Page 54 of Dangerous Silence
Demi
I couldn’t let myself look at that head. But I had to. It felt wrong not to face what I had done. Those half-drawn eyes. The open mouth.
“Tell me, Axe,” I demanded, trying to find vigor in my voice. “Who was he?”
My entire body trembled, knowing that those answers would never erase what I had done. How had I let myself make an impulsive decision like that? Axe grabbed my shoulders, lightly at first, then firmly moved me until I was sitting on the bed. The mattress was taut, tension holding where the man’s dismembered body laid. My legs were jelly. He parted my knees, standing between them. His body brushed against mine as he looked down at me. As I lifted my face, my eyes caught on his bulge.
Why the hell was he hard right now?
“What is wrong with you?” I asked. “You’re turned on? Right now? Bythis?”
Axe didn’t move. And if I was honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer right then. I pleaded that he was turned on by my reaction, by what I had done, and not that he was turned on by death. Axe’s gloved fingers ran down the sides of my arms; even through the thick blazer, his touch was magnetic. I turned my chin to the side, not wanting to give in to the sensation, knowing that his touch meant more to me than I could logically explain. Then I saw the man’s arm lying there. It didn’t look real. More like a prop from a movie. Or maybe that’s what I told myself to feel better.
The worst part was that I had asked. I had wanted to do it. To prove to myself that I understood Axe, that I could put myself in his shoes and did what he did.
Axe traced the curve of my breast through the blazer, then pulled on the button. There was blood on both of us. That man’s blood. Hislifestaining us.
Axe might not have cared who the man was, but that blood would mark me forever.
He undid those three large buttons on my blazer, and I let him. It was better to let him do that, to take my mind off of it, then to think about the headless, armless man next to me. I closed my eyes, holding back the tears. I didn’t know if he had a family. If his friends would miss him. If I had done the right thing.
I tried so damn hard to understand. I wanted to know Axe better. I wanted to see what my dad was like. I wanted to see how it felt. I wanted—
Axe pulled up my shirt, exposing my bra and stomach. I inhaled, taking in the smell of blood, the tinny smell that was always lingering on Axe’s skin. His murders had seemed so surreal from inside of that metal cage, like I would never be a part of it. Would never bathe in blood like he did. But now it was on my clothes, in my hair, staining my skin. And Axe wanted to touch me?
Why wouldn’t I stop him?
“We first started making contact with Miles Muro a while ago,” Axe said, his voice monotone. He pulled down the cup of my bra, exposing one breast. My nipple was hard before he even touched it, awakening to his presence. “We had a man, this thief who had stolen a diamond from Muro’s wife. And we had the thief’s daughter.” He paused, his finger grazing over the tops of my breasts. I stared at the red-splattered shirt covering his stomach, the piece of flesh on his wrists, his hands manipulating me. Calling to me. My body responded, but it didn’t feel like it wasn’t me anymore.
“We were supposed to deliver them both,” he said. “Use their lives as a tool to spread our empire with Muro’s. But my half-brother, one you haven’t met.” He skimmed his fingers across my areola, making me shiver. “He fell for the daughter. Didn’t care about what saving her life meant to the family.”
I looked up at Axe, and those black eyes narrowed in on my soul, telling me that he didn’t see anything there. Not the room. Not the corpse behind us. Not me. And I realized then, that I didn’t want to feel or see any of it either. All I wanted was Axe. I could let myself go with him. Forget everything. Make it all disappear in a mindless, brainless orgasm. None of it felt real, anyway.
“He saved her,” Axe said. “Saved her life. Threw away our one chance at having a partnership with Muro.” Axe pinched my nipple, his fingernails biting into the skin as if to make me pay for his brother’s mistake. I pressed my lips together, trying not to make a sound. I had to let Axe say everything. He had held it all in for so long.
“We knew that a relationship with Muro wouldn’t have lasted,” he said, “but we didn’t get to try. Ethan took that one chance away from us. For a fucking woman.”
For a woman? Why did that make Axe angry? Becausethatwoman could have been me?
“Eventually, we delivered the thief to Muro.” He let go of the pressure on my nipples, and a small gasp escaped my lips. “We tried to have a normal business relationship. Tried to put it all in the past. To do what Gerard wanted. But Muro trained soldiers to find us, trained them to have certain qualities that would attract the men in my family. Using our own desires against us.”
Their own desires against them? “What do you mean?” I asked.
He turned his chin to the side, but never let his eyes stray from mine, always studying, always scrutinizing me. “Muro thought that if we were distracted, we’d slip up. Get ourselves killed.” He leaned down, breathing onto my face in hot bursts. “The only mistake I made was gifting one of the soldiers to my brother. And Wil fell for her too. Another fucking woman.” He clenched his fists, his grips around my breasts, one clothed and the other bare, and I grimaced, the pain shooting through me like tendrils of fire. “And when more soldiers came after us, I told my brothers we should have killed them. Each and every one of them. But they didn’t listen. Didn’t think it was fair.”
Finally, he let go, then pulled my other breast out of the cup, twisting my nipples slowly. My breathing hitched.
“And you know how I feel about what’s fair,” he said in a low voice.
I searched his eyes. That might have been true, but he also held onto the promise to my dad. To me.
“You still wanted to kill them?” I asked.
He nodded, his eyes vacant. “Derek thought the soldiers could be recruited. And my father didn’t want to start a war. Wil was a lost cause.” He laughed darkly to himself, then beamed into me with ice in his eyes. “I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman. If you can be of use to our family, or if you’re a scrap of meat. I’ll kill anyone I have to. Every single person has a messed up past. I’m only doing what nature intends.”
But nature wasn’t a bullet or a cleaver. His fingers had stopped moving, as if waiting for me to speak, but my body stayed in his hands, both of us looking at each other, wondering what we should do next.
“If it were up to me,” he pulled me up by the nipples, making me stand beside him, his cock hard against me, pulsing in frantic twitches as if it needed to be free to touch me, “None of them would have lived. I would have killed Teagen myself. I would have killed Ellie too.” My heart clenched; he would have killed his own sister-in-law? “I don’t care who you are. This is who I am. If I have to kill you, I will.”
