Daggermouth (The Heart, #1) — Chapter no 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I Could Show You

The vodka had seemed like such a good idea three hours ago. Now, as black smoke billowed from the oven and something that might’ve once been steak sizzled angrily in a pan, Shadera was beginning to reconsider. The kitchen of Greyson’s apartment swam before her eyes, all gleaming surfaces and complicated appliances with holographic displays.

She grabbed the oven door, yanking it open. A wall of smoke hit her face, acrid and choking. Whatever she’d shoved in there—bread? She thought it’d been bread—was now a blackened lump that might’ve been useful as a weapon but certainly wasn’t food anymore.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she hissed, stumbling backward over her own feet. The room tilted, reminding her that she’d finished most of the bottle. Good vodka, too. The kind they’d kill for back home.

Her stomach cramped with hunger. Days of barely eating had left her hollow, and the vodka only sharpened that emptiness. She grabbed the bottle from the counter and took another pull as smoke saturated the room. The burn was familiar, comforting. Unlike everything else in this glass prison.

The meat wasn’t cooking right. Parts were black, parts still raw. She turned the flame higher, reasoning that more heat meant faster cooking. The oil in the pan began to bubble. Then to smoke. Fire erupted from the pan. Orange tongues licked upward, catching the oil she’d poured too liberally.

“Fuck.” The word came out slurred, frantic.

She spun toward the sink, her movements loose and uncoordinated, grabbing the first thing she found—a pitcher of water. The fire alarm started shrieking, the sound drilling into her skull. The flames were higher now, licking at the range hood. She raised the pitcher just as the front door exploded open.

Greyson stood in the entryway for a fraction of a second, taking in the scene —the inferno on his stove, the smoke pouring from his oven, and her standing

in the middle of it all with a pitcher of water and what she imagined was a spectacularly guilty expression.

“Stop!” He moved faster than her drunk eyes could properly track, shoving her out of the way. “Not water on a grease fire, you fucking—”

The pitcher in her hand went flying as she fell backward, crashing to the floor as water rained down on her. The pitcher shattered as it met the ground beside her, sending shards of glass over her uncovered legs.

Shadera hissed as a piece of broken glass lodged itself in her calf and Greyson barked an order to whoever had entered the apartment with him. The man was already moving, throwing open every window he could reach and cracking the door to the living-room balcony. Greyson had already tamed the fire, slamming the lid over the flames as the remaining black smoke billowed out of the now open airways.

Greyson turned to take a step toward her, his eyes hard. Glass crunched under his boots in the first second, and in the next, he was slipping on the water- slicked floor, plummeting toward her. She scrambled backward, but her drunken limbs didn’t move fast enough.

He caught himself before his body crushed hers, his bare palms meeting glass on either side of her head. A small pained groan slipped through his clenched teeth as his mask reflected her face back at her—soot-streaked, eyes wide with shock and vodka. She could feel his heart hammering through his chest where it pressed against hers.

“What the fuck were you doing?” The words came out erratic, each one perfectly placed to make her feel like a child being scolded.

Shadera’s throat worked as she swallowed. The proximity, his warm body pressed against hers, sent heat and warning signals through her intoxicated nerve endings.

“I was hungry,” she answered, pushing onto her elbows. The movement closed the small distance between them. Greyson studied her, his eyes boring into hers, and for one single heartbeat they dropped to her lips before he shoved himself to his feet.

He didn’t offer her a hand to help her up, just strode to the stove and snatched the pan off its surface. She watched him from the ground as he made

his way to the trash chute by the fridge, and shoved the pan down it. Shadera scoffed as she rolled to her side and pushed herself from the floor.

He’d probably never washed a dish in his fucking life.

“You nearly burned down my apartment because you were hungry?”

Greyson’s voice was climbing now, incredulity breaking through the cold fury.

“There’s a comms system for a reason. Chapman would have—”

“I don’t support slavery,” Shadera cut him off, gripping the corner of the island as the room swayed.

“Slavery?” Greyson snapped, as his eyes locked back on hers. “Chapman is—”

“I’m Callum.” His voice cut through the tension and both their heads turned toward him. He stood by the window, having shed his suit jacket at some point.

