Page 84 of Fastest Kill

"Okay, I'll make some room," he said, and moved the plan off the bed. That was all. No ceremony about it or smug smiles.

Frederica set Despina's rifle against the wall, placed her bags down beside it, and shut the door. She turned back and found him watching her with his elbows on his knees.

The problem was that Frederica had a plan for tomorrow. She had been running it in her head since the briefing, taking it apart and reassembling it the way her father rebuilt locks, just for the pleasure of understanding every mechanism.

Entry through the east catacomb passage, get Dario inside the chamber before the blood moon peaked, Altun on the wards, Rodrigo on the outer guards, Kon and Athena through the north access. Extract her mother. Kill anything that moved to stop her. She knew how to do that.

This thing with him was the real issue.

"I don't know how to do this," she admitted, needing to be honest about it. "The mission with Agrippa, I can do that with my eyes closed. This. Us. Thing. I don't know how to be someone who needs people and who worries about how I could lose them."

Dario was quiet long enough that she knew he was choosing his words, not scrambling for them.

"You've always had people, Spartana," he said eventually. "Your parents. Altun. Kon. You just convinced yourself you didn't need them to show you that they cared."

Her throat tightened. "Maybe I feel like I don't deserve it. I'm not an easy person to like and be friends with. I kill people, Dario."

"So do they, and you're a lot more likable than you seem to think you are."

Dario crossed to her in three unhurried steps and took her face in both hands, tilting her chin up. His hands were warm and large and steady, and she leaned into him because she was so tired of fighting him.

"Your mother is alive because five hundred years ago, Serapis pulled a woman out of Cologne and put her on a road south. Lisette Brun walked until the danger was behind her, and her line continued, and eventually it became you." He held her gaze, his dark eyes calm. "Tomorrow night, you are going to go back to that city and pull your mother out of the same man's hands, because that is who you are. You protect the people you love."

Frederica's throat had almost closed entirely. She tried to swallow through it.

"I'm terrified I'm going to fuck it up," she whispered.

"I know." His thumbs moved along her cheekbones. "Me too, but I would rather be terrified with you than safe without you."

She gave in and kissed him hard, both fists in his T-shirt. The space between them had always been a lie, and she was done maintaining it.

He made a rough sound against her mouth and kissed her back with the same force, his hands sliding from her face and into her hair. They were pulling each other's shirts off seconds later with a mad urgency to get skin on skin.

"I could make this slow," Dario said against her mouth. "All sweet and tender if you need it. We have all night."

Frederica pulled back enough to look at him. Her expression communicated what she thought of that in a single flat stare.

Dario grinned. "No, I didn't think so either. Not our style, is it, tesoro?

Frederica laughed. "No, it isn't. I want to feel alive. I want to take you the way I want to without hesitating about it."

Something shifted in his face, and he tilted her head so he could kiss and nip his way along her jaw to her sensitive ears.

"Then I'm yours," he whispered. "All of me. Do whatever you want, just leave enough of me to fight tomorrow."

Frederica kissed him hot and fiercely before stripping off the rest of her clothes and getting down on her knees. The sound he made when she looked up at him went all the way through her chest.

She got his pajama pants off and wrapped her hand around his cock.

"Frederica—"

She took his tip into her mouth, and any other words died on his tongue. She worked him slowly, finding what made his thighs tighten, and his breath go ragged. The drag of her tongue on the underside, the pressure at the base where her hand gripped him.

Dario's grip tightened in her hair, and she took him deeper. He controlled the pace, and she let him because she wanted the full weight of his wanting.

"Cazzo," he swore on an exhale, and the shaking started in his thighs.

Frederica reached down and slid two fingers over her wet pussy, finding her clit, working herself in slow circles because she was already aching and couldn't bear it. She loved the hot, musky taste of him, the feel of his big hands on her, guiding her exactly the way he wanted.