The Predator (Dark Verse #1)

by RuNyx

"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.

"One day, Ms. Vitalio," he spoke quietly, "I am going to enjoy collecting that debt very much." He leaned in, lining his mouth with her ear, his scruff rasping against her skin as her hands fisted to keep another shiver down. "And you know what? You're going to enjoy repaying it."

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

"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."

"She stays here," he growled. Growled.

"Keep your mouth away from me," she told him in a low voice. His face remained completely passive, only an annoying eyebrow hiking up. "I had no intention of bringing my mouth anywhere near you."

Tristan Caine: Apparently, you're not out of my system, Ms. Vitalio.

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

He considered her for a second in silence, before tilting his head to the side, his mouth curling deliberately in the imitation of a smirk even as his eyes remained blank. “How do you like to be fucked, Ms. Summers?”

“Where the fuck is she?”

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.

He devoured her while tasting like the whiskey and sin she heard in his voice.