His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms marked with tattoos and old scars Shadera’s trained eye recognized as defensive wounds.

He moved toward them casually, stopping just outside striking distance—a man who knew how to navigate violence without inviting it. His mask was copper and gold, more ornate than Greyson’s austere obsidian.

Callum inclined his head to the side. “Longtime friend of our brooding Executioner here.”

Greyson shot him an annoyed glance before taking a deep breath and letting his shoulders relax by a fraction. “He’s here to do some work on the locks.” He nodded toward the kitchen island.

Shadera followed his gaze, noting the surveillance scanner he had used her first night sitting on the edge. Understanding clicked into place. Not locks. The surveillance devices.

She studied Callum with new interest, her drunk mind working to categorize him. Heart elite, obviously, but something else too. The way he moved, the scars, the casual comfort with crisis.

“What do you do?” she asked, hearing the slight slur in her words. “Murder people too?”

Callum’s laugh was genuine, warm in a way that nothing in the Heart should be. “No, I have people for that.” The honesty of it, delivered with such casual charm, made her blink. “I do many things. Run the entertainment district.

Procure things that need procuring. Currently, I’m helping you two lovebirds.”

Shadera nearly gagged at the word as he winked at Greyson, who looked like he might murder him right there in the kitchen.

“The study?” Greyson ground out.

“The study,” Callum confirmed, with a mischievous glint in his eye as he turned back to Shadera. “Try not to burn anything else down while I work.”

Shadera didn’t need to see his face to know he was smiling to himself behind the mask as he disappeared off into some corner of the apartment, leaving them alone with the mess.

The kitchen still reeked of smoke as Shadera leaned against the counter and pulled the jagged piece of glass from her leg then tossed it onto the counter. She let her eyes wander to Greyson, watching him survey the damage with those cold blue eyes.

“How drunk are you?” He didn’t look at her when he asked, just started gathering the broken remains of the pitcher from the floor.

“Wouldn’t mind being drunker.” She reached for the vodka bottle, but he moved it away from her before her fingers could hook around the neck.

“You should have called Chapman.” His voice carried that particular tone that made her want to throat-punch him. “That’s what he’s here for.”

“Like I said, just because I’m currently a prisoner here, doesn’t mean I’ll add to your workers’ suffering.” The words came out just as she intended, sharp and accusatory.

Greyson stopped moving for one second then turned to fully face her. They stood on opposite sides of the kitchen island now, the marble between them like a battle line.

“Chapman isn’t a slave,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s paid well.

Very well. He’s from the Cardinal, has family there. He’s been with me for ten years now, by choice.”

Shadera scoffed, the sound ugly in her throat. “Right. Because someone from the Cardinal has so many choices working for the Heart’s Executioner.”

Greyson’s jaw shifted, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. “He can leave whenever he wants. I’ve offered to help him relocate three times. He stays because—” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “Why am I explaining this to you?”

“Because you’re trying to pretend you’re not a monster,” she said, with a mock pout, sarcasm lacing every word. “Good help must be hard to find when you murder children for a living.”

His hands flattened against the island, and she watched the tendons in his forearms go taut. For a moment, she thought he might come around the counter, might wrap those hands around her throat again. Part of her wanted him to. Fighting was easier than talking.

“Can you cook?” The question came out of nowhere, his tone shifting to

something curious.

“What?”

“It’s a simple question. Can you cook?”

The vulnerability hit her before she could stop it, cutting through the vodka haze like cold water. Her shoulders went rigid, defensive. “No.”

He waited, those eyes steady on her face.

“In the Boundary, we don’t—” She hated the way her voice cracked. “Food comes in cans. Packages. Already made. We don’t have fresh anything. Don’t have fancy stoves with temperature controls and timers and…” She gestured vaguely at the kitchen. “We don’t have any of this.”

Something flickered behind his eyes. Not pity—she would have hit him for pity. Something else. Understanding, maybe, though that seemed impossible

from someone who’d never known hunger.

“Sit,” he said.

“I don’t take orders from—”

“Just fucking sit, Shadera.” It was softer this time, tired, but still a command.

He pulled a crystal glass from a cabinet, set it on the island between them. Then he retrieved the vodka, pouring two fingers into the glass. “Civilized people use glasses.”

