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Adriana took a calculated step, her stare hardening as broken glass crunched under the toe of her high heel. “And why not? I seem to have acquired a nasty little habit of reinventing myself these days.”
One more step. Crunch. Two more steps. Crunch.
Darting her tongue out, she licked her bottom lip while curling a finger around my tie. “Plus, no risk, no reward—and whatever wrath comes either of our ways, I’ll just chalk it up to a bad roll of the dice.” She gave my tie a hard tug. “At least this time, it’ll be on my terms.”
“You’re insane.”
“And you’ve been drinking since I left. What are you up to now, Brody? Half a bottle a day? More? I mean, you’re a bountiful mixed bag of sin. What are you trying to forget?”
“The fact that you’re here.”
“Maybe it’s the fact that you love the power of pulling that trigger a little too much. Quite possibly, it’s that your little rebellious phase caused you to go against a direct order and align with the Northside Sinners anyway.”
“Don’t push me, Adriana. I’m warning you.”
“There could even be a tiny part of you hidden away in whatever’s left of your conscience that’s haunted by what the roll of your dice did to me. But what you’re really trying to numb is buried deep within the dark and twisted layers of that ‘don’t give a fuck’ exterior. That’s where the real fear lives.”
“Shut up!”
“The fear that the all-powerful Valentin Carrera will one day find out the truth. That when you rolled the dice, you bet everything on the fact that her hatred for me would outweigh any love she had left for him.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“Yes, and quite cliched, if I’m honest. Even if you lost in the end, as long as Val lost too, that’s all that mattered, right?”
Son of a bitch.
This game of wits had turned into a battle to the death and sensing impending defeat, I flipped my middle finger in the air and headed for the door. “I’m out of here.”
“Stop!”
And like an idiot, I paused mid-stride, my hands clenched by my side with one foot in front of the other.
The room went silent.
“You’re running because I’m right. Because to look me in the eye would force you to see yourself. Not the man you pretend to be every morning, but the one you drown every night.”
I closed my eyes, my jaw clenching so hard my teeth cracked. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Don’t I?” she said, the jagged rawness in her voice tearing at my skin. “You don’t think I know what it’s like to crave escape from your own darkness? To want something to stop the voice in your head that whispers it all would end if you turned that gun around?”
I snapped. Suppressed rage erupted, hotter than lava and twice as destructive. Twisting around, I reached underneath my shirt, drew my gun from its holster, and pulled back the slide.
“Shut up!” In three wide steps, I had her shoved against the wall, my hand wrapped around her throat and glass crunching under our feet. Before she could say a word, I pressed the Glock against her temple. “You know so much, huh? Did you know I came here to get rid of you, Adriana? Did you know if I pulled this trigger right now, Val wouldn’t know any different?”
I waited for her to plead for her life. I wanted her to beg. I needed her to beg. I wanted to hear the words come from those tempting lips. All night I’d listened to them hurl insults and threats like it was her goddamn given right. Taunting me. Teasing me. Making me want things I had no business wanting.
And that dress didn’t help.
That tight, lacy, scrap of a dress that hugged her voluptuous body in all the right places. A dress that turned a man into a type of crazy that should never be left alone in a motel room with his boss’s sister.
“Then what are you waiting for?” she rasped as my grip tightened around her throat. “Do it.”
My gaze shifted to where my hand gripped her slim neck, and I lifted my thumb, trailing it along the side of her jaw. The move was simple but undeniably erotic. A strange buzz swayed me off balance, forcing our bodies together until there wasn’t an inch of space between us.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
She laughed, the force of her hard exhale pushing her breasts against my chest. “Am I supposed to be intimidated?”
