This is wrong. This is so wrong.
Something hot unfurls low in my belly, spreading outward like heat from a fire.
No. What—
The warmth registers before I understand what it means. Pooling between my thighs. Making my breath catch for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.
Cazzo. No. What is WRONG with you, Angelina?
My legs press together.
Cole hits him again, a body shot this time, ribs, and Adrian wheezes and sags like a puppet with cut strings. Each blow is placed with deliberate care, the same deliberate care Cole uses when he touches me. He's not out of control. He's in perfect control. This is simply what his control looks like when it's pointed at destruction instead of pleasure.
My thighs press together tighter.
What does it say about me that I can't look away? That I don't WANT to look away?
Adrian's nose is shattered, his lip split wide and pouring blood down his chin, his body hunched around his midsection where Cole's fists did their invisible damage. Cole hasn't said another word since that first quiet command. He doesn't need to. His fists are saying everything.
And I'm standing here with my thighs pressed together and heat flooding through me.
His hands. Two nights ago they held me with reverence. Now they're covered in blood. Both versions, the gentle lover and the violent protector, are the same man. The same hands.
I can't look away.
Adrian slides down the wall when Cole finally releases him, leaving a red smear on the cream-colored paint like a gruesome brushstroke. His nose is shattered, his face already swelling into something unrecognizable, blood dripping onto his expensive Italian suit.
Cole crouches down so they're eye level, his voice dropping into something barely audible. "Come near them again, either of them, and diplomatic immunity won't protect you from what I'll do."
Then he stands and turns to me. His eyes are still cold, still holding that terrible emptiness, but when they find mine something softens. Just for me. Only ever for me.
"We're leaving."
He doesn't touch me. Just waits, giving me the choice Adrian never bothered to offer.
I step over Adrian's legs, my heel catching on his ankle, and I don't care. Don't look down at him crumpled and bleeding. Don't want to examine too closely why satisfaction is curling through my chest where horror should be.
The door closes behind us. I don't look back.
But I feel Adrian's blood drying on Cole's hands as he guides me toward the exit, his palm hovering near my lower back without quite making contact. I smell copper and violence mixing with cedar. I feel the heat still pulsing between my thighs with every step.
I should be horrified. Disgusted. Ready to call security.
I want Cole's hands on me, the same hands that just made Adrian bleed, proving they know how to do something other than hurt.
The drive home passes in silence.
Traffic crawls through the city. Red lights, stop signs, and a woman with a stroller crossing at the intersection like the world hasn't just tilted sideways on its axis. Everyone going about their normal lives, completely oblivious to the fact that the woman in this SUV just watched a man get beaten bloody and didn't do a single thing to stop it.
And liked it. Don't forget that part. What does that make me?
I stare out the window and try to find Judge Castellano somewhere in the wreckage of the last hour. She's supposed to believe in due process, in the rule of law, in justice that happens in courtrooms with evidence and arguments and the careful application of precedent.
She's supposed to be better than this.
Maybe she never existed. Maybe she was always just Angelina in a black robe, pretending to be someone worthy of the title.
Cole's hands rest on the steering wheel, his knuckles split and dark with dried blood. The leather streaked with blood, and the splits crack wider every time he flexes.