“Good thing I’m not civilized then.” But she took the glass anyway, the crystal cool against her palm as she sank onto the stool. She took a sip, watching him as he moved to the refrigerator.

He pulled out ingredients with an efficiency that spoke of familiarity— vegetables she recognized and some she didn’t, another package of meat, bottles

and jars of things that might have been spices or sauces. Each movement was relaxed, economical.

Shadera watched, suspicion warring with curiosity as he arranged the ingredients on the counter. “What are you doing?”

“Cooking,” he answered without looking at her.

“You?” She couldn’t keep the disbelief from her voice. “The Executioner knows how to cook?”

“The Executioner has a name,” he replied, pushing the vegetables into the sink and turning on the water. “And yes, I cook.”

The admission surprised her. She took another sip of vodka, let it burn away the questions that wanted to follow. He reached for something on the counter— a small tablet—and pressed a button. Music filled the kitchen, nothing like the thundering bass from the clubs in the Boundary. This was instrumental, complex, a blend of sound that seemed to wrap around the space.

Then he rolled up his sleeves.

The movement shouldn’t have caught her attention, but the vodka made her notice things she usually wouldn’t. The fabric folded back to reveal forearms that were… She took another drink. They were just arms. Nothing special about the subtle flex of muscle under skin as he reached for a knife.

The domesticity of the scene was so at odds with everything she knew about him that for a second, she wondered if she was dreaming as he began to cut the vegetables.

The knife moved through the items with ease, reducing them to uniform pieces. He had surgeon’s hands, she thought hazily. Killer’s hands. She’d seen those hands sign death warrants, had imagined them covered in blood. But watching them work now, she could almost forget what they had done. How many necks they’d snapped. How many triggers they’d pulled. Now they were almost gentle, careful, creating instead of destroying.

She found herself watching his fingers—long and elegant, yet powerful—as they guided the blade.

“Where did you learn to cook?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.

He paused, knife hovering above a red pepper. “My mother taught me the basics. The rest I learned on my own. I find it… cathartic.”

“Your mother?” The concept seemed absurd—the Executioner as a child, standing at his mother’s side, learning something as ordinary as cooking.

“Contrary to what you may believe, I wasn’t born with a gun in my hand.”

There was a hint of something like amusement in his voice. “I had a childhood.

Of sorts.”

She didn’t answer, instead took another slow sip from her glass as she watched him, the alcohol softening the edges of her perception. Her eyes traced the line of his jaw below the mask, the way it flexed as he concentrated.

The muscles in his back moved beneath his shirt as he worked, and she found herself tracking him with unconscious interest. His movements were graceful, controlled, a body trained for violence. He was built like a fighter—not bulky, but carved from consistent training. She wondered what kind of training produced a body like that. What kind of pain he’d endured to earn those muscles.

A traitorous part of her mind whispered that he was beautiful, in the way that dangerous things often are—a predator in motion, a storm rolling in, a blade catching the light. She crushed the thought immediately.

Sure, he was objectively attractive, if you liked the tall, brooding, homicidal type. Which she didn’t. Obviously.

This was the man who executed citizens for petty crimes. The man who stood on that platform day after day, ending lives with no emotion. The embodiment of everything she’d spent her life fighting against.

And yet, she couldn’t look away from his hands.

The smell that began filling the kitchen was nothing like her failed attempt.

Rich and heavy, layers of flavor she couldn’t identify. Her stomach cramped.

“What are you making?” she asked, needing something to redirect her thoughts.

“Pasta,” he answered, scraping the chopped vegetables into a pan. “Simple but filling. And hard to burn,” he added, the ghost of mockery in his tone.

She should have been offended, should have snapped back with something caustic. Instead, she found herself watching as he added seasoning and adjusted

the heat with a confidence she envied.

Her mind drifted to more questions, wondering about the life he lived that she didn’t know. He’d been gone all day. After threatening her this morning, after wrapping his hands around her throat, he’d disappeared.

Shadera lifted her fingers to her neck at the memory, the skin where he had touched tingling.

“Where were you today?” Another question fleeing her lips without permission.

He didn’t look up from the pan. “Does it matter?”

