Chapter 4

Helena's POV

The past few days blurred together in a rhythm I still couldn't fully understand.

I was learning the rules of this world, learning how to move through it without flinching every time someone said Vincent's name in that particular tone of voice that meant fear and respect mixed together.

But I still didn't know what I was becoming here, what shape I'd take when all this was done reshaping me.

Tonight was another business dinner where I played Vincent's fiancée for an audience of men in suits who looked at me and tried to figure out if I was worth the price Vincent had apparently paid.

We were twenty minutes from the estate when the first bullet punched through the rear window.

"Get down!" Vincent's hand slammed my head below the dashboard and the Mercedes swerved so hard I hit the door. More gunshots ripped through the air and I heard our driver curse in Italian, which probably meant something very bad in any language.

My heart was trying to break through my ribcage. This wasn't a drill or Dante's paranoid safety lectures, this was actually happening and I could die right here in this car.

Vincent had his phone out and was barking orders while bullets kept hitting the car in sharp metallic cracks. "Two vehicles, black SUVs, coming up on both sides. Get units to the east gate right fucking now."

The Mercedes jerked violently to the left and I heard our driver make a wet, choking sound that made my stomach drop. We were slowing down and that meant we were dead, that meant whoever was shooting at us was about to finish what they'd started.

Vincent pulled his gun.

I moved.

There was a compartment built into the floor under my seat and Dante had shown it to me three days ago during one of his lectures about always knowing where the weapons were. I yanked it open and my hands closed around cold metal.

"Helena, what are you—"

I shoved my door open and brought the Glock up the way Dante had drilled into me about a thousand times. The SUV was pulling up right next to us and I could see the guy in the passenger seat aiming at Vincent through our broken window.

I fired three shots before I could think about whether this was insane.

The first one went wide but the second and third hit the driver's side window and suddenly the SUV was swerving out of control, jumping the curb and slamming into a lamppost hard enough that I heard the crunch of metal even over the ringing in my ears.

Vincent was staring at me with an expression I couldn't read, somewhere between shock and something else I didn't have time to figure out.

The second SUV was coming around for another pass and I fired again, aiming for the tires because that's what Dante said to do if you couldn't get a clean shot at the driver. The front tire exploded and the vehicle spun out, crashed into a parked car in a screech of brakes and breaking glass.

Then there were sirens and more black cars flooding the street and I realized Vincent's people had arrived. The attackers scattered into the night and it was over, just over, and I was standing in the middle of the street holding a gun that was still warm in my hands.

Vincent took the Glock from me carefully and pulled me hard against his chest. I could feel his heart slamming against mine and his breath was coming fast and rough against my hair.

"You just saved my life," he said.

"You're bleeding." My voice came out too high and unsteady and I couldn't seem to catch my breath. "Your arm, Vincent, you're—"

"It's nothing, just grazed me." His hand cupped the back of my head and held me there against him and I realized we were both shaking. "Helena. Look at me."

I tilted my head back and whatever he saw in my face made his eyes go dark and intense in a way that had nothing to do with the gunfight we'd just survived.

"Let's go home," he said.

The estate was lit up and crawling with Vincent's men when we pulled through the gates. Dante met us at the front door with murder written all over his face and immediately started shouting orders about perimeter security and finding out which family had just signed their own death warrant.

Luca appeared seconds later with his phone already out, calling in favors and making threats in that calm.

Vincent's sleeve was soaked through with blood but when Dante tried to call the family doctor Vincent just waved him off.

"I'm fine, it's barely a scratch." He was looking at me instead of his brothers and the intensity of that look made my skin feel too tight. "Come with me."

He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the stairs. I followed him up to the second floor but instead of walking me to my room he took me into his. I'd never been inside Vincent's bedroom before and I stopped just past the threshold, taking in the dark walls and heavy furniture and the massive bed that suddenly seemed to fill my entire field of vision.

Vincent closed the door and locked it with a click that sounded very loud in the quiet room.

We stood there looking at each other and the air felt charged with something electric and dangerous, something that had been building between us for days and was about to break loose.

"You could have died tonight," I said, "That bullet was two inches from your head."

"You could have died too." He took a step toward me and I watched his hand come up slowly to cup my face, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone. "You should have stayed in the car where it was safer. You should have kept your head down and let me handle it."

Then he kissed me.

It wasn't gentle or careful or any of the things a first kiss probably should be. He kissed me hard and desperate and hungry, like he'd been holding back for days and had finally stopped trying. I kissed him back with the same desperate intensity and my hands were already tearing at his blood-stained shirt, ripping buttons because I needed to feel his skin against mine right now.

He backed me toward the bed and I pulled him down with me, both of us falling onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs and ruined clothes.

"Helena." His voice came out rough against the side of my neck where he was kissing and biting in a way that would definitely leave marks. "If we do this, if we go there—"

"Stop talking." I bit his lower lip hard enough to make him groan. "Just stop talking and touch me."

Whatever control he'd been clinging to snapped completely.

Vincent grabbed the zipper of my dress and yanked it down, pulled the fabric away from my body and threw it somewhere across the room. His mouth was everywhere at once, kissing and sucking at my throat and collarbone and the curve of my breast. I arched up into him and felt him hard and ready against my inner thigh through the fabric of his pants.

I grabbed his belt and tried to work the buckle but my hands were shaking too badly. He took over and stripped off the rest of his clothes in movements that were efficient and rushed, and then he was above me with nothing between us except my underwear, which he hooked his fingers into and dragged down my legs.

"Look at me," Vincent said, and it came out like an order.

I opened my eyes and met his stare. Those gray-blue eyes that had been so cold and calculating the night we met were burning now with raw need.

He pushed inside me in one long thrust and I cried out, my nails digging into his shoulders hard enough to break skin. It hurt for a few seconds because it had been so long and he was bigger than Ethan had been, bigger than I'd expected. But then my body adjusted and opened for him and the pain dissolved into something that felt so good I couldn't think straight anymore.

Vincent started moving and I moved with him, meeting every thrust with my own need that had been building under my skin since the first time he'd touched me. His hand slid under my thigh and lifted my leg higher, changing the angle so he went deeper, and I actually screamed.

"That's it," he growled against my ear, his breath hot and his voice wrecked. "Don't hold back, let me hear you."

Every nerve ending in my body was firing at once and building toward something overwhelming that was coming at me fast. His thumb found the sensitive bundle of nerves between my legs and circled it in perfect rhythm with his thrusts and I was going to die, I was actually going to die from this.

"Vincent, I can't, I'm going to—"

"Do it." His voice was command and plea mixed together in a way that destroyed me. "Come for me, Helena. I want to feel it."

I shattered completely. My whole body clenched and convulsed around him and I heard myself crying out his name while pleasure crashed through me in waves that wouldn't stop coming. It went on and on until I thought I might actually pass out from the intensity of it.

Vincent thrust harder and faster, chasing his own release with single-minded focus. When he came he buried his face against my neck and said my name over and over while he pulsed inside me.

We stayed frozen there for a long moment with both of us trying to remember how to breathe, sweat cooling on our skin and hearts still racing.

Finally he pulled out carefully and I felt the loss of him immediately, felt empty in a way that should have alarmed me but just made me want to pull him back. He reached for the nightstand and grabbed something, cleaned us both up with a gentleness that seemed completely at odds with what had just happened between us.

"Stay tonight," Vincent said quietly, and I realized it wasn't quite an order. "Stay here with me."

I should have said no. But I nodded.

He pulled me against his chest and dragged the sheets over both of us. I could hear his heartbeat slowing down.