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“I’m sorry.” He didn’t even bother unbuttoning my shirt the rest of the way before he tugged it over my head and tossed it aside. Kissing and licking my skin, his hands roamed my body, pulling my hips against his.
I shed my pants and stripped him of his. Taking our cocks together in my hand, I stroked them from base to tip in languid movements. Just feeling him was almost enough to make me come on the spot.
“Promise you won’t pull away from me again,” I said, sucking in a breath when he bit my neck.
He ran his hands through my hair and drew me close, kissing me, andnotanswering. The avoidance wasn’t lost on me, but I pushed it to the side in favor of enjoying this connection to him, shallow and inappropriate as it may have been. We should have been focused on revenge, on murder, on retribution for all we’d lost.
Instead, we brought each other to the brink of orgasm and stopped, again and again, a revenge of an entirely different sort. We punished each other just to have some semblance of control in a situation where we had none.
But tonight was the first step to rectifying that.
“Fuck, I’m going to come,” I groaned. Leander’s grip on my cock tightened, timing his strokes with each thrust. “Don’t you dare stop this time!”
Smirking, he leaned down and captured my mouth in a kiss. I knotted my hands in his hair so he couldn’t pull away completely.
All of the sensations built on one another — his hot, wet tongue in my mouth; his hand stroking my length; and his dick hitting the perfect spot — until the warm, tingling in my lower abdomen exploded so hard I saw stars.
“Oh, God!” Leander collapsed on top of me, his hips jerking as his own orgasm rolled through him. Burying his face in the side of my neck, his breaths came out hard and sharp before tapering off into a normal rhythm. “Thank you...”
“You’re welcome?” I tried to angle myself so I could look at him, but he latched on tighter, keeping his face where I couldn’t see it.
“You didn’t leave. I gave you every reason to… but you didn’t.”
“And walk away from the other half of my soul?” I shook my head, even if he wasn’t looking. “Impossible. I’d rather throw myself from the top of this building than live one more moment without you.”
He lifted his head, meeting my gaze hesitantly. There was a profound sadness in his eyes, illuminated by the unshed tears. Still, after all this time, after everything we’d been through, he didn’t quite believe me when I told him how much he meant to me.
I hid that stab of pain behind a smile, brushing his hair out of his eyes. “As much as I love holding you, we should probably get in the shower and get out of here. After all, we have a slew of new murders to plan.”
35
Bennett
Ithought learning all about Gianna Scardato and planning her excruciating death would be enough to keep hold of Leander, to keep him from slipping back into melancholy, as he called it.
It wasn’t.
When the insomnia kicked in again, I knew I was losing him. He didn’t isolate me completely as he had in the immediate aftermath of Olivia’s murder, but I could tell he was channeling enormous amounts of energy into faking it.
One afternoon Leander’s voice carried out into the hallway as I came down the front stairs. It was still too distant to make out what he was saying, but the tone sounded... off. I hadn’t heard anyone come into the house. I figured he was probably on the phone, as he had been a lot lately.
When I turned the corner to the library, he was standing with his back to the door, staring out the massive window to the gardens behind the house. As I’d guessed, he had his phone pressed to his ear.
I walked up behind him and slipped my hands around his waist, pulling him backward. He didn’t turn to look at me. He didn’t cover my hands with his. He didn’t do anything, except remain as unyielding as possible in my arms.
“I assume that won’t be a problem?” His attention was completely dedicated to the phone call, his gaze fixed on some point beyond the glass. “No, I’m sure.”
Circling around to his frontside, I furrowed my brows and crossed my arms. He continued to avoid even glancing in my general direction. The world outside of that conversation had apparently ceased to exist. He didn’t blink. He didn’t twitch. He was as frozen as the statutes outside.
“Oh, and one last thing,” he said, his voice dropping even lower, barely above a snarl. “When you find him, you send him to me — alive.”
Tears glistened in his eyes, turning them a brighter shade of green, but they didn’t spill over. He disconnected without further instructions and exhaled a slow, steady breath.
“My love…” I tilted my head and reached out, caressing his cheek. Like waking a sleepwalker, I was mindful of his hands and any sudden movements. “What did you just do?”
As if he was in a fog, his gaze slid toward me slowly, like he was just now aware of my presence. Instead of lighting up in recognition or happiness, or even anger, his eyes remained dull and dark. Whatever emotion he might have felt failed to register anywhere in the sharp angles of his face or in his rigid frame. The only time I’d ever seen that wraithlike look was in the moments before he was arrested. Seeing it again made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Unable or just unwilling, he didn’t give me an answer. Bowing his head, he swallowed hard before turning and drifting out of the room, leaving me standing there with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