“You threatened to kill me this morning.” She took another sip from the crystal glass. “Then left me locked in here.”

“I needed space.”

“From me?”

“From the temptation to follow through on the threat.”

The admission should have frightened her, knowing what he was capable of.

Instead, she found herself appreciating the honesty. No pretense, no games. Just truth.

Silence fell between them again as she studied his profile. It was a shame, really. A shame that such a pretty face belonged to someone she had to kill. A shame that those beautiful, strong hands had so much blood on them. A shame that— No. She pulled her thoughts back sharply. The vodka was trying to make him into something human. He was the Executioner. That was all he was.

An hour had passed in strange suspension, the only sounds the sizzle of the pan and the classical music playing softly over the speakers. Shadera had switched from vodka to water at some point—when, she couldn’t quite remember—but the alcohol still swam through her blood, making everything soft and dangerous.

Callum emerged from the study like he’d been born from shadows, quiet despite his size. “We’re invisible,” he announced, satisfaction threading through his voice.

A small smile crept onto Shadera’s lips. Something about him reminded her of Jameson, how he could sneak into any place with complete silence, his

effortless charm and confidence.

Without hesitation, Greyson reached up and pulled off his mask.

The casualness of it stopped Shadera’s breath. The way he just removed it, like taking off a coat, setting it on the counter with no more thought than that.

His dark hair was slightly mussed from the mask’s pressure, and he ran a hand through it absently, making it worse.

“You have a death wish,” she snapped, as Callum smirked in her direction.

Greyson ignored her, turning to Callum. “Completely clean?”

“Clean as we can make it.” Callum moved into the kitchen, helping himself to a glass from the cabinet like he lived here. “Left all the devices in place, of course—moving them would raise suspicion. But I’ve created a loop. As far as anyone monitoring knows, you’re both having a riveting evening of silence in separate rooms.”

“How?” Shadera asked, professional curiosity peaking. “Heart surveillance systems run interference recognition algorithms that detect synthetic loops.”

Both men turned to look at her, surprise evident in their straightening postures.

“Murderous and curious, I like that,” Callum quipped, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “I’ve got a signal interceptor in the study now. It catches their feed, splices it to be on a believable loop then feeds it back to them. So technically, nothing is synthetic. It’s all their footage, just… adjusted. They only see what I want them to see.”

“But the audio signatures would show the splice pattern.” She leaned forward. “Unless you’re using a randomizer to vary the ambient noise when you feed it back through their surveillance.”

Callum blinked at her as Greyson’s mouth dropped slightly open.

“Exactly.” Callum sounded delighted. “I’ve got it cycling through over twelve thousand different background variations, enough that pattern recognition software won’t flag it.”

“What about thermal imaging? The new Heart surveillance systems usually have heat detection.”

“You know your shit,” Callum replied, moving closer with genuine interest.

“Thermal spoofing projectors. Three of them now floating around in the

ventilation system, calibrated to project heat signatures that match your normal patterns. Took me about thirty minutes to map your typical movement patterns from the past day’s footage.”

“Smart.” She found herself almost impressed. “But what about voice?

They’re expecting conversation—”

“Ah, that’s the beautiful part.” Callum pulled out a small device from his pocket. “Voice synthesis. I pulled your voices from the recordings, fed it through an AI processor. Now I can make you say anything.”

He pressed a button, and Shadera heard her own voice say, “I’m going to bed.

Stay away from me.”

Then Greyson’s: “Gladly.”

The accuracy was unsettling. Perfect pitch, perfect tone.

“How the hell,” Greyson interjected, looking between them, “do you know surveillance technology this well but can’t operate a stove?”

Shadera’s jaw tightened as she forced away the small smile forming from his bewildered tone. “Survival in the Boundary requires different skills than your pampered existence, little heir.”

“Learning to disrupt Heart security systems is survival?” His tone had shifted to genuinely curious.

If he understood what was truly happening in his city, he would realize what a stupid fucking question that was.

“When infiltrating Heart facilities for medical supplies, for food? Yes,” she snapped, annoyance flaring. “The people dying of infection don’t care how I get the antibiotics.”

Silence stretched between them. Callum looked back and forth, then clapped his hands once. “Well, this has been illuminating. But I have places to be, people to threaten, credits to collect, the usual evening activities.”

