Connor’s Claim (Body Count #2)

Chapter 1

C onnor

The blade in my hand, cold and hard, reassured me in a way life rarely managed. It was a tool of my trade along with the skeleton bandanna tied across my lower face and the needles and tranquilisers in a leather pack in my pocket.

Keeping to the shadows, I stole along the edge of the night-dark mansion, alert for sign or sound of another person.

For the danger I knew was coming.

Once upon a time, I’d arrived at this house with a backpack of clothes and an expectation of living here for a short while. My mother had a new man and had fucking gushed about how we’d all make a home together as a blended family. Them, the deeply in-love couple, and us, the kids.

Me and his teenage daughter.

Everly.

I never expected to feel anything for her but disdain. After all, surely she’d hate our new living situation, too, and loathe the sight of me just as I would with her. Except she hadn’t. She’d liked me. Been kind. Welcoming.

Including into her bed.

That was the limit of it, though. Love at first sight was my failing.

Everly Makepeace had once been my stepsister and my obsession, but never the other way around.

It was the only way I could explain why now, a decade later, with no love lost on her side, I was breaking into her home to protect her.

I took a corner, my sights on a drainpipe that ran up a notch in the wall and which had given me a way into her bedroom on countless occasions in the past, but I drew up short, shock stealing my breath. Starlight glinted on jagged broken glass, the kitchen door open a crack.

Whoever was after her had already got in.

I was too late.

My heart restarted, and adrenaline rushed. I darted to the door, easing inside with my knife ready to carve Everly’s name into her attacker’s skin. Silence held the kitchen, polished, empty surfaces stretching across the space. I already knew from the lack of cars outside that no one else was home. Her father had a busy life managing the city and dodgy deals while wearing his crocodile smile. He wasn’t here. Just her.

Along with a stranger.

Treading carefully, I passed the kitchen’s Italian marble island with my sights on the exit, on protective duty I couldn’t explain. I shouldn’t give a fuck about this woman. She never had about me. She’d been everything to me then nothing, and nothing was where she should’ve stayed. Somehow, my feet kept moving. My muscles remained tight and my focus honed.

At the door, I held still and listened.

Nothing. No creaks, no voices. Maybe they hadn’t found her yet. I paused to decide on my route once I was in the hall. A sweep of downstairs or directly up to her bedroom. Aye, I’d go straight to her. Relish her expression of fear if I was the first one there.

Abruptly, something thudded. Footsteps. A muffled scream.

Everly’s.

I burst into the hall, cold panic filling me. Across the way, two bodies moved deeper into the room Everly’s father called the Council Chamber. A big man dragged Everly backwards, her bare legs scrambling for purchase on the floorboards and her pale, silky dressing gown flaring open. His gloved hand clamped against her mouth, and her long brown hair spilled over his arm where she tried to escape him.

His arm was right under her breasts, her curves threatening to spill from her camisole.

Dead man walking.

The decision came as easily as my jolt forward to intercept his abduction attempt. Crossing the hall, I sheathed my knife, the weapon unneeded. He was unarmed, at least at first glance, and I had anger enough to overpower anyone.

The man spoke urgently into Everly’s ear, whatever he was saying ceasing her struggle enough for him to free her mouth. I didn’t give a fuck. I ran the remainder of the way and raised my fist. Both spotted me at the same second, Everly’s eyes widening. Her attacker flinched, but my punch connected with the side of his face. He fell, dropping his hold on her.

“Connor,” Everly squeaked.

She recognised me. Even all in black. Even with my face half covered.

“Get back.” I snapped an arm out to guide her to a position of protection.

She took it. Crept behind me with her body against mine.

The man on the floor whipped up, a hand to his jaw where I’d hit him. If he could kill with a glare, I’d be sliced in two.

“Don’t fucking touch her,” he ordered.

Indignation slammed into me. I twisted to speak to Everly though never took my gaze off the intruder who’d dropped into a fighter’s stance. “Your choice. Watch him die or close your eyes.”

She wasn’t leaving my side in either case. My blade was in my hand again without conscious thought.

Everly’s fingers tightened on my sleeve. “Wait. Both of you.”

The stranger hesitated. Eyed where she touched me. “You know him?” he asked.

Everly’s quick nod nudged my arm.

He swore. “Listen to me. I’m not here to hurt you, but others are coming who will.”

There was something familiar in his voice, enough to still my hand. “What the fuck did ye just say?”

“He said the same to me,” Everly whispered. “He came with a warning.”

The man tugged down the plain scarf around his mouth. “I’m not fucking around. We don’t have time for this.”

Recognition dawned.

I knew him. Not all that long ago, I’d had him imprisoned in a room in my apartment after he’d stormed our warehouse in search of his sister. He was Riordan, brother of Genevieve who my best friend, Arran, had recently claimed. I liked Gen. I’d even respected her brother for trying to save her, though he’d got it wrong and eventually accepted that she wanted to be there.

What I couldn’t make sense of was why he was here.

“Excuse me if I call ye a fucking liar,” I bit out.

“I’m not. Red from the Four Milers called in your capture.” His gaze stayed on Everly.

“She’s a job to ye?” I snarled.

