The Predator (Dark Verse #1)

by RuNyx

Tristan 'The Predator' Caine. They called him the predator. His reputation preceded him. He rarely went on the hunt but when he did, it was over. When he did, he went straight for the jugular. No distractions. No playing around. For all his unruffled attitude, the man was more lethal than the knife cutting into her thigh. He was also the reason she had come to the party. She was going to kill Tristan Caine.

"You should know not to come into the house of the enemy, all alone, unprotected. And you should know never to sneak up on a predator. Once we catch the scent of your blood, it's a matter of the hunt."

"I prefer you blonde." Her breath seized in her throat at the voice coming from behind her. The voice she hadn't been able to forget for a week. The voice that had whispered the ways of murder into her skin like a lover's caress. The voice of hard whiskey and sin.

Standing up, her eyes not wavering from his, her arm not wavering in her hold, Morana tilted her head. "I prefer you gone."

"Death isn't the main course, sweetheart. It's the dessert."

"Never make the mistake of thinking you scare me. It will be your last."

"One day, I'm going to carve your heart out and keep it as a souvenir. I promise."

Dante Maroni tilted his head slightly, eyes sharp on her. "May I ask why you refused to work with Tristan?" Morana raised an eyebrow. "May I ask what's going on between you and Amara?"

"No one else gets to kill you, Ms. Vitalio," he spoke quietly. "The last face you see before you die will be mine. When it comes to death, you're mine."

"You're not afraid of death?" Morana felt her lips curl in a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "You learn not to be afraid when it sleeps under your roof every day."

Tristan 'The Predator' Caine cooked. Would wonders never cease?

In that moment, the man who'd claimed her death had given her a glimpse of life by doing something he probably didn't even realize he'd done. In that moment, the enemy had done what no one had ever even tried to do for her. He had made her feel a little less lonely. The moment would be over when the sun came out. But for that silent moment, something inside her beyond her own understanding, even as she hated him, shifted.

He looked at her. Her heart stuttered. He looked away. Her heart started.

"We've been honest so far, Ms. Vitalio," he murmured. "I'll be honest now. I despise you but I want you. Fuck it, I do. And I want you out of my system."

She hated him, everything he had done and every word he'd said. She wanted to kill him someday. But her body wanted him. And she wanted him out of her system. Just once. Her father was right outside. His men were right outside. The Outfit was right outside. Tristan Caine was inside. Behind her. She wanted him inside her.

She saw the text, and her stomach dropped, her heart pounding. Tristan Caine: Apparently, you're not out of my system, Ms. Vitalio.

Morana Vitalio was not scared of death. But she was scared of Tristan Caine, even though she didn't want to admit it.

Had she not seen him prepare it from the scratch, she'd never have believed he had cooked it. So, he was also good at cooking too. Figured.

"Don't you know not to run away from predators, sweetheart? We like the hunt."

Morana felt her heart thud, her chest rise and fall rapidly. "It wasn't a damn kiss. I bit you." One side of his lips quirked up even as his eyes heated. "Doesn't matter. I get my mouth on you, and you'll never be the same."

Tristan Caine terrified her, but it wasn't because of the death he was bringing her slowly, the death he would bring her one day, the death he raised in her. No. It was the life.

Morana felt an odd kind of excitement filling her. She’d never been on a bike. Only ever in her car and her father’s. Her first time on the back of a bike, with Tristan Caine.

Tristan Caine rode the bike well. Really well. He maneuvered around crowded areas expertly, gave it free rein in the open road, all the while in complete control of the monster.

She should have worried when she felt the gun he’d tucked into the back of his jeans press against her stomach. But she didn’t. All she felt was free. Wild. Exhilarated in a way she’d never been before.

Today, for the first time, she got to be no one but a girl on the back of a man’s motorcycle, if even for a moment. Today, for the first time, she was just a woman with no past and no future, just this endless road with this man, this freedom, and this life.

It was just a bike. It was just a ride. It was just a man. It just was.

Tristan Caine, in motion, was beautiful. But Tristan Caine, in utter stillness, could not be described.

“Next time, I’m going to see how loud you can scream, Ms. Vitalio. I’m going to make you so sore you won’t know if it’s from the screaming or the fucking.” This man needed a leash for that dirty, explicit mouth.

She was in awe because watching him, right at that moment, she understood exactly who he was. The Predator. Always the hunter, never the hunted. He could not be hunted. He could not be tamed. He could not be destroyed. That kind of unbreakable aura was so, so tempting to her.

“I don’t know whether to snap your neck or fuck the life out of you,” that voice washed over her senses, so low it made her want to roll her eyes back into her head and wantonly lay back on the counter.

“This body belongs to me, Ms. Vitalio,” he murmured in a low voice, the whiskey and sin combining to make her head tip back over his broad shoulder as her stomach clenched. “This body is mine,” she retorted, unable to recognize her own voice dripping in sex. He continued, like she hadn’t spoken, cupping her ass. “I’m a territorial man. And this has been mine since the moment you locked that bathroom door.”