He moved toward Greyson, pulling him into one of those masculine embraces that involved more back slapping than actual hugging. “Try not to kill each other,” he said, loud enough for her to hear. Then he whispered something against Greyson’s ear, something she couldn’t quite catch.

Greyson nodded once, his expression unreadable as Shadera’s suspicions peaked.

Callum turned to her, offering a slight bow that somehow managed to be both mocking and respectful. “Well, killer, welcome to the Heart.” He paused at the entryway, glancing back. “You know, Greyson is more than what you see on those screens. Much more.”

Before she could respond, he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.

Greyson returned to the stove, plating whatever he’d been cooking with the same focus he probably used to clean his weapons. Two plates, arranged with an attention to detail that seemed excessive for food.

Shadera drifted to the window, drawn by the lights below. The Heart sprawled beneath them, glowing like circuitry that spilled over the rings.

Beautiful and cold. From this direction, you couldn’t see the execution platform.

Couldn’t see the blood that never quite washed clean from the stones.

“The city is almost beautiful from up here,” she said, not really talking to him. “When you can’t see the suffering.”

“Almost.” His voice came from directly behind her, closer than she’d expected. She could see his reflection in the glass, watching her instead of the view. “Beautiful things are often built on ugly foundations.”

She paused, staring at him in the glass, desperately trying not to overanalyze his words. She turned to face him, finding him less than an arm’s length away.

“Speaking from experience?”

“No,” he answered quietly, quickly. “There’s nothing beautiful in my world.”

The words hit Shadera with a force she wasn’t prepared for. It was sad really, all this luxury, all this wealth and stability, and still he found no joy in it. Shadera knew better, had seen with her own eyes that beauty could be found in every corner if you looked for it. Even when the world was burning.

He held out one of the plates. “Eat.”

She didn’t argue.

The food was perfect. Of course it was. Everything he did, he seemed to do to perfection. She ate standing by the window, aware of him moving through the space, cleaning up the mess until the kitchen looked as if it had never been

touched. It felt domestic, strange.

“I could show you,” he said suddenly.

She looked up from the plate. “What?”

“The Heart. Tomorrow, before the dinner. I can show you what it looks like in the light.”

Suspicion flared immediately. “Why would you do that?”

He met her eyes then from across the low-lit room, the intensity cutting through the drunken haze still clouding the edges of her thoughts. “Because we need to sell this arrangement. You need to look comfortable in my world, like you belong here. And because…” He paused, his throat working. “Because I have people I care about who are in danger if we fail at this.”

The honesty of it caught her off guard. “Callum,” she stated. “It was him in the drone footage with your sister, wasn’t it? I recognized the mask he wore tonight from what your father showed us.”

He didn’t answer, only nodded once.

She thought of Jameson as her eyes turned back to the window, of the drones that had hunted him, of what Maximus might do to him if she stepped wrong.

They were from two very different worlds, but both trapped inside the same nightmare. Both performing for an audience that would destroy everything they cared about if they missed a single line.

Shadera closed her eyes, pulling in a deep breath through her nose and letting it slowly exhale through her lips as she let the situation sink in, truly sink in. She hadn’t let herself see past the idea of killing him until now, hadn’t let herself accept that she was, in fact, a prisoner here until she could concoct a plan that wouldn’t get the people she loved killed.

She wanted him dead. Needed him dead. But Jameson, the people in the Boundary, they didn’t deserve to die because she couldn’t look past revenge. She wouldn’t let anyone else die on her path to vengeance.

Slowly her eyes peeled open and she strode toward the island, crossing the living space into the soft light of the kitchen. She set her plate down on the counter and turned toward Greyson. Her fingers found the marble edge and she hoisted herself up onto its surface.

She didn’t meet his eyes, but let her gaze fall to the dried blood on her leg where the glass had cut her, to her bare thighs visible from underneath the oversized shirt, to her hands folded in her lap. To the numbers tattooed across her fingers: 9758.

“So,” she started after a few minutes of silence as Greyson leaned against the back of the couch, arms folding over his chest, “you want to kill me.”

Greyson nodded, answering though it wasn’t a question. “Yes.”

