Page 163 of Carnal Wagers

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I snapped at her. “It’s not safe.”

“More so for you than for me.” She rolled her eyes and pulled herself upright. “As if I would leave you alone to deal with however many men are chasing you, without Paulie and Shiner to assist. You’d do it for me. Wouldn’t you?”

I reluctantly grunted.

She flipped her tangled hair over her shoulder. “Then don’t expect any different from me.”

My chest swelled as she smashed another bit of my inner turmoil to smithereens.

She sauntered to the large assassin, her hips swaying tauntingly, practically begging me to take a bite out of her. When she ripped the knife out of his throat, arterial blood squirted out in waves, and my cock pulsed to match it at the strength she exuded.

She scrunched up her face in disgust. “Beurk, I hate this part.”

The man gurgled blood. He clutched his throat with one hand and flailed for purchase with the other. When he reached for her, she smacked his hand away. Slowly, his jerking body calmed until it stopped completely.

My brow arched. “You said you didn’t mind killing.”

The captured assassin beneath me tried to toss me off him with a muffled growl. I clapped him upside the head with the butt of my new pistol.

“Stay down.”

Her nose wiggled. “It’s the struggle I don’t like. And the look in their eyes. It makes me feel guilty.”

“Take pride in your aim at least.”

“I missed. It was his head I wanted.” She wiped my knife on the dead man’s pants. “That would have been quick and painless, with no need to deal with the sad bit of dying.”

“You should work on that.”

“If you carried balanced knives, I wouldn’t have to.”

Which reminded me…I tossed her the thigh holster belonging to the assassin beneath me.

“Will those work?”

The man bucked against me, but with one punch to his ribs, he collapsed back down under my weight, practically hyperventilating.

She pulled a throwing knife out and tested it, balancing its middle on her index finger.

“Perfect.”

With the tip of her tongue peeking out between her lips, she threw it, and it landed dead center through the dead man’s hand. Satisfaction lit up her face, and in that moment, she looked freer than she’d ever been. Untamed. Unbridled. Completely at ease and unequivocally mine.

“Christ, woman. Sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Her cheeks tinged with color as she rustled her fingers through her hair and tugged at the unflattering thermal outfit. “In this? Looking like this? Doubtful.”

“What I’d tell you about perfection?”

This bit of truth was hard for her. Her whole life she’d been fed that only a flawless exterior would garner her the attention she wanted. It was going to take time to chip those lies away and make her understand she was beautiful and desirable because of what she meant to me, not how she looked.

“Come on, say it, síbhean.”

“Perfection is overrated.”

“Exactly. One look at you, and no one would think you had a killer instinct. But they’d be dead fucking wrong.”

She held out my karambit knife. “Here, I don’t need it anymore.”