Page 7 of At Your Mercy
The unlocking of the front door signaled Elias’s arrival. He strolled in with a smile on his face.
“You look awful,” he said cheerfully, setting a paper cup of coffee on the counter like some benevolent saint. “Not your best, Ronan.”
I snatched it up, only because my hands were shaking and I needed something to hold onto. “You don’t get to walk in here all happy like—like this isn’t your fault.”
“My fault?” Elias arched a perfectly-groomed auburn brow, shedding his jacket and tossing it across the back of my kitchen table’s singular chair like he owned the place. “You’re the one who failed your mission. You got too distracted by Cohen.”
My grip tightened around the cardboard cup until it began to dent. “He’s… different. I wasn’t expecting—”
“Different?” Elias’s mouth quirked in amusement. “You’ve charmed and slit the throats of men who owned countries, sweetheart. Don’t tell me one silver fox has you undone.”
Heat rushed to my face—rage, shame, I couldn’t separate them. “I wasn’tundone,” I hissed.
“No?” Elias leaned against the counter, arms crossed, his smile all teeth. “Then what do you call it? Because from where I’m standing, you forgot all about killing him, turned it into a cute little date.”
I slammed the cup down so hard that coffee splashed over my fingers, burning me. “Shut the fuck up.”
Elias only chuckled, low and pleased, as if my temper were proof of something. “I’m not understanding the issue, sweetheart. You know that sometimes a warm bed is the quickest path to a cold corpse. It’s what you’re known for. So why not do the same here? Get him comfortable. Get him nice and pliant. Then cut his throat while your hole is squeezing his cock. Simple.”
The words gutted me. My stomach churned, and for a dizzying second, I thought I might actually be sick.
Wesley’s voice echoed in my head, “Have you ever killed someone while their dick was inside of you?”
Elias brushed his hand against my cheek. “You’re a beautiful weapon, Ronan. And weapons don’t get to choose how they’re used. You know that.”
Yeah, I did.
Every assignment, every seduction, every time I’d spread myself open for the sake of a successful mission—he had orchestrated it.
I jerked back, nearly tripping over my own feet in my retreat. My heart was a hammer in my ribs, my breath jagged.
“I’ll do it my own way,” I rasped, though the words didn’t feel like mine. But they felt like the only defense I had left.
Elias smiled that serpent’s smile again. “Of course you will.” His hand lingered in the air a moment after I’d pulled back, fingers curling in a lazy little wave as if my recoil amused him.
“You’ve always been so dramatic,” he said, pushing off the counter. He plucked his jacket from the chair and swung it over one shoulder. “But that’s what makes me love you. You burn bright, Ronan. Just don’t forget who struck the match.”
He didn’t wait for a response. His shoes clicked across the floor, loud in the cramped silence of my apartment, and then the door shut behind him with a finality that left my chest hollow.
The coffee sat abandoned on the counter, gone cold. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
I stripped out of my robe on the way to the bathroom, shedding it like a skin that didn’t fit. The shower tub combo was old porcelain, cracked at the rim and too shallow to sink under fully, but it was the only part of this shitty apartment that ever felt like mine. I twisted the knobs until steam rose, curling against the mirror, and slid in before the water had even finished filling.
Heat licked at my skin, creeping into my bones. I pressed down, down, down until the water covered my face, muffling the world into a quiet, distorted hum.
Under here, I wasn’t some deadly marionette, or a failure who’d let a man’s steady hands and kind, commanding eyes turn me inside out. Down here, I was weightless. The water heldme like nothing else did, blurring the too-sharp edges of my thoughts.
I broke the surface with a gasp, slicking my hair back from my face, and let my head rest against the rim. The tub groaned beneath me, pipes hissing in protest, but I didn’t care.
Here, in the warm hug of the water, I could almost believe I belonged to myself.
Almost.
Because even with my eyes closed, I could still feel Elias’s hand on my jaw.
I slid lower into the water again, until only my face remained above the surface. The ceiling blurred, and my skin prickled from the heat, but inside, I was cold. Hollow.
A thought circled relentlessly in my brain.I could just let him kill me.
