove this son of a bitch out here.”

“It doesn’t match,” Hero insisted.

“So she keeps saying.” Vince rolled his eyes conspiratorially and then headed for the bathroom and its connecting door to Hero’s bedroom. “Careful,” he called. “The mattress is leaning against the linen closet wall here in the bathroom.”

Luca still hadn’t processed what was happening. He felt like he’d just stepped into one dream and then been dropped down the rabbit hole into another. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it, nor could he quiet the thunder rolling through him.

“You ready?” Vince asked from the other side.

Shaking his still-pounding head, Luca grabbed his side of the bed frame, figuring some heavy lifting would help.

“One, two,
three
.”

He lifted and pulled while Vince pushed, and the bed frame shot through the door. It was a heavy bastard, but Luca felt like he could lift cars and shit with all the various masculine chemicals swimming through his veins.

Vince’s cell beeped and they abandoned the bed frame next to the dining room table.

Hero appeared in the bedroom doorway, and Luca didn’t even hear Vince’s brief conversation. His heart kicked up again. Tiny grey sweats cut off into shorts and a tank bared her pale, toned limbs. Her hair was clipped into a messy pile on top of her head. Cream paint smudged random swaths of her skin interrupted by a few smears of teal. She had on no makeup, but her color was high from exertion.

She was the most goddamned beautiful woman Luca had
ever
seen.

As she noticed him, Hero’s smile faded and the teasing in her eyes was replaced with distance that bordered on wariness.

“Well kids, I’ve got plans, so I wish you luck on the ceiling.” Vince was already by the door. “Catch you tomorrow,
suckers
.”

Luca said nothing as the front door closed. He just stared at her, hoping his eyes didn’t give away everything going on inside him.

“Hi,” Hero murmured quietly before turning and disappearing back into her room.

Hi? What the fuck did she mean,
Hi
? Luca marched to the front door and threw the deadbolts, then stormed back into her room.

Hero stood facing away from him toward the wall her bed used to rest against. The wall where a demon symbol had been painted in blood. Now a deep teal marked it an accent wall where the others were a lavish cream. Luca paused in the middle of the room. His fingers curled at his sides to keep from reaching out to her.

He could tell by the way her spine stiffened that she knew right where he was.

“I’m thinking about doing a peacock mural here,” she said in a voice made too bright by sheer force. “Maybe one that fans out from the headboard. I could get some beaded wall lamps to match and—”

“Hero.”

She flinched and turned around, her eyes doing a quick sweep of his appearance. When she reached his face, her eyes widened, something flaring in their depths. Fear? Excitement? Both? “You look—tired,” she said softly. “Did you work all night?”

Luca gave a sharp nod. He looked like shit warmed over. He felt even worse. But that wasn’t what caused her to blink so rapidly and look uneasy. She could see the darkness that had been awakened in the entry. She was perceptive enough to sense the intensity of his current emotions. Maybe she could read the fact that his entire body vibrated with the need to claim her.

“Maybe you should get some sleep. I’ll get the mattress and put it in the living room…”

If she hadn’t backed up a step, she might have had a chance. But it was that one small movement of retreat that sent him leaping after her like a hungry predator.

The rage and adrenaline that hadn’t yet drained from him quickly transformed into something equally as powerful and ultimately more dangerous.

Violent need.

“Luca, wait,” she whispered as he snatched her from where she stood. But the hands she lifted to ward against him were weak as he claimed her mouth.

***

Hero trembled as his arms locked her against his hungry lips and angry body, one hand behind her head, the other filled with the curve of her ass. His kiss wasn’t a question or a punishment, not this time. It was a declaration.

This was happening. No more words. No more waiting. No more promises. Their explosive desire had just tipped the scales and overcome all other emotions. Patience. Fear. Hell,
common sense
had no room between their melded bodies now. Just carnal, primal,
animal
need.

She couldn’t remember why she’d been putting the distance between them. None of it seemed to matter now that he’d given in. When she’d seen him in her living room she’d known something had changed. Had wondered what happened to unleash the dark violence in his eyes. But now he kissed the questions out of her, and Hero was helpless to do anything but let him meld her pliant body into his with demanding hands.

His tongue made wet, delicious promises against hers. His heart pounded in his chest like a jackhammer beneath her hand. His skin was hot and hard underneath his shirt. And speaking of hard, his long, impossibly thick erection strained against his zipper, digging it into the tender flesh of her belly.

The reckless arousal from the night before slammed into her once again, this time unenhanced or unimpeded by drink. Unable to move any of her limbs, she melted into him, submitting to his dominance. Her knees weakened, but her mouth felt strong next to his as she returned the kiss with equal force.

Damn, those lips were made for sex.

Hero’s surrender had the opposite effect than she’d expected. Instead of softening, Luca growled deep in his throat and curled the hand in her hair, pulling her head back and imprisoning it there, exposing her neck. His eyes were demon black and triumphant as he ran his full mouth down her jaw, spreading hot kisses on her neck, using his teeth in little bursts that made her gasp for air.

