Page 44 of Fall Before Her Throne

She instantly reacted.

She dropped the knife. It clattered to the ground, and I kicked it away. Her hands fisted in my hair, her back arching as my palms dug into the small of her back. I walked her backward until we hit the wall, and then before I knew what I was doing, I hiked her legs up to pin her against it. My body settled between her legs like it was fucking made to be there.

“Leona.” The sound was strangled, both a whisper and a prayer. “Leona.”

She whimpered—a fucking miracle of a sound—when my hips pressed hard against her. God, my body was on fire from the inside out. There was nothing I could do to quench it, no balm except her.

My hands trembled as they explored her sides, trailing up and down, molding the shape of her body to my memory. Her fingers fisted into my shirt and yanked, and it was all I needed to take the hint. I separated from her lips for only the time required to pull it off and drop it to the ground. My ribs were on fire, my bruises throbbing, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

The dam had broken within me. Years of buried feelings were gushing out all at once. My hands felt for her body underneath her leather jacket—this thing drove me to insanity with how powerful she looked in it. Her little gasp when my fingertips brushed over her bare skin had my mind unraveling.

“You have no idea,” I whispered against her lips. “No idea.”

“Tell me, then,” she returned. “I need to hear it.”

I kissed her softly, over and over, drawing her hair over her shoulder. I trailed a line down her neck, relishing in the sharp pinprick of pain that came when she yanked on my hair. Her fingertips floated over my skin, leaving a trail of fire in their wake.

She groaned when my thigh pressed against her core. The heat there was a beacon, and I needed to explore it, to know it. My fingers dipped into the waist of her jeans. This want, this need to search, would consume me.

“Max.” Her voice wobbled, enough for me to hear the hesitance. I instantly pulled back. My heart pounded a beat within my veins. “Tell me the truth about this. For once. You said you needed time. I need it now.”

My heart twisted in my chest. She waited for me to say something, to explain myself, to tell her what she wanted to hear, but nothing came. The longer it took, the more her face shuttered until her hands pressed against my chest.

The reality of our lives, everything I’d shoved away so I could take a fleeting second to finally feel her, came crashing back in. Everything I’d done to her. All the shit that waited for us in the days ahead.

I let her body slide down mine until she stood in front of me.

I couldn’t tell her, because there was no way she would ever truly forgive me. I had no right to her. No right to speak the words aloud. I didn’t deserve them, or her.

And when she woke up and realized that, the pain of her loss would be more acute than anything I’d ever felt before.

It would kill me.

Finally, she looked up at me. Her palm grazed over the bare skin of my abs, right at the bottom of the stitches holding my skin together and the bandage covering the wound. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, but I couldn’t bring myself to move.

“I’ve spent my entire life trying to get you to love me, Max.” Her voice broke on my name, but then she steeled herself. She looked me in the eye, and the pain there proved to me all over again I had fucked up. There was no coming back. She wouldn’t forgive me. “I’m not doing it anymore.”

She slipped through my grasp like water.

13

CIEL

Iwatched on the newly installed cameras as they argued. My eyes were locked to my phone screen when he kissed her, and she kissed him right back. She slid down his body, told him something that made his face look like his heart was breaking, and then she walked away.

Quickly, I clipped the video and sent it to the group chat with my brothers. I got a text back immediately that Obi would monitor Max tonight.

When the door to the room I’d claimed with Wynn opened, I wasn’t surprised to see the wetness on her cheeks.

This was why I didn’t trust Maximiliano Volpe.

My brain was good at finding patterns, and the pattern of his behavior was crystal clear. He wouldn’t betray us. He wouldn’t do anything to physically harm her.

But he would break her heart all over again.

She gave me a small, sad smile when she saw me getting changed by the bed. I opened my arms, and she rushed into them, pushing her face against my bare chest. I pressed her against me and held her. She didn’t cry, but she leaned into me like I was the only thing holding her up. All the energy of tonight bled out of her.

I cradled the back of her head. “What happened, baby girl?”