Chapter 23: Bloodstained Vengeance
The bell tower smelled of old pigeons, dust, and the sharp, cold scent of impending rain. Teresa’s shoulder throbbed where the bowstring had snapped back, the pain a bright, honest counterpoint to the knot of dread in her stomach. She watched from the high, arched window as the man in dark clothes crumpled. Her arrow was a part of him now, buried deep in the base of his throat.
He didn’t cry out. There was only a wet, guttural exhalation lost on the wind.
Nate, his back to the killer, his eyes scanning the garden paths below, heard the thud. He whirled, sword already half-drawn, and saw the body sprawled on the worn stone flags, the feathered shaft vibrating slightly with its final heartbeat.
Teresa was already moving, her soft slippers silent on the steps. She emerged onto the tower roof, the wind whipping her hair across her face. Callum lingered in the stairwell shadows, a spectator. Nate stared at her, then at the arrow, then back at her. The unasked question hung between them: Since when?
She ignored him, walking past. The assassin was still alive, his eyes wide and panicked, his hands clutching uselessly at the impossible thing in his neck. Dark blood welled around the shaft with each choked breath. Teresa knelt beside him, the cold stone biting through her trousers. She saw the mercenary’s insignia on his collar, the same from Lucien’s list. Professional. Someone’s blade.
Her own dagger was in her hand, small and sharp. She didn’t look at his face. She grabbed his wrist, forced his arm straight, and drew the blade across his forearm in a swift, deep incision. The radial artery opened like a second mouth, a sudden, pulsing stream of crimson that darkened the grey stone. She did the other arm with the same efficient brutality.
“Teresa,” Nate breathed, a protest not of mercy, but of shock.
She leaned close, her lips near the dying man’s ear. His breath rattled. “That’s for threatening what’s mine,” she whispered, her voice colder than the tower wind. She watched the life leave his eyes, watched the frantic panic fade into a glassy, empty stare. The blood pooled, steaming faintly in the chill.
She stood, wiping her dagger clean on the dead man’s cloak. Her hands were steady. Nate’s gaze was a physical weight on her, a mixture of horror and a fierce, unwilling pride. Callum stepped out of the shadows, his usual flippancy absent. He looked from the body to Teresa, his bright green eyes alight with something new—not lust, not yet, but a raw, awakened fascination.
“Well,” he said softly. “That was… decisive.”
Teresa turned and walked back toward the stairs without a word. The adrenaline was curdling, leaving a hollow, metallic taste in her mouth and a frantic heat in her blood. She didn’t go to her chambers. She went to Amberley’s.
The door was ajar. She pushed it open. Amberley was there, still dressed, pouring wine. Nate and Callum had followed; she heard their footsteps behind her. Amberley took one look at her face, at the specks of blood on her tunic, and set the decanter down.
“It’s done?” Amberley asked.
Teresa just nodded. The silence in the room was thick, charged. The kill had been clean, necessary, but it had unleashed something feral inside her, something the steam of the baths had only moistened. She needed to feel, to burn the cold touch of death away.
Callum closed the door, the latch clicking loud in the quiet. He was looking at her, the fascination hardening into a direct, unvarnished want. Nate stood rigid by the hearth, his conflict plain on his face—the guard warring with the man.
Teresa looked at Amberley. “You wanted a private audience.”
She crossed the room in three strides, grabbed the front of Amberley’s gown, and kissed her. It was nothing like the languid exploration in the baths. This was conquest, a claiming. Teresa’s tongue shoved into Amberley’s mouth, tasting wine and surprise. She bit her lip, not gently. Amberley moaned, her hands coming up to tangle in Teresa’s hair.
Then Callum was there. He pulled Teresa back by the shoulder, spun her, and shoved her against the wall. His body pinned hers, his mouth crashing down on hers. She could taste the night air on him, the faint salt of sweat. He kissed her with a brutal hunger, his hands rough on her hips. She kissed him back just as fiercely, grinding against the hard ridge of his cock through his trousers.
“Fuck,” he muttered against her lips, his breath hot. “Seeing you kill that man… Christ.”
His hands went to the laces of her trousers, yanking them open. Amberley was there too, her own dress already half-off, her mouth on Teresa’s neck, her hands pushing up Teresa’s tunic to paw at her breasts. Nate hadn’t moved from the hearth, his fists clenched at his sides.
“Nathaniel,” Teresa gasped, breaking from Callum’s kiss. Her eyes, blazing, locked on his. “Don’t just stand there. Either leave or join us.”
