Darkest Sins (Perfectly Imperfect #9)

“Alarms?” I ask.

“Compromised. You’ll need to install new ones.”

I throw a glance over my shoulder. The body of a man dressed in black clothes and wearing a balaclava over his face is lying on the balcony. “Mercenaries?”

“Yes. The Sicilian’s team.” He lays the gun next to the reading lamp on the side table, groaning in the process. “Congratulations. Your head is worth two million nowadays.”

Dread ignites somewhere deep inside me. Something is wrong. I dash across the room and grab the lamp, turning it toward him. The front and side of his shirt are saturated with blood, and some of it is seeping onto the chair’s upholstery.

“Shit.” I kneel between his legs and start unbuttoning his shirt. “Bullet?”

“A knife.” He cups my cheek, tilting my head up. “It’s good to see you again, my tiger cub.”

I press my lips together to hide their quiver, peer into his eyes, and suddenly, it doesn’t feel like it’s been almost four years since we last saw each other. Same eyes. Still so haunted. But there are new secrets in their depths.

He’s alive.

Is this real? I’m terrified this could all be a cruel, cruel dream.

Breaking his magnetic stare, I glance away to take in the changes. Little differences he can no longer conceal now that I can see him in the light. Like one of the strands that has escaped his braid and had fallen over his somewhat gaunt face. He’s lost a lot of weight, and his hair seems to be shorter, the ends reaching about halfway down his breastbone.

“Where were you all this time?” I ask and resume unbuttoning his shirt.

“Not important.”

I shake my head and pull apart the sides of the button-down, revealing his chest and stomach. A shocked gasp leaves my lips. There’s an almost four-inch cut above his hip, running vertically over his ribs. The same general spot as that bullet wound nearly five years ago.

“We need to get you on the bed.” I take off my blazer and press it over the cut. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Straightening up, I take the gun off the table, flick on the safety, and slip it into my waistband behind my back.

He raises an eyebrow. “Confiscating my weapon, cub?”

“I can’t have guns lying around my living room,” I say and extend my hand toward him, “Come on.”

His eyes hold mine as he wraps his calloused fingers around my wrist, his thumb pressing right over my pulse point. Since I’ve met him, the look in his eyes has been somewhat surreal, as if a fiend was lurking behind those icy grays. Are his eyes the last sight his targets see before leaving this world? They might feel fear, but in their place, I’d welcome the view.

“You’re losing too much blood,” I whisper.

His eyes crease at the corners. He pulls my hand to his mouth and touches his lips to the tips of my fingers. It’s the faintest of kisses, but it feels as if hot iron is branding my skin.

And I almost fall apart.

“Blood lost for you is blood well spent,” he says against my trembling palm.

A viselike grip squeezes my chest. This man. How dare he? After what we had. After losing him. And now . . . Now he saysthisto me? Words that make my heart race, reigniting that desperate yearning for all those things I dreamed of for so long. To be his. Have him as mine. To breach this chasm between us, break through the invisible barricade keeping us apart. He’d taken a bullet for me, but he never let me behind his guarded walls.

I pull my hand out of his hold. “Let’s go.”

He slowly rises off the recliner, towering over me. I forgot how tall he is.

“This way.” I wrap my arm around his waist and nod toward the door that separates my bedroom from the open floor living and kitchen area of my apartment within the villa.

With my palm putting pressure on his hand as he presses my jacket to his side, I help him across the central space. We’re at the threshold of my bedroom when his body sways forward, and I barely manage to get him steady.

“Your luck with the knife-welding riffraff in my neck of the woods hasn’t changed, I guess.”