Heart of a Monster (New Reign Mafia Duet #1)

by Shain Rose

“She’s a reminder of what someone, even someone like me, can strive to be even when the odds are against them,” I said. “Or maybe of what you already are,” he whispered, and his hand didn’t leave my neck. It rubbed my collarbone like he knew me, like we’d met in another life and he was sure we’d be connected in this one.

“Doesn’t mean you need to do it that way every time. Now, breathe out and squeeze my hand, woman,” Rome coached me. “It helps.” “I know how to get a tattoo.” I balked and tried to pull my hand away. He gripped it harder and leaned forward over me so that his lips were a hair away from mine. “Stop fighting me. Let out a breath on me, Katalina. I want to taste your air.”

Katalina had permanently marked herself with the words I’d said to her the first night we met: You’ll live because if you don’t, you’ll die. Around it all were skulls and roses and dying flowers of all sorts, wrapped in jewels and strings of pearls in the most intricate detail I’d seen in a long time. I’d never gotten that good a look at it all until tonight. It was art that represented her more than I think she would ever know. I saw her in the world of the family, trapped as a prized possession, trapped by the beauty she flaunted for us. She let herself be used over and over again as bait, and even if she didn’t know it, it would kill her. The family would kill her just like they did everyone.

“If he hadn’t put his hands on you, I would have let it slide.” “I can handle a man’s hands on me.” I gripped her hips in response, and she hissed when I squeezed and then lifted her up onto the table. “A man like that on a body like yours is a waste.”

She spread her legs wider, and I slammed into her. She wrapped her arms and legs around me as I pumped into her faster and faster. Clawing at my back and biting my neck, she didn’t fuck nicely. She left her mark all over me, probably like she did to all her victims. And we were her victims. Katalina was poised as bait but never ended up just that. I left my mark on her by sucking too hard on her neck, devouring her mouth when I should have pulled back, and gripping her hard enough to bruise. Our touches were painful. Just the way we liked them.

She needed to be punished for the way she baited men, especially men like me. Yet the punishment I wanted to inflict on her ended with me between her legs because she looked good enough to eat today.

Searching my face, he didn’t answer. He stepped close to me and moved one of my messy curls from the side of my face. “You’re damn pretty when you smile, woman.” My eyes rolled hard. “Be serious, Bast.” “I am serious. You look like one of those big feral cats, ready to move in for the kill. To someone like me, it’s beautiful.”

I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest. Then the damn woman who haunted my every thought came out of the dressing room, and all my muscles tensed. “That dress is unacceptable.” The throbbing pain at the base of my skull intensified. She had the uncanny ability to give me migraines, to make me hurt in places I’d never hurt before.

“I’m not asking you to be anything to me.” “And yet I’m yours and you’re mine.”

Me or him, right?” Then he gave me what I wanted. He took my mouth in his and seared his heart there. I wanted to melt into him, get lost in him forever as his tongue roamed my mouth like he owned it. “Choose me, Katalina,” he whispered. “Let me consume you. Pick our destruction, not his safe haven.”

“And how do I look at her, Brey?” “Like she’s your heaven and your hell. A dream and a nightmare all wrapped up in one tiny little warrior.”

His hand flew off the steering wheel and went straight to my neck. He yanked me forward so I was just inches from his lips, feeling his hot breath on my cheek as he said, “There’s no arguing your place. Your blood is mine. We bleed together, woman. Always. Remember that.”

“You’re fucking beautiful. And one day—not today, but one day soon—I might have to tell you I love you and watch the chaos that ensues.”