“And I’m going to kill you.” His head tilted at her words, a smirk forming as if to say “debatable” as she continued. “But if we kill each other, everyone else

dies.”

“That seems to be the predicament.”

“I’ll let you parade me around the Heart and sit at your father’s dinner table.

I’ll play the part in public, for now. But the moment I see my out, the moment I can safely leave here, and the opportunity presents itself to kill you, I won’t hesitate to take it.”

She finally dragged her gaze from her hands to find his eyes already on her.

They weren’t hard, they weren’t full of hate but understanding, recognition.

Respect almost.

“As long as you know I’ll do the same,” Greyson answered. His right hand slid over his chest, then wrapped around the left side of his neck as he stretched it, his fingers brushing over the cut of his jaw.

Shadera’s eyes followed the movement, watching as his thumb grazed the edge of his bottom lip. Heat burned over her skin, settling at the base of her spine.

“What’s it like?” he asked, snapping her out of her sudden trance.

She shook her head, clearing her throat. “What’s what like?”

“Living in the Boundary?”

She stilled, anger replacing whatever heat was just pumping through her veins. “You want a poverty tour? Poor little heir wants to know how the other

half lives?”

“I want to understand—”

“No,” she snapped, cutting him off. “You want absolution. You want me to tell you it’s not that bad, that people manage, that there’s some kind of dignity in the suffering, so you can sleep at night in your silk sheets thinking you’re one of the good ones because you cared to ask.”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s not—”

“It’s exactly that.” She dropped from the counter, the remnants of vodka flaring back to life in her stomach as she grabbed the edge to stabilize herself.

“You want to know what it’s like? It’s watching children fight over scraps. It’s choosing between medicine and food. It’s watching your family be shot on billboards for falling in love with someone in the Cardinal. It’s selling yourself in whatever way keeps you alive one more day. It’s—”

“Why?” The word exploded from him, sudden and fierce enough to make her pull back. “I’m trying to coexist with you. To find some middle ground where we can survive this arrangement without tearing each other apart. But you —” He pushed from the back of the couch and moved toward her. “Every word is a weapon. Every gesture is an attack. Is it physically impossible for you to have a conversation without turning it into an argument?”

“When the conversation is with you? Yes.” She squared her shoulders. “You don’t get to play tourist to my suffering.”

He moved closer now, close enough her head tilted back as she maintained eye contact. Warmth flushed through her body—rage, she told herself, not the sudden awareness of how close he’d come, how his eyes had darkened with emotion, how his voice had dropped to a register that seemed to vibrate in her chest.

He took one last step toward her and his hands curled around the counter on either side of her waist, thumbs brushing against the curve of her hips.

“I may not know poverty, but don’t think for a second I do not know pain.”

His words were a growl.

She could feel his breath against her face, slipping through her lashes. Her senses flared, hyperaware of every point where the space between them had collapsed.

They stood frozen, bodies touching, the air around them charged. Greyson’s eyes dropped to her mouth and she realized she was breathing too fast, that her lips had parted without permission. It was just the vodka. It made her notice things she shouldn’t—the heat radiating from his body, the way his chest rose and fell, the fact that if she tilted her head up just slightly… She wondered what he tasted like. Whether the Executioner’s mouth would be soft or harsh. Whether he’d kiss with the same control and perfection he

maintained. Her tongue swept across her lower lip without conscious thought, and she watched his pupils dilate.

The air between them went electric, the energy of it standing every hair on edge. He leaned closer, just a fraction, and even with every instinct screaming in her head, she wanted to feel his hand back around her throat.

He jerked back like he’d been burned, turning away from her so fast she nearly stumbled. His hands gripped the edge of the couch hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

“Go to your room,” he ordered, voice rough.

She didn’t need to be told twice. Her legs carried her down the hallway on autopilot, her skin prickling, over-sensitized. The door to her room had been repaired—Chapman’s work, she assumed—and she pushed through it, closing it behind her with a soft click that sounded like judgment.

Shadera pressed her back against it, chest heaving like she’d been running.

Like she was running now, from whatever had almost happened.

“Fuck.” The word came out as a hiss between her teeth.

