The silence that followed the gunfire was louder than the chaos itself. Silas's men had been neutralized, scattered through the darkened corridors of Wright Enterprises like discarded shadows. Drake stood in the center of the wreckage, his chest heaving, his suit jacket torn. The gun in his hand was heavy, but the woman standing in the center of the room was heavier on his mind.
Alisha stood amidst the glass shards, her breathing shallow, her blade stained. She looked like a dark angel of retribution.
Drake dropped the weapon and moved. He didn't walk; he stalked. He reached her in three strides, his hands tangling in her hair to pull her head back, forcing her to look up at him in the moonlight.
"You're bleeding," he rasped, his eyes scanning her face with a frantic, possessive hunger.
"It's not mine," she whispered, her fingers curling into the lapels of his ruined shirt.
The adrenaline of the fight had mutated into something else—something thicker and far more dangerous.They were alone in a skyscraper that had become a tomb for their pasts. The power was still out, the only light coming from the lightning that bathed the room in stark, flickering white.
Drake backed her into the velvet sofa in his private lounge, his body a solid, unyielding weight against hers. He didn't care about the board, the company, or his brother's escape. In this moment, the world consisted only of the woman who had tried to destroy him and the man who wouldn't let her go.
"You think you hate me for what I did to your father," Drake murmured, his lips brushing against her ear, his voice a jagged edge. "But you stayed. You watched me bleed for two years and you didn't leave. Why, Alisha?"
Alisha's eyes were dark, swirling with a mixture of defiance and a deep, aching Need. "Because no one else sees the monster in the mirror like I do. Because I wanted to be the one to break you."
"Then break me," Drake growled, his hands sliding down to her waist, his grip so tight it would surely leave marks. "Take every piece of me. But know this: I'm neverletting you out of this building. You're mine, Alisha. My secretary, my shadow, my executioner. I'd rather burn in hell with you than reign anywhere else alone."
He kissed her then—a collision of teeth and tongue that tasted of salt and the iron tang of the night. It wasn't a soft promise; it was a surrender. Alisha met his intensity with her own, her hands moving to the back of his neck, pulling him closer until there was no air left between them.
The tragedy of their lives—the torture Drake had endured, the loss of Alisha's father—had funneled them into this narrow, violent point of existence. They were two broken things that fit together perfectly, creating something sharp and indestructible.
Outside, the rain lashed against the glass, but inside, the heat was suffocating. Drake pulled back just enough to look into her eyes, his thumb pressing hard against her lower lip.
"Tomorrow, we hunt Silas down together," he promised, his gaze territorial andabsolute. "We take back everything he stole from us. But tonight... tonight you belong to the man you tried to kill."
Alisha didn't reach for her knife. She reached for him. "Tonight," she whispered, "there is no one else in the world."