Cross | 18+

“What the hell was that?” she snarled, her voice echoing off the corrugated metal walls.

I got off my bike, letting my helmet drop to the ground with a dull thud. I took a step toward her. “A race.”

“You let me win.” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation, laced with venom.

“Did I?” I took another step. The air between us crackled.

“Don’t play stupid. You hung back the whole time. Is this your new game, Enzo? Pity? You think I need you toletme do anything?”

Her use of my name—my real name, not ‘Cross’—was a jolt of electricity. “I think you’re playing a dangerous game with a dangerous man, and you’re in over your head,” I said, my voice low and rough.

“Klaus?” She let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “He’s predictable. He’s transparent. He wants something; he takes it. He doesn’t play mind games. He doesn’tbreakpeople and then pretend he’s doing them a favor.”

The words hit their mark. I closed the last of the distance between us. “Is that what you think I did?”

“I know what you did!” she shouted, the sound raw in the confined space. She shoved at my chest. “You made your choice! So don’t stand there and pretend you get to have an opinion onmychoices now!”

I caught her wrist, easily overpowering her, and slammed her back against the cold, corrugated metal wall of the hangar. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs. She gasped, then screamed—a feral, furious sound—and fought me, her body twisting, her boots scrabbling against the dirt.

“Let me GO!”

“No.” The word was final. Absolute. I pinned her wrist above her head against the metal, my body crowding hers, eliminating any space, any escape. “You don’t get to run from this. You don’t get to hide behind him.”

She was panting, her eyes wild, her lips parted. The fury in her gaze was the most alive thing I’d seen in her since she returned. It was beautiful and terrifying.

Then I saw her free hand move. A blur of motion from her hip. The glint of moonlight on polished steel.

She’d pulled a small, wicked-looking tactical knife from a hidden sheath.

Before I could react, before I could even tighten my grip, she drove it forward.

Not a killing blow. Not even close. But a brutal, precise stab.

The blade sank into the meat of my side, just above my hip, punching through leather and skin with a sickening, wetthunk.

White-hot pain lanced through me, a shock so pure it momentarily blinded me. My grip on her wrist slackened. I stumbled back half a step, a grunt of agony forced from my throat. My hand went to my side, coming away slick and dark with blood.

She stood there, breathing heavily, the bloody knife held in a white-knuckled grip, her eyes wide with a mixture of triumph and horror at what she’d just done.

The pain was immense. But the sight of her, the feel of my own blood hot on my fingers... It ignited something else. Something primal and unstoppable.

A slow, dangerous smile touched my lips. My eyes locked on hers.

“Bad girl,” I whispered, the words a dark caress.

And then I moved.

The pain was nothing. A distant buzz. All I saw was red—the red of her hair, the red of my blood. Before she could raise the knife again, before she could even think, I was on her.

I knocked the blade from her hand with a brutal swipe. It clattered into the darkness. My hands were on her again, but not to restrain. To claim. I shoved her back against the wall once more, my body crushing hers, and my mouth came down on hers in a kiss that was nothing like the one she’d shared with Klaus.

This wasn’t triumph. This wasn’t performance.

This was punishment. This was possession. This was a wildfire, consuming everything in its path—four years of silence, of distance, of lies, of watching her with another man. It was all teeth and blood and desperate, furious need. I kissed her like I was trying to devour the ghost of the girl she was and weld the soldier she’d become back to me, no matter how much it destroyed us both.

She froze for a split second in shock. Then, with a ragged sound that was half sob, half snarl, she kissed me back.

It wasn’t surrender. It was a battle. She tasted sweet on my lips. I bit her lip between my teeth; she gave me a soft gasp, then she opened for me, and I darted my tongue in, tasting all of her. Her hands came up, not to push me away, but to fist in the leather of my jacket, holding on as if we were both falling from a great height.

It was the beginning of the war. That was till he got there.