Frustration shone in his eyes, and his focus came back to me, his expression savage. “No, asshole. I’m here to tell her to go before someone else makes that decision for her.”

The Four Milers were a rival gang in the city of Deadwater. Why the fuck they’d put out a kidnap hit on the mayor’s daughter was a mystery, yet it didn’t feel like a lie.

Then there was the reason I’d come here in the first place. A hunch that recent murders in the city had been related to me, and that the next target might be someone I cared about. Or used to anyway. It had spurred panic.

I’d run to Everly’s side like I was whipped.

Lights strobed in the hall, stark against the darkness. The rumble of an engine followed, maybe even more than one.

Riordan’s head snapped toward the sound. “That’s them. You need to leave.” Again, he spoke to her, but then he shot that angry gaze to me. “Take her away or I will.”

Antagonism rose in a hot wave, boosted by other emotions. Fear of others wanting her. A gang. This jack-off. The image returned of him touching her. His threat to claim her unleashed jealousy that directed my hand into a fist and snapped out another punch.

It connected. Riordan spun back from the force.

I didn’t wait to see him land, grasping Everly’s hand to lead her into the hall. A quick glance left showed headlights illuminating the glass inserts around the big front door. Whoever was approaching was coming in hot.

With any luck, we’d have time to leave the way I’d come in.

At the kitchen door, I peered out. Glass crunched under my boots. Everly took a sharp inhale of breath, and I peered back to see her wince and lift her foot.

Blood welled from a cut.

Horror trickled through my veins. I’d killed men in their sleep. Or wide awake and hanging from chains in front of me. Never once had the sight of blood affected me.

Except it was hers… Had to keep moving. Ducking, I put my shoulder to her belly and lifted her fireman-style, ignoring her huff of breath.

Then I was out the door and running. Down along flowerbeds. Over a low wall that divided the patio from a formal knot garden. A flight of steps that led to a sunken lawn with a fountain, but if you went left and under a tree, an animal track led to a gap in the fence.

My route in and out as a younger man, and our salvation now.

“Stop,” Everly begged.

“No. We need to get out of here.”

I scrambled through bushes and up a slope to the edge of the neighbours’ wide garden. They had an access alley to a side street. It was where I’d left my car.

“He can’t be right. Why would a gang come after me? It was probably security arriving,” she argued. “Connor, stop. I’ll yell if you don’t.”

Everly had always been on the na?ve side.

Despite her Machiavellian father. Despite the disturbing undercurrent of the city we lived in. Where I dwelled in darkness, she’d always summoned light.

She wrenched at me so I stumbled, correcting my balance to set her down at the base of the huge oak tree that temporarily concealed us. She hobbled, her injured foot held up from the earth. “Thank you. This is a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

Blood pounded in my ears. With my back to her, I pulled my kit from my pocket. In easy, well-practiced motions, I had a needle in my hand and ready to go.

“…no clue what that man meant,” Everly was saying, her hands moving with her words. “If we just?—”

I embraced her and stabbed her arse in a fluid movement.

Her beautiful face rose to mine. Lines of confusion shaped on her forehead then disappeared. She tried to form a question, but those treacherous eyes rolled back, and Everly passed out, draping gracefully against me.

I didn’t wait around, lifting her again to get us to safety. The alley was clear, an automatic light flickering but not coming on. Out on the street, I paused to make sure there was no one watching then crept to my car and laid the lass across the back seat, all with barely a sound to alert the neighbours.

From the driver’s seat, I regarded the unconscious woman in my rearview mirror. In my haste to get her out of sight, I hadn’t taken care to cover her with her dressing gown, and her body was mine to stare at.

Expensive ivory nightwear, a tumble of brunette curls.

Everly had curves for days. Thick thighs I’d tried and failed to stop dreaming about. A rack that could make a man cry. She’d never liked her body, but I’d worshipped her, dropping kisses on her soft belly and loving every inch of her creamy skin.

That was then and this was now.

Her camisole was askew so one breast had half fallen out, her dressing gown lace concealing her nipple like the best kind of peep show. At the apex of her thighs, her silk shorts stretched over her mound, giving me a lewd outline of her shape. Parts of her I’d once traced with my tongue.

Despite every resolve I’d ever had with this woman, my dick thickened in my black jeans.

Anger followed. Never again would I succumb to wanting her. No matter how my body betrayed me, I was only here for one thing, and it wasn’t that.

The engine rumbled, but I kept the car’s lights off. There were few other vehicles parked on this road of mansions, most people tucking their expensive rides away in garages or on their driveways.

Except for a black motorbike, propped up kerbside behind us.

Just as I’d recognised the intruder in Everly’s home, I knew his bike, too. Riordan had ridden it to the warehouse, and I’d memorised the model and plate.

Throwing my car into reverse, I slammed into it, sending the machine skidding with the crunch of broken glass.

Fuck him for being here tonight. Fuck him for stealing my thunder and apparently wanting to save her.

And fuck me for the twisted thoughts that, even though she’d rejected me, said to my face that no, she didn’t want me, now Everly was in my possession, I was going to bleed out from old wounds when it came time to let her go.