It was the use of his full name, the command in it, that broke him. Duty, propriety—it all crumbled under the weight of the night, the shared danger, the terrifying, beautiful woman smeared with another man’s blood. He moved, his movements stiff at first, then with a resolved urgency.
He came up behind Amberley, his big hands smoothing over her bare shoulders. He bent his head, his mouth finding the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Amberley arched back into him with a sigh.
Callum had Teresa’s trousers down around her ankles. He dropped to his knees, his hands spreading her thighs apart. His mouth was on her cunt without preamble, his tongue driving into her. She cried out, her head thumping back against the wall. He ate her like a starving man, his tongue lashing her clit, his fingers pushing inside her, curling and scissoring. The coil of tension from the tower—the fear, the violence—tightened now in her gut, transformed into a different, sharper peak.
“Yes, right there, you bastard,” she snarled, fisting his dark hair, grinding her pussy against his face.
Amberley, caught between Nate’s mouth on her skin and the sight before her, moaned. She reached down, her fingers finding her own wetness. Nate’s hand slid down her stomach, joining hers, his calloused fingers replacing her own. He pushed two inside her from behind, his other hand pinching and rolling her nipple.
The room filled with the sounds of them: wet, sucking sounds from Callum’s mouth between Teresa’s legs; Amberley’s sharp, ragged breaths as Nate fingered her; Teresa’s guttural swears. Callum stood up, his lips glistening. He fumbled with his own laces, freeing his cock, thick and hard.
“Turn around,” he ordered Teresa, his voice rough.
She turned, bracing her hands against the wall. He spat into his palm, slicked himself, and drove into her in one brutal thrust. She screamed, a short, sharp sound of perfect fullness. He set a punishing rhythm, each snap of his hips slamming her into the wall. The force of it, the raw physicality, was exactly what she needed.
Nate watched, his fingers still working Amberley, his own arousal a painful tightness in his breeches. Amberley pulled away from him, her eyes dark. She pushed Nate into a chair. “Your turn to watch,” she breathed, and she sank to her knees before him, pulling his cock free. She took him deep into her throat, her head bobbing eagerly.
Teresa reached back, grabbing Callum’s ass, pulling him deeper into her. “Harder,” she demanded. “Don’t you fucking dare hold back.”
He obeyed, his grip on her hips bruising, his balls slapping against her with each thrust. The pleasure built, a torrent threatening to sweep her away. She saw Nate over Amberley’s head, his head thrown back, his eyes clenched shut as Amberley sucked him, then open again, watching Teresa being fucked against the wall.
“Come for me, Princess,” Callum growled in her ear, his pace becoming erratic. “Come all over my cock.”
It was the crude command that did it. The orgasm ripped through her, violent and consuming, her cunt clamping around him in violent spasms. She shouted, a raw, ragged sound that was half-sob. He followed her over, his own release punching into her with a hoarse cry, his body shuddering against hers.
She slumped against the wall, spent. Callum pulled out, breathing heavily.
Amberley stood up from Nate, wiping her mouth. Nate looked wrecked, his composure utterly shattered. Without a word, Amberley led Teresa to the bed. She pushed her down onto her back, spread her legs, and lowered her mouth to her again, lapping up the mixed slickness of Teresa and Callum. Teresa arched off the bed, a weak cry escaping her lips, oversensitive but craving more.
Nate stood, his cock still hard. He came to the side of the bed. Teresa reached for him. “Nate,” she said, her voice stripped bare.
He hesitated for only a second before kneeling on the bed, over her face. She understood. She took him into her mouth, tasting the salt of his skin, feeling him throb on her tongue. He groaned, a deep, shattered sound, and his hips moved tentatively. She sucked him, her fingers digging into his thighs, while Amberley’s tongue brought her to another, smaller, shaking climax beneath him.
It was Callum, recovering, who knelt behind Amberley. He guided himself into her with a smooth push as she was still lapping at Teresa. Amberley gasped around a mouthful of Nate, her body arching back into Callum’s thrusts. Nate, driven over the edge by the sight and the sensation, came in Teresa’s mouth with a choked, broken groan.
They collapsed together in a tangled, sweating heap on the large bed, limbs intertwined, the scent of sex and blood and spent adrenaline thick in the air. No one spoke. The distant chimes of the bell tower, now silent of threat, echoed through the night.
Teresa stared at the canopy above, feeling Nate’s steady breath on her shoulder, Callum’s arm heavy across her waist, Amberley’s hair tickling her arm. The hollow feeling was gone, filled now with a dangerous, satiated warmth. The trap had been sprung. The first move was theirs. And the lines between protector, ally, lover, and pawn had blurred into irrelevance.