Page 47 of Sinner's Vows

He wasn’t asleep at all.

He let me take his gun. Heallowedme to take his gun. My hand is steady, my grip firm, my feet planted firmly apart, ready to take the shot, but all I can do is stare at him, the images of the movie casting a light show around us.

“What now, sweetheart?”

He hasn’t moved, but his eyes are taking everything in. From my dress’s shoulder which has slipped down my arm, exposing way more skin than I’d like, to my free hand clutching my stupid dress as if it’s going to save me.

“You have to admit this isn’t very sisterly of you,” he drawls.

“I’m not your sister,” I breathe. Claiming to be just that could stop a man from raping me—it would stopthisman—but it’s such a blatant stupidity, I can’t buy into it.

“We’ll see. But you are a thief, stealing my gun like that. What are you planning to do now?”

His words rip through me and zap me back to the night Franco kidnapped me from that sex-slave auction. Back to the day I fled after his assault.

Franco. That night.Thief.

My hands start to tremble, and I take the pistol in both hands to steady my grip.

He’s dead.Dead. Dead. Dead.

Dominic reaches for the remote control where he’d left it right by his hand. With the smallest of movements, he kills the sound. Now it’s so quiet, my heartbeats seem to fill the space with heavy, anxious thuds.

He doesn’t move, just waits for me to take the next step. To say something.

I lick my lips, all my training withering to dust as a I watch him register how I’m failing. How my head has gotten to me. God. The body is nothing. The mind is everything.

I’ve never felt weaker than in this moment, with a gun in my hand, aimed at a man I would have given a life sentence with no parole weeks ago if I’d met him in my day job. Cuffed him and dragged to prison to rot like I was left to rot in that dungeon.

But now all my weak mind can do is fill up with Franco, with what he’d done, and this man’s gentle voice as he keeps on asking questions I can’t answer without giving everything away.

“Let me teach you something, Ariana,” he says then, his voice soothing and calm. “Next time you want to know if a man is asleep or just faking it, look at his crotch.”

My gaze drops there by instinct, and I snatch at a breath that won’t fill my lungs. He is aroused, shamelessly so. And it’s…it’s…it’s a lot.

“It’s the gentle, almost imperceptible touches that get to me the most.”

He lets that sink in, and it does.

Did he just admit that I turned him on? My mouth fills with gravel, my lips parched, and still, I can’t say anything. The gun, all for being lightweight, is a brick in my hands, dragging my arms down.

“Go for it, sweetheart. Prove to yourself you can do it,” he says. “I bet a bullet from you would make a very pretty hole in my heart.”

25

DOMINIC

Something triggered her to lose all focus. And it wasn’t my giant fucking cock begging for attention. It was something I said. She was so into getting my gun, I couldn’t bring myself to interfere. Firstly, it was kinda cute. Secondly, the whispers of her fingers as they ghosted over my skin, brushing against my leg’s hairs, sending sensation to rush under my skin and into my veins…fuck.

Now my arousal is abating at speed because a haunted look has invaded her eyes, and I need to be careful. Just looking at the way she stands, how she cocked the pistol, this one is a professional in one way or another.

She knows her way around guns but has never pulled the trigger to kill somebody.

Until you’ve been forced to shoot, until you’ve felt the body grapple with a last breath as you keep on tightening your grip on that throat, until you’ve stabbed and let blood fountain over you, you actually have no clue how you’re going to react when the time comes.

Sweetheart. Sweetest of sweethearts…

I sigh as I tilt the sofa’s footrest down. It locks in place, and I stand. Ariana has lowered the gun, and it points to the floor now, ready to shoot off a toe if I let her. One step, and I have her by the shoulder, and she doesn’t resist. I slowly slide my fingers down her arm and take hold of the weapon. I secure the gun, empty out the magazine and the bullet in the barrel, and toss it all on a recliner.

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