“You want this just as bad as I do,” she said, and I was almost tempted to tell her no fucking duh.

However, when she eased her way onto me, I couldn’t even think straight. My hips began to move, pushing my cock entirely in her.

She was moving too slowly, watching me struggle to fight back the urge to ram my way in her until she couldn’t walk.

“How quickly the tables can turn,” she whispered. I gasped when she leaned down to kiss my chest.

Grabbing on to her waist and hair, I held her on top of me before sitting up. I was done playing around. I just wanted to fuck her so deep that she wouldn’t be able to see straight.

“And how quickly they change back.” Gripping her waist, I forced her to move along with me, fucking her as we sat in the middle of my bed.

She looked me in the eyes as I looked into hers. Our lips were only inches apart, breathing each other in as she rode me. Reaching up, I brushed the side of her face and pulled her hair, along with her head, back so I could kiss her neck. Then I pushed her down onto the bed and rammed myself harder.

She moaned, and I smiled. “Fucking Jesus, Liam.”

Leaning down, I kissed the side of her face before whispering, “Not even he can save you from this now.”

Holding onto her wrist with one hand and gripping her thigh with the other, I fucked her pussy hard, ramming farther and farther inside her as she trembled in pleasure.

“Fuck, Mel,” I yelled as I felt her walls tighten around me. But even then I didn’t stop. I wanted to fuck her pretty little brain out, so I let go of her hands and grabbed on to her hips. I fucked her like she was a bitch in heat. I went quickly. I went deeply. I went in and out so many times I couldn’t even see straight, and she was screaming my name while clawing at my back. She had come twice already, and I would keep making her come until she was filled with only me.

Slowing my thrusts down only slightly, my head went back as I released in her just as she came for the third time. Drained, I forced myself to hover over her, not wanting to crush her. However, she surprised me and pulled me on top of her. So I just laid there on her breast, leaving small kisses on her neck.

“Thank you.”

“You never have to thank me for sex.” In fact, she could have it anytime she fucking wanted.

“Not only for the sex, Liam.” Stopping my kisses, I sat up to stare in her eyes, but she refused to look at me.

“My dear wife, you do not have to thank me for that either.” I kissed her cheek before finally pulling out of her. I was going to bring up condoms later, and hopefully, she didn’t want them either.

We didn’t speak for a moment as I lay next to her. Instead, the smell of sex and our breathing was the only thing to fill the room.

“What do you want from me, Liam?”

I wasn’t sure how to say it without . . . without sounding like a pansy. But I knew if I lied she would know, and the last thing our relationship could handle was a lie, whether it was big or small.

“I want you to love me,” I said softly. “But if not, then I want it to be the closest thing to you loving me. I want your loyalty. I want your honesty. I want you by my side and no one else’s. I want your body. I want your mind. I want to know your hopes and dreams so I could one day make them reality.”

I paused, knowing the sicker, inner-darkness part of me was about to speak. But that was who I was, and I wanted her to know it. I hadn’t even realized I wanted it until now.

“I want you to be willing to kill for me. I want you to be the same killer I am and not flinch away from the blood. I want you to revel in the blood alongside me. I want you to help me take down every fucker who stands in the way of a Callahan.”

She was silent, and so was I as we lay there.

“The second part of that I can do with ease,” she finally replied. “The first, the love. I haven’t loved anything in a long time. I cared for Orlando deeply, but we were never close. I spent most of my life training. He was working. I wouldn’t know where to start with love.”

It wasn’t a no. It was just a how, and I would have to show her. I took her hand, kissing it before sitting up.

“We will start with getting to know each other,” I replied, loving how she looked in my bed . . . our bed.

“Know each other?”

“Like what the fuck is your favorite color, and other not important, but important things like that.”

“It’s teal. I do not know why, but it’s teal.”

Smiling, I got up, naked as the day I was born, and grabbed the plate of food, the wine, and the files, and placed them before us on the bed.

She picked up the wine and smirked. “You know my favorite wine.”

“I do,” I replied, uncorking it and not telling her how I knew. She didn’t need a cup and drank straight from the bottle before handing it to me. I drank as well, laughing in my mind at how far I had come. Had it been any other female, I would have seen them as less of a woman. But with Mel, it only made her sexier to me. Everything she did made her sexier.

“What’s your favorite color?” she asked, taking a bite of sandwich.

“I don’t have one.”

She shook her head at me.

“Favorite movie?” I asked her.

“Shawshank Redemption,” she said.

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. What’s yours then?” she asked.

“Goodfellas,” I said, winking and causing her to roll her pretty brown eyes at me.

“Of course.”

“I’m also a huge superhero nerd.”

She looked me over before nodding. “I can see that.”

“Shut up,” I said as she laughed. It wasn’t forced, or harsh, but soft like bells chiming in the wind.

She brought her legs in, and I noticed she was still wearing her white heels, which meant a few things. One, I fucked her in her heels and that was fucking hot. Two, she looked fucking sexy sitting on my bed naked with only heels on, and third, she almost always wore white shoes. I would make a note of that for whenever I bought her something, but still.

“Why do you wear white heels all the time? Is it an Italian fashion statement or something?”

She froze for a moment, before her shoulders dropped and her eyes glazed over.

“Orlando and my mother, Aviela, fought often when I was a child. I was young, but even I knew something was wrong. On the outside they put on a show of this happy, well-off couple, but really, my mom was living in a different wing of the house. She even spent most of her time in Italy. Sometimes, after her fights with my father, I wouldn’t see her for weeks. When they were young and fell for each other hard, my father didn’t want to lose her, so he only told her about what he did for a living after they were married.” She frowned, drinking from the bottle again.

“Shit.” There was no way a relationship in our lives could work if we didn’t make it clear who we were from the get go.

“Yep.” She shook her head. “From what I gathered, my mom was a hippie. She hated violence, and like all hippies, she protested. My grandparents wouldn’t let her get a divorce, and so she wore white gloves. Basically, she was telling Orlando every time he saw her that her hands were clean. She told him if he could go a week without killing, she would take them off and he could touch her. But it never happened. My father turned to whores, pretending they were her, and she fell in love with her bodyguard. However, she was pregnant with me, and my father told me that she miscarried once while they were dating, so she didn’t want to risk anything the second time around. They tried to stick it out for my sake, but Orlando finally gave up trying to win her over and they agreed to let me spend holidays with him. It was like that until the plane crash.”

“And so you wear the white shoes . . .”

“Because my hands aren’t clean, but . . .” She half smiled. “When I see them, I think of her and I don’t feel like I never had a mother. I just see a woman with white gloves.”