Page 107 of Isaac

"Is that a promise?" I taunt him, even though my heart is pounding in my chest. "Because I'll be honest, Jeremy, I don't give a damn about your threats."

"Watch your mouth, newbie," Jeremy hisses, releasing me with a shove. "You won't always have Isaac around to protect you." He takes a half step back, creating a pocket of distance between us.

A chuckle leaves my lips.

"What’s so fucking funny?" he asks.

"Just wondering how someone as sweet as Jessica ended up with such a dumbass for a brother."

Even in the dark, I can see Jeremy's face redden with fury, veins bulging in his neck as he clenches his fists. I think he might charge at me, but then he shakes his head and growls out, "Keep talking, asshole." He spits into the dirt at my feet.

"Thanks for the advice," I reply sarcastically, watching him storm off into the night. He’s got a body to handle.

Once he's gone, I let out a shaky breath, turn around to face the wall and press my forehead against the metal, trying to push away the chaos in my mind.

You’ll get through this, Hawk.

No. Wait. You’ll get through this Dalla—

I slip through the door of my hotel room, the taste of violence still bitter on my tongue. The vague sight of Tucci’s brain mattersplattered across the cement floor haunts me, even in the silence of this suit Isaac Thoreau has chosen for me.

I'm Hawk now.

Dallas Bradley is a whisper lost to the wind, a ghost with a badge buried six feet under my skin. And tonight, Hawk's hands are stained with blood and the phantom weight of the gun that ended Tucci lingers while my fingers fumble with the hem of my shirt and then a button and zipper of my jeans. Fabric slips off me with a hiss, a quiet shedding of the day's armor, revealing ink and scars beneath I catch in the mirror above the minibar.

It glints in the dim light from a single lamp I turned on when I stumbled in, its contents meticulously stocked—a silent witness to my unraveling. My hand wraps around a bottle, no glass, no ceremony. The sting of alcohol down my throat doesn't wipe the slate clean, but it blurs the edges, makes the reflection in the mirror tolerable. It's whiskey or regret that should be filling my chest.

After I’ve had enough sips to dull the aching sensation, I stagger into the shower.

The water pelts my skin, scalding, steam rising around me. Each droplet demands penance, a cleansing I can't truly claim.

Not anymore.

I scrub my flesh raw, but it's not dirt I'm trying to erase—it's memories, images of life draining from a man's eyes by my own volition. I'm caught between two hells—the one I came from and the one I’ve just been accepted to.

I stand there until the torrent beneath my skin begins to numb. I step out, a towel catching on my hips, clinging to the last shred of something that feels like decency.

There's a knock, a prelude to another kind of storm. I can feel it. No one else but Isaac would be at that door at the most inappropriate hour and right now is as dead as it can get during the night.

I already know what he'll bring with him—temptation, danger, an allure that's both weapon and wound. And it’ll hurt like a motherfucker after he’s gone. It always does after he’d grab me somewhere in the dark corner of Purgatory and capture my mouth with his. And then he’d disappear into the thin air as if he was never there, as if the taste of his kiss on my lips is simply a figment of my sick imagination.

But I can’t seem to stay away.

I open the door and just like I thought Isaac’s standing there, both hands tucked into the pockets of his slacks. Top three buttons of his shirt undone. Different shirt. Not the one he wore earlier when he asked me to commit a murder.

"Can I come in?" he rasps out, his eyes communicating perhaps too much. Too many things.

"Sure," I reply, my own voice surprisingly steady despite the tremor in my gut.

He steps inside, closing the gap between us, molding himself to me. He gives me no warning.

He crushes his lips to mine. His tongue explores my mouth, staking his claim, while my hands roam over his body, seeking assurance that I'm not alone in this darkness.

In his kiss there's power, a call that goes beyond bodies, beyond the blood on our hands. This is the dance we've perfected—the push and pull of desire wrapped in the guise of control. Desperate, twisted want, the kind that blurs lines and breaks all the rules. Desperate, twisted want, to have one another.

No reasoning.

No explanation.

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