They had a lot to say to each other, but none of it seemed to matter as she drowned in a pool of her own longing rivaled only by the man-turned-beast imprisoning her against him. Maybe she
was
possessed by a demon of lust. Maybe
Luca
was that demon and at the moment she’d gladly lose her soul for the hard fuck he was about to give her.

A pleading sound escaped her chest and that seemed to snap his last thin reserve of self-control. With a few foreign curses, he let go of her hair.

Her shorts disappeared.

Her panties disintegrated in his hands.

Then he was palming her ass with both hands while fusing their mouths, and lifting her against him as he staggered forward a few paces and shoved her up against the freshly painted wall. It was wet and sticky against her shoulders and ass, which she found erotic as hell. She latched on to him with her arms, launching an assault on his lips that made him snarl a warning against her teeth.

His body ground against her, helping one arm hold her in place as his other hand reached in between them to wrench his zipper down. His knuckle brushed against her spread sex with the movement, and as her hands gripped his wide, straining shoulders, the leather of his gun holster bit into her palms. This was exactly what she’d wanted, to watch his long, predatory muscles strain against that holster as he came inside of her.

His hand came away wet and was instantly replaced by the hot, blunt head of his cock. She arched helplessly, still unable to move much but feeling the need to facilitate his possession. He drove into her with such force her body resisted a little, creating an incredible friction for them both.

A low, desperate noise vibrated between them, but Hero couldn’t tell who’d made it.

He didn’t give her the time she needed to adjust to someone his size, but before he began drilling her into the wall, his hand reached up and cupped the back of her head, protecting it from injury and paint.

His strokes were long and brutal. His teeth bared and startlingly white against his dusky skin. His eyes black holes of mindless need. Buried beneath all that was something that surprised Hero yet again. A reverent disbelief. A tender awe that reminded her of someone lost in a fantastical dream and seized with the terror that it could end at any moment.

That wasn’t going to happen. Hero cinched her ankles together around his waist. She was never letting go of him, and he’d just have to deal with it.

He groaned and hiked her higher on the wall, repositioning his thick shaft to saw in and out of her in such a way that her breaths became pants of exquisite torture, then moaning, demanding explosions of vulgarity, culminating in strong, high cries of incomprehensible pleasure as her body clenched around his in the most vicious, unrelenting climax of her life.

Hero could have climbed the wall to escape it as the sensation of being fucked with a lightning rod suffused her nerves with raw, electric pleasure so intense, it bordered on pain. As she squirmed, Luca’s grip tightened and he continued to plunge into her with awe-inspiring power and efficient grace.

She sagged against him when the storm passed, her limbs trembling and limp.

Luca grunted and drove her higher and harder, his strength and stamina astonishing and impressing her at the same time. He seemed intent on a single-minded focus, and for just a moment, Hero wondered if he was struggling to find his own release.

Now that she sagged forward against him, the hand behind her head plunged between their bodies, his thrusts becoming faster and shallower as his thumb found her clit and made small, insistent circles around the tight, smooth bud.

Suffused with this new sensation, Hero made a shocked sound as she convulsed around him again, feeling his cock grow impossibly harder inside of her as a second throbbing orgasm rushed into her core.

Luca dropped his head into her neck, his hand pulling from between them and bracing against the wall. As he thrust deep once again, his body rubbed against her sensitized clit. His movements became violent jerks and then shuddering tremors. He bit her shoulder gently, and then harder, drawing her orgasm from her sex into a full body experience. Pulsing inside her, he tried to say her name, but could never quite manage it as his whole body locked up with pleasure for several intense, beautiful moments.

The aftermath was quiet but for their labored breathing and the pulsing sounds of the music from the other room. The wall was cool and slippery behind her. Luca was still hot and slippery inside her. Hero closed her eyes, a sense of calm and rightness settling over her as she held him close. She ran her nails through the softer hairs at the nape of his neck and turned her head to kiss his scratchy jaw.

Her name finally sighed past his lips and a deep sense of contentment and connection flowed between their joined bodies.

Until. “Fuck,” he cursed, his muscles stiffening as he withdrew from her and lowered her to the plastic covering her floor.

She missed him instantly, but gave him space to pull himself together and zip up. Still naked from the waist down and mostly covered with paint, she frowned at him. “What?”

“Hero, we didn’t—
I
didn’t use anything. Are you on the pill?” The fear in his voice made her smile a bit.

“I wouldn’t touch the stuff,” she said. “But I’m due to start my period any day, so I’m not ovulating.”

He shook his head and blinked a lot. “That doesn’t necessarily mean—”

Hero stepped forward, tracing the line of his gun holster. “Don’t worry about it, I have some condoms in the bathroom, but first I need to shower.” She gave him the most suggestive look she could muster, hoping to distract him and knowing she succeeded. “I’m very dirty, and I’ll need help washing my back.” Turning around, she wriggled her ass at him, now mostly smeared with teal paint.

He swallowed and she peeled her soiled tank off, the only clothing she had remaining. “Think you’re up to it?”