Page 24 of Irrevocably

I stare up at him, Matilda’s cold metal at my back, still overwhelmed by fear and shock. He just cut a man’s throat in front of me, and without hesitation. His hand didn’t even shake.

I knew he was dangerous, I knew. But it’s one thing to suspect someone is capable of killing, quite another to see them actually do it in front of you.

“Wh-Who is that?” I manage to force out, my attention on the body on the ground.

“Him?” Lucien glances down then looks back at me, his cold stare glittering. “Someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“B-but he asked me to take him to Dad.”

Lucien says nothing, studying me intently instead. He’s so very close, as close as that man was, yet Lucien doesn’t smell like expensive cologne. His scent smoky, spicy, with an edge of leather, and the heat I feel radiating from him makes me shiver.

I must still be in shock, because when he raises a hand, his fingers still stained with blood, and cups the side of my face, I can’t move. His touch is gentle and warm, so at odds with the last time he touched me, his fingers pressing into the bruises around my neck. So at odds with the firm slice across that man’s throat.

I shiver like a tree in a high wind as I look up into his cold, empty eyes. Except … they’re not empty now, and they’re not cold. No, there’s something in them, a spark of heat, like that flash I saw in the alley, when he pressed his thumb into my bottom lip.

I shiver even harder. Is it … attraction? Is that because of me?

“Did he hurt you?” Lucien asks, his voice deep and rough, the spark in his eyes getting hotter and hotter.

“N-No.” My voice shakes and I try to steady it. “No, he didn’t.”

Lucien’s thumb strokes across my cheekbone, sending a wave of prickling heat through me. Oh fuck, what’s happening? What am I doing?

I try to go on. “I d-don’t…”

He studies me like a scientist with a new discovery, stroking my cheekbone again with his bloody thumb. “Are you afraid?”

I should shove him away and run. Run fast and far so he can’t find me. Put some distance between him and me and these strange things I’m feeling, because seriously? He’s just killed a guy. He’s still got blood on his hands. So why am I so hot? Why do I want to lean into that hand the way I did in the alley? Why the fuck am I even letting him touch me?

But I don’t move. Instead, I lift my chin. “No,” I say, lying through my teeth.

“That’s good,” he says.

Then he bends his head and puts his mouth on mine.

Chapter Twelve

LUCIEN

I never act without thinking and I never make mistakes. Everything I do is deliberate and for a reason, but there’s no reason for me to be kissing Astrid Starling, none at all. Yet that’s exactly what I’m doing.

She was standing right up against her little yellow car, looking up at me, her hair silver in the darkness and her skin so pale. A fall of moonlight. And all I could think about was that Angelo Moretti put his hands on her, threatened her, and that she was my target not his.

If I hadn’t been here, she might have died and then I wouldn’t know if her bottom lip tasted as soft as it felt back in that alley, when I touched it with my thumb. Or if her mouth would feel as hot as it did when she bit me.

Perhaps it was the kill that got to me. I don’t usually get a rush from killing, and I don’t usually kill in anger, either. A good assassin can never be moved by any kind of emotion. But I can’t deny that I was angry that Angelo Moretti had his hands on my target, a target I hadn’t even gotten the information I needed from yet. I wasn’t going to let him fuck that up, so I took my knife and dealt with him.

Lazarus won’t be pleased that I went against his orders, but I don’t care. We can deal with any Moretti blowback. It won’t affect our eventual plan, and besides, Astrid’s far more valuable to us than he was.

She tenses as my mouth covers hers, but she doesn’t move, so I don’t, either. Her lips are as soft as I remember, and her body is very warm, the skin of her cheek smooth as satin against my fingertips. Instinctively, I grip her jaw to hold her where I want her, and she trembles, but I keep going, angling her head back so I can push my tongue into her mouth.

I never kiss and I never allow anyone to kiss me. It’s too personal, too intimate, but her mouth is irresistible, and now I can’t stop, especially when a gasp escapes her. It goes straight to my head like bubbles in champagne, sweet and effervescent, and I’m kissing her deeper now. Her mouth tastes like summer, hot and delicious, and she’s soft, so fucking soft. And I’m pushing her against her little yellow car, feeling her body giving against mine, her tits against my chest, the heat of her pussy against the fly of my jeans.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt a kick of lust like this one, a very long time, and it’s a mystery to me why my cock has decided this woman is the one, a twenty-one-year-old college student, a normal girl in a normal little life.

Then again, she’s not quite as normal as she seems, is she? She’s got a secret that she doesn’t want anyone to know, and it’s a dark one for a good girl like her. A dark one that calls to me.

I grip her tighter, pull her head back further so I can get deeper, exploring her mouth, tasting her. I nip at her bottom lip, demanding a response, and she trembles. Her hands are on my chest, her palms pressed to the cotton of the hoodie I wear beneath my leather jacket, and she tries to turn her head away. I don’t let her, because I’m not done. I want more of this taste: honey and strawberries and every sweet thing I was never allowed in Enzo’s house. Like the chocolate bar that Lazarus always had in his pocket, which he gave me every day after school.