She pushed off the door, pacing the length of the bedroom like something caged. Which she was. Caged with him. She fucking hated him, hated everything he was, everything he represented.

But her body didn’t care about his crimes.

She stopped at the window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. The city lights blurred below, and she could see her reflection laid over them—wild eyes, flushed cheeks, lips parted like she was still waiting for that kiss.

It was just biology. Simple fucking biology. She hadn’t been with anyone in days. Hadn’t felt Jameson’s hands on her like she was used to, night after night, hadn’t tasted his mouth or felt him inside her. Her body was just responding to

proximity.

That’s all this was.

Her fingers went to her collarbone, tracing the bruises he’d left there. They’d faded to yellow-green now, ugly but healing. She pressed into them, feeling the stab of pain. Remembering his fingers squeezing, the way his eyes had gone dark with something that might have been desire.

She moved to the bed, falling back onto those obscene sheets as her body thrummed with need, with frustration that had nowhere to go. She could handle this. Deal with it clinically, efficiently. Get the craving out of her system so she could think clearly, so she could focus on what mattered—survival, escape, eventually finishing what she’d started and putting a bullet in Greyson Serel’s gorgeous fucking face.

Her hand slipped beneath the shirt, into the waistband of her underwear, finding herself already wet. The shame of it burned through her, but not enough to stop. She closed her eyes, summoning Jameson’s face. His scarred hands, his crooked smile, the way he always knew exactly how to touch her.

But the image kept shifting. Jameson’s green eyes becoming blue. His rough hands becoming those careful, precise fingers. The memory of Jameson’s weight became Greyson above her on the kitchen floor, his heart hammering against hers.

She pressed harder, fingers moving in familiar patterns, trying to force her mind back to safer territory. To Jameson’s apartment in the Boundary, to his bed that always smelled like sage and smoke. To the way he’d whisper her name against her throat when he was close.

A moan tore from her lungs as her treacherous mind supplied different images and she bit down on her fist to stifle the sound. Greyson’s mouth on hers, tasting like expensive whiskey and cruelty. Those hands that killed with no remorse learning her body with the same deadly focus. The way he might say her name—not with Jameson’s warmth, but with a lethal edge that fed into his control.

She thought of his hand around her throat. Not the violence of it, but the restraint. The way he could have crushed her windpipe but didn’t. The control that must have taken.

What would it be like if he lost that control? If she made him lose it?

He needed her out of his fucking house.

His bedroom door stood at the end of the hall, promising solitude.

Sanctuary. He quickened his pace, desperate to put as many doors and walls

between them as possible, when a sound froze him in place in front of her door.

She wasn’t—she wouldn’t.

He stood motionless, ears straining. He had imagined it, his mind playing tricks on him. But there it was again. A moan, louder this time, accompanied by the soft rustle of sheets.

Heat flooded his body, pooling low in his stomach. He was already half hard from their interaction, his self-control frayed to a thread. The image of her in that oversized shirt, his shirt, long tattooed legs bare and tempting, flashed through his mind.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the sound. This was insanity.

She was a fucking Daggermouth. He should be plotting her death, not imagining what she looked like tangled in his sheets.

Another moan drifted through the door, breathier than the last, and his control snapped.

Before he could second-guess himself, Greyson had his hand on the doorknob. It turned easily—unlocked. One push and he could see her. See what was making her make those sounds. See if her face flushed with pleasure the way it did with rage.

He rested his forehead against the wood, his breath coming harsh and fast.

This was a line he couldn’t uncross. A boundary he couldn’t return from. If he opened this door, if he saw her like that… His hand tightened on the knob, knuckles going white. Every muscle in his body begged him to push forward, to find out if she fucked as brutally as she fought.

Greyson wrenched himself away from her door. He couldn’t and there was no world where she would even want him to. Where she would want him. He covered the remaining distance to his room in three strides and closed the door behind him, sliding the lock home with a shaking hand.

He pressed his back against it, head thumping against the wood as he tried to steady his breathing. This couldn’t happen. He couldn’t let himself feel this— this sick mix of lust and loathing for a woman who wanted him dead.

For a woman he wanted dead.

Greyson dragged a hand down his face, feeling the rasp of stubble against his palm. A second night hiding in his own home.