“Not… murder?” My voice is hoarse. Ragged from the air and the emotion and looking at Charlotte’s face, her eyes. “He doesn’t deserve equal treatment?”
“Don’t become him,” Charlotte whispers. It nearly undoes me, the begging note in her voice. “Don’t let him turn you into this.”
I give her a hard, unforgiving smile. “Turn me into what? A man who makes a contract to use a woman’s body? A man who takes revenge on a man using his daughter?” My bones feel like they’re on fire, too. There’s no place to run from this. I can’t stop the words any more than I could stop Cornerstone from turning to cinders. I take a step toward her. Another. Charlotte’s trembling, but she doesn’t step back. “That’s me. I’m already a vicious bastard. Do you think you can save me? Maybe that’s why you want me. That’s what they say, isn’t it? That a woman’s always looking for her father? You want me because I’ll break your sweet little heart.”
Charlotte slaps me. A stinging direct hit. She didn’t hold back. “Stop.”
I touch two fingers to the skin without thinking, surprise filtering in around amusement that feels serrated. It escapes from me in a cruel laugh. “That was like being attacked by a rose petal.”
Charlotte’s eyes flash. Those sapphires burn like they’ve been dropped into the fire. She’s so fucking beautiful like this, cheeks red, breathing hard. A Valkyrie. This evening—this night—has stripped her down into some primal version of herself. I did that. I pushed her to the brink. I’m drunk with it. With wanting more. With pain and disappointment and raw fury. With need. I want her laid bare in every way. Every possible way.
“Try again.” It begins as a taunt, but I pull it back. I keep my voice under control. I don’t want her to run. I want her touching me, even if she’s hitting me. “See if you can hurt me. See if you can leave a mark.”
She wipes at her face with the back of her hand, leaving behind a streak of soot. It’s like battle paint.
I catch a flash of her teeth, and Charlotte launches herself at me. I’m not sure she knows what she’s doing. I’m not sure she knows what she’s trying to do. Punch me. Tackle me. Kill me. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I catch her in my arms and breathe deep.
Under the smoke, under the ash, I can smell her. She’s still there. Shampoo and sweetness and something warm, something soft. I thought I was desperate for a breath of fresh air. I was desperate for this. For her.
She fights me. Charlotte’s all fists and fury, but despite her anger she’s not really trying to push me away. Her body arcs closer while she pushes and shoves, landing some wild, ineffectual blows.
“Fight harder than that.”
“No.”
No, but she does it anyway. The sound that comes out of her is pure frustration. She makes it hard to move her down a side street. Down from the bustle. All those fuckers are sprinting for the fire so they can capitalize on it. Charlotte’s alive in my hands. Every move she makes puts pressure on my knee. I don’t give a fuck. Ten steps. Twenty. Thirty. She pounds a fist on my shoulder. She throws herself into me. I don’t know what the hell she’s thinking. She’s probably not.
“What do you want?” Her voice is high and strained. “What the fuck, Mason?”
I feel like she sounds. Like I’m nothing but a bloody heart. Like I’m done with all this. Like no amount of water is ever going to put out this fire. No amount of money can repair the wounds. Another thirty steps. I want to see how long she’ll fight me. I’d love to test her that way. Drive her past the edge. I’m testing myself, too. How long can I suffer like this? How long can I stand it? Another year? Another fourteen?
She punches at my chest.
Not another minute.
I slam her up against the metal gate boarding up an electronics store. It creaks behind her, the metallic rattle drowning out her gasp. Her purse falls and hits the sidewalk.
“There.” Charlotte’s breathing even harder now. She’s pinned, but she kicks at me, tries to use her hips to throw me off balance. “Did you get what you wanted? Is this what you wanted? Jesus, Mason, I—”
Once you’ve started falling, there’s no stopping. That’s the bullshit law of the universe. Once a body is plummeting through thin air, it’s at the mercy of gravity. It will continue to fall until something breaks that fall, whether it’s a carpeted floor or a slab of concrete forty feet down. It can’t be denied. It can’t be changed.
I couldn’t stop myself from falling. And I can’t stop myself from kissing her, stealing the rest of her words for myself.
2
CHARLOTTE
Mason tastes like fire and hurt. Every part of me should resist him. Every part of me should reject him. But I’m a mess. I’m a garment that’s been sewn all wrong. I need to rip out the seams and start over. I want to say it’s because I’m angry. I want to be furious. Powerful. But mostly, I’m afraid.
It’s not just my father. It’s not just a thrown glass and spit curses. It’s my mother fleeing in an Uber. It’s the fear in her eyes. The resignation. The determination. The whole damn thing is falling apart. I’ve been trying so hard to hold it together, to be the thread that binds us into something recognizable, if not whole. If I’m not holding us together, who the hell am I?
I kiss him back. How could I not? He’s been breathing smoke and ash for hours, and he still tastes good. He still tastes like what I want. He still feels like what I want. It lights up some hidden part of me to feel his tongue against mine. To feel his teeth sinking into my lip.
Damn this man. Damn his beautiful face and his captivating eyes and his perfect, scarred body. Damn the scrape on his cheek that says he’s been pushing, that says he’s been fighting. Damn the easy strength pinning me to a metal gate. The gate will give out before he does. It protests behind me with whines and creaks. A gap between two of the slats pinches my skin. I’m trapped between cold pain on one side and Mason’s heat on the other.
He leans into the kiss. He kisses the breath from my mouth. Hard enough to bruise my lips. It’s an attack. I don’t know how to tell them apart, violence and sex. They clash together. He slides one hand down to my ass and gives it a vicious squeeze. I cry out into his mouth. I’m still sensitive from his belt. He belted me tonight, and I was wet for it. Desire answers the memory between my legs.
I aim a punch at his chest. At his ribs. He laughs into my mouth. “Is that all you got? You’ll have to try even harder, you sweet little thing.”
My pulse races, heat rearing up like it did from the Cornerstone building. It shoots into my fingers and my toes and makes my muscles ache with an urge to do real violence. I never thought I could be this way, but I want to hurt him. I do. I dig my fingers into his collarbone and rake them down the front of his T-shirt. His soft, expensive, fancy T-shirt that’s been ruined in the fire. I tear his belt buckle open and fight fabric away until I find him. He’s hard as I’ve ever felt, iron-hard, steel-hard, and I’m not gentle when I wrap my hand around him. Not tentative. I pump him once, twice, and he grunts, closing his mouth over mine.