Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
This, however, is a bad omen.
An enormous oil painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau hangs on the wall. Dark oranges bleed into darker grays, a winged demon flying in the hellish background on the canvas. In the foreground, two naked men are in a gruesome, endless fight in the eighth circle of hell.
The one designated for fraudsters, imposters, counterfeiters, liars.
The redhead pins his knee into the other man’s back while taking a bite out of his throat.
It’s called Dante et Virgile.
Dante and Virgil in hell. Nova sold a forgery to the Musée d’Orsay a couple years ago and kept the original.
Now the original is hanging in a fucking safe house. Because there is so much about this that screams security.
The painting was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. The redhead was Gianni Schicchi, a thirteenth-century Italian who impersonated a dead man so he could inherit his wealth for himself. Nova loves art, and it’s his ironic love of this painting that makes me think he needs a therapist that’s not his brother.
I hate housing stolen artifacts and possessions. It feels like collecting ticking bombs. He needs to put the painting in a fucking storage unit. Like tomorrow.
I’ll argue about it with him later.
I’d much rather be in the company of his sister.
I enter the living room and see Phoebe on her hands and knees in a simple but beyond sexy pink cotton dress. She’s laboring over an old cast-iron wood-burning stove, shoving firewood in the hatch.
My cock instantly stirs. A primal instinct tries to tear through me.
The floorboards creak as I near her.
She glances over her shoulder at me, dark blue hair falling into her heart-shaped face. She brushes the strands back, and as we lock eyes, a thousand different feelings barrel through me at vicious speed, a million different memories and lives we’ve lived all colliding at once. And this one—this life is carved out as the most fragile. Most vital. The one I want to exist inside.
Because I can do this.
I drop my motorcycle helmet and cut the distance so fast, she has no time to stand.
I’m on my knees in front of Phoebe. I clutch her soft cheeks with two unforgiving hands, and she hangs on to my neck as I crash my lips against hers. Her teeny-tiny moan builds an inferno in my bloodstream.
Her body responds by bowing toward me.
I kiss her with truths. Of how we won’t be alone for long. There isn’t sweet, little urgency in me. It’s violence against seconds, against time. I ravage the fuck out of her with my tongue, my hands, with the emotion coiling around my searing lungs.
Phoebe’s fingers cling tighter as though to command, Don’t stop.
I breathe in her intoxicating, sugary floral scent and cup the back of her head, deepening the kisses in feral, hungry waves.
More.
I need more of her.
I tear my lips off hers.
She pants out, “No Hi, Phoebe?” She grips my leather bike jacket with two strong fists. “No How’s it going, Phoebe?”
“Hi, Phoebe.” I slide my hand farther into her blue hair. “You want me to come inside you, Phoebe?” An aching, whimpering noise escapes her throat. Fuck her, fuck her, fuck her now. I want to burn her sounds in my brain.
“So badly,” she teases, her glare ratcheting up the heat between us. “You want to ram your dick inside me?”
“Repeatedly.”
Her lips part with another breathy noise. “Not now…? My brothers should be here soon—Rocky!”
I lift her by the backs of her thighs. The fire in her eyes hasn’t extinguished, and I tell her lowly, darkly, “You think I care if they see me fucking their sister?”
She shoves my arm. “You should care.”
“I care about railing you so deep, you’re unsure whether to cry or scream.” I watch her breath shorten. “I care about making you come until your eyes roll into the back of your head and you beg me to do it all over again and again and again.”
A flush stains her cheeks, but while I hold her, she leans close to snap back, “I’m not begging you for anything.”
I throw her on the couch. It’s covered with a white sheet, and she falls into the fabric and bounces a little on the cushion. Before I can pin her down, Phoebe pops up on her feet and backs away with a stubborn blaze in her eyes.
She’s so much like me, it’s almost terrifying.
I track her, but she circles me—which causes me to circle Phoebe with an unmanageable tension. Like we’re assassins come to kill each other.
“I’m not wasting any moment I have with you,” I warn her. “Even if it’s locked between two risks and six thousand dangers.”
“Good,” she snaps back.
“Great.” I take off my jacket, then yank my shirt off my head while I continue tracking her. She zeroes in on my hands as I unbuckle my belt. I toss it aside, then unzip my pants. I’m shedding my clothes rapidly. To where I’m buck-ass naked. My hard cock primed for entry into her pussy.