Page 39 of Torn By Fate

“Missed you?” Serafina laughed, a cruel, heartless laugh. “I wanted you dead, Adrian. Every day, every minute, every second…” Her voice dropped lower, intimate in its cruelty. “I had reveled in the thought that I put a bullet in your heart.”

The words should have sliced through me; her malice should have pained me. But it didn’t. The scar tissue beneath my shirt tightened, and I felt nothing but a dark, twisted satisfaction.

“Except you didn’t.” I pressed my finger deeper, and she gasped. “You missed.”

“By accident.”

“Was it?” My thumb found her clit, circling with deliberate pressure. Her hips jerked. Oh yeah, she liked that. “An accident? I think your aim is pretty good.”

Her jaw clenched. I could see the tendons in her neck flexing, the effort it took to maintain the mask when her body was screaming its surrender.

“I won’t miss next time,” she whispered, and the words were meant to sound like a threat but came out breathless. “I promise you that.”

“I look forward to it.” I pressed my cock against the curve of her ass, letting her feel the full, aching hardness of what she did to me. She gasped again—a sharp, involuntary sound that went straight to my groin. “I have found that you trying to kill me is quite entertaining...” I rolled my hips against her, grinding the rigid length of me into her. “It turns me on.”

Her body responded before her mind could catch up—a full-body shudder, a clench of her inner walls that nearly undid me. A flush spread across her neck despite her cruel words. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and her breath came in shallow pants.

My hand was still between her legs, my finger still buried inside her, and I could feel her pulse around me, feel how wet she was despite everything she said.

She hated me so much and yet her body said something else entirely.

My wife loathed me. Her cunt wept for me. How cute.

“The next time you have a gun in your hand,” I said, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper, “make sure your aim is precise.”

I pressed my mouth against the curve of her shoulder, teeth grazing the skin. “Don’t disappoint me, Princess.”

I withdrew my finger slowly, watching her face as the loss of contact registered. Her lips parted, and for one unguarded moment, I saw it—the want, the need, the raw, unfiltered hunger that she spent every waking moment trying to bury, to deny.

Then the cold, indifferent mask slammed back into place.

I brought my finger to my lips, tasting her, my eyes never leaving hers. My dick was impossibly hard, to the point of pain, and fuck me, I almost came right there in my pants like a fucking horny teenager as her decadent taste filled my mouth.

“Sweet,” I said roughly, enjoying her arousal on my tongue, savoring every bit of it. “Sweet and bitter, just like you.”

She said nothing, but her lips curled in disgust. The silence between us was its own kind of conversation—heavy with everything she wouldn’t say and everything her body had already confessed.

I released her slowly, stepping back just enough to create space between us. The loss of her warmth was immediate and unwelcome, and I fought the urge to pull her back, to press her against the wall and take what my body was demanding.

But I did none of those things.

Serafina didn’t spin around like I had expected her to.

She didn’t come at me swinging and yelling. She remained as she was, the front of her body pressed into the wall and her fists clenched at her sides.

I took a step back. And then another. Away from her. Until I was carefully hidden into the darkness once again.

“We’ll see each other a lot more again, Princess.”

My words seemed to have the effect they needed.

I watched in the shadows as her careful patience snapped and she spun around, snarling, expecting to see me. Too late.

Confusion masked her face as she looked around wildly, searching for me. I was right there, like I had always been, so close to her yet just far enough that she would never see me unless I wanted to be seen.

Her shoulders tensed, and she hissed under her breath. “Bastard.”

My mouth curled with a smirk.