Morana looked at their hands, so close and so apart, comparing the differences, the similarities. Both pairs of hands excellently talented in their respective fields, yet his was dark, rough, with veins and long, wide fingers, with blunt nails and a smattering of hair at the back. Hers looked so much paler, smoother, so much smaller, the tips painted a bright green. Seeing their hands together like that, watching the thick forearms alongside her delicate wrists, something fluttered in the pit of her stomach.

“I see how he looks at you. Despite knowing about you all my life, I never thought he’d be as he is with you.” “How is he with me?” the words escaped her softly before she could think about them. Amara didn’t look down at her, kept staring at the clouds overhead, her lips curling slightly. “Alive.” Morana felt something pass through her heart. A current, a zap, a something.

“There’s no other word for it. That’s why I don’t believe he can truly ever hurt you. Because after tasting life, you don’t really ever let it go, do you?”

Tristan looked at her face, feeling the same flutter in his chest he’d felt the first time he’d seen Luna. She was beautiful — rosy cheeks chubby on her pink face, little cute legs folded on the wood of the table, pink mouth opened in a small ‘O’ of wonder as she looked around the room at all the people. But it wasn’t that which Tristan found so beautiful. It was her eyes. Big, pretty eyes the color of wheat and grass mixed together. Those eyes were blinking at people, at things — clear, sweet, pure. Untouched by the evil around her.

Another tear left his eyes. And then something happened. He didn’t understand how. He didn’t understand why. But suddenly, the little girl’s eyes came to him beside the pillar in the shadows, found him. She tilted her chubby little head in wonder. And then she smiled. A completely toothless, completely adorable smile that just knocked him in the stomach. Tristan felt his own lips move. He felt himself smile for the first time in days since Luna had gone missing. The baby flapped her chubby arms wildly, wiggling on the table, her giggling cackles loud in the room.

Without a thought, his mind silent, completely silent, Tristan walked out into the fore, straight to the girl who was getting red in the face from her cries. Hands trembling, Tristan wiped the blood off her soft face, forgetting his own bleeding palm. Instead of cleaning her skin, he marred it even more with his own blood.

Tristan stood there. Alone. Without his baby sister. Without his father. Without his mother. Only with men who looked at him like they would eat him alive. And a baby who had stopped crying. A baby who, a few minutes ago, had been nothing to him. A baby for whom he’d murdered the father he’d loved so much.

He had spilled his father’s blood to protect her. His mother had called him a monster. She'd been right. He’d become a monster, more evil than all the men in the room, in one second. All because of her.

As of tonight, her life was his. He’d given up everything so she could live. Her life was his. He didn't know what he would do with it. But it was his.

Saving her had destroyed him. One day, he vowed as he watched a man pick up the little girl and take her away, his eyes on her, he would collect his debt.

He felt. He felt so deeply he didn’t let himself feel. He felt so deeply he feared his own reactions to it.

While the boy he’d been might want her life, might still want to hold on to the debt in his mind, the man he was only wanted her. That was his weakness. He wanted her and he’d made it obvious. He wanted her and that was the reason she was still alive. He wanted her and that was why he’d protected her, sheltered her, saved her, time after time, from her own father. This want was his weakness.

Silence. A change in the air around her. The scent of wood and musk. The warmth of a breath over her face. And then she felt it. Lips. Soft, tender lips settling upon hers. Her heart stopped. It fucking stopped as her stomach bottomed out.

A cold drop of rain fell on her cheek. Thunder rent the sky. She parted her lips, feeling the shape, the make, the beauty of his. He captured her bottom one, sucking on it lightly before brushing her lips again. The rain came down, drenching them both within seconds.

He kissed her — softly, simply, expertly. He kissed her — until her knees turned to jelly and heat invaded her belly. He kissed her — without his tongue, without his hands, without his body. Just his lips — soft, firm, present — on hers. It was the most beautiful kiss she could have ever dreamed of, the most untainted she’d ever imagined from him, with a softness she’d not thought him capable of. With his intensity, with his blazing eyes, the silent promises had been of devouring. This wasn’t devouring. This was savoring. He was savoring her lips, memorizing her taste, introducing himself to her so much more intimately than he ever had.

He kissed her for long, long moments — as chaste as kisses could be, yet she felt it down to her soul. And then, she felt the cool tip of his gun, stroking over her face, the metal kissing her wet skin from temple to jaw. She pulled back slightly, just an inch, to find those magnificent eyes on her in an inferno, his shadowed face wet, lips a little swollen, stark against his scruff.

Before she could blink, his mouth was upon hers, prying her lips open with his tongue, flicking her tongue in a movement she felt between her legs. Clenching her thighs together to relieve the throbbing, she closed her eyes and went up on her toes, instinctively allowing him more. And then, he devoured her. Fulfilling every promise his eyes had ever made to her. He devoured her in the rain, with his gun beneath her jaw. He devoured her while tasting like the whiskey and sin she heard in his voice.

He devoured her without touching another inch of her body, stroking her tongue with his, tasting her so thoroughly her legs weakened, her hands catching onto the lapels of his jacket to keep herself upright, not touching his skin like he wasn’t touching hers, yet letting him support her. Electric. There was no other word for it. It sizzled. It sparked. It consumed.

Morana swallowed, stepping forward. And she followed him into the dark.