Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Reaper
A fter helping her dress, I take her back to the apartment, and she looks at me, big eyes, like she’s caught feelings.
I want to say I shouldn’t have devoured her. But it was a hunt, and she’s a natural at primal play.
Lizette alone made her part real.
I always play it real. It is real for me. But so many women play at it, and they giggle and let me catch them. Depending on my mood and interest level after the chase, I might fuck them. Some will go down on me.
They don’t interest me. What gets my fires up is the chase, the hunt, a real one.
And this, from a virgin, was incredible. I wanted to fuck her so hard, take her ass, let her see all of me like her gaze begs.
But I ate her out.
With her, the rules of the play didn’t seem to exist.
Could be the mark fucking Knight left on her. I had the sense to keep away from her throat. The rest ?
Fuck, she riled me beyond anything before. Shone a light. Made a connection that felt like we knew each other, could see into things.
This is, I decide as I pull out my cigarettes, ignoring the look of disapproval on her face, as the caught feelings morph to confusion, nothing more than false intimacy. A false closeness brought on by similar kinks.
By the bite, the mark, the brand, the bond—whatever you want to call it.
I don’t pretend to understand how it all works, how Knight’s mark can affect all of us. But I think it does.
There’s not a blood bond between us.
Doesn’t have to be.
Our pack has three strong alphas who share the top position.
We are the lead alphas. The core pack.
Fuck. I hate the word pack .
It’s never sat right since I was a kid. Since that fucker tried to kill me after he decided he was bored of using me as his punching bag.
I ended that. By ending his life.
I don’t even remember how old I was when I slid the knife he used on me between his ribs as he slept. I remember everything else. Perfect clarity. Waiting for his eyes to open as he woke only to die. I wanted him to see my bloodied face.
My eyes.
The last thing he ever saw.
After, I stared in the mirror. Face black and bloodied, skin split open here and there, the only thing alive staring back was my eyes. Black fire. Pits of hell.
Dante found me. We didn’t know each other that well. But he was older; he helped burn the house, and find someone to sew me up.
After that, things blur. Another pack, one of the misfits, took us as no one wanted to care for the freak kid with the Frankenstein’s monster’s face.
It suited me fine. They left me alone.
So, why do I feel at home for the first time since finding Dante again?
Maybe I’m caught in her headspace of the hunt’s aftermath.
I put the cigarette between my lips.
“Why did I feel like I knew you intimately?” Lizette whispers. Her gaze meets mine. “I still do. Out there, when it was life and death…I knew it wasn’t and I was safe, but I was also fleeing for real…out there, it was like I could see into you. Knew you intimately without knowing anything about you. Like the details of your life were on display. The thing that makes you you .”
I don’t say anything. My phone’s buzzing in my pocket. Dante. I don’t need to look. He can wait.
“I-Is it normal? Or am I seeing things? Making it up so I’m not so…” She shakes her head.
Lonely. The word she isn’t saying. Lonely.
The girl who grew up loved. But isolated.
“Not so ridiculous,” she says, her words soaked in her lie.
Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s a compromise, a way to step back from her bleeding honesty.
In my experience, ridiculous and lonely tend to intermix.
Removing the unlit cigarette, I contemplate her words.
“We were rough, dirty, in a game you got caught up in. I like primal play. It’s blood, heat, violence. The hunt. That feeling you had of life and death. It’s in you, too.”
She takes a breath and nods. “Is that why it’s like I know you?”
“I’m not sure.”
That connection hums in me. Alive. Present.
“Maybe,” I say. “We see what we want to see. A reflection of us, a glimpse of something to weave a tale around.”
“You didn’t feel it?” she asks.
That’s too far. “I’m the monster you get to deal with the other monsters. An ex-con. I murder and protect what’s mine. But I leave things alone if they leave me alone.”
It’s not an answer. But it’s the best I can give. This isn’t like any kind of conversation I’ve ever had, and I’ve been forced into therapy. Once.
Her complexity and loneliness make her insightful. And she probably recognizes the parts of me that is human. Experiences that have left marks.
She sees me .
“You can do what you want, but I recommend staying inside. One of us will drop back in to check on you.”
Lizette stands and comes up to me, and I smell us on her. The funk and musk and heat and wildness. Sex. Need. All of it. All at once. “Are you running away?”
“When one of us comes by, in a few days, you can probably head home, or get out of here. I would recommend keeping away from the Council. Unless that’s the life you want.”
“Reaper?”
She puts her hand on my chest, over my heart.
“Go rest, little omega,” I say. “Try and sleep.”
“Well, at least you didn’t apologize.”
I drop my gaze back to her face and cup her cheek for a moment. “For what?”
“For what happened?”
“I never apologize over shit like that. It was mutual?” She nods. “It was good.”
“I want?—”
“Everyone wants.” I step back and leave.
Everyone does want. Even me, it seems. Even fucking me.
“Did you fuck her?”
I blow out a stream of smoke, rum next to me in the command center of Pandora’s.
It’s not what it’s called. I call it that because, in here, I can watch all corners of each floor. Even the private areas for private parties.
We make sure things don’t happen.
This floor is the only place in the club without cameras, where the three of us have suites, and the alley where the fucker tried to rape Lizette.
Her voice that held a perfect pure note, a thrill of orgasmic pleasure ringing through it, is still inside me. It was something almost sacred in the most elemental way.
“No.”
Dante’s eyes narrow. Knight’s curious gaze moves from one of us to the other.
The kid snaps his fingers and points at me. “You touched her. You dark horse.”
But behind the jovial tone is something tight. Jagged.
Jealousy.
A sliver of it.
I don’t respond. “I moved her and put her in my safe house in the Wharf district.”
“A love nest?” Knight asks. Then he glances at Dante. “Why is it all hands off her to me but not him?”
“Shut the fuck up, Knight,” Dante says, almost absently. “Why?” he says to me.
He walks from the command center to his office, Knight hot on his heels.
I take a drag on my cigarette, pick up the rum, and follow. Once in there, he starts his paperwork. I’ve no interest in what he’s doing. We make money. We grow. I have my place in the dark. The silence. The clean up.
I’m muscle. I’m the deliverer of death, if and when needed. I’ll do whatever, whenever, in the name of protecting this pack.
“Isolation.”
My one word hangs in the air, but Dante looks up as Knight stares at his tablet.
“Wharf district?” Dante blows out a breath. “That’s a rough fucking area.”
“It’s remote. People keep to themselves.”
“A perfect place,” Knight says, not looking up, brown curls falling into his eye, “for him to fuck her.”
I cast him a long look. And although he doesn’t look at me, he squirms.
Then Dante glances at us both. “Knight, Reap says he didn’t. And what’s it to you? You’re not picking a fucking omega for us. Fuck whoever you want, but get back to working on digging up anything and everything on this pack in Hover Valley, and on that guy, Jake.”
“Look into if Ghost is back.” My words turn the room into silence.
Knight breaks it. “You really think he is?”
“Yes,” I say.
“He would do anything if he thought it’d get back at us or get him ahead.” Dante frowns. “Did you see him?”
“Not yet. He’s like me.” I ignore the snort from Knight. I know what the kid wants. Her . That perceived prize of her virginity. Like I told her, I don’t fuck virgins. “But I keep getting a sense of someone.”
“Look into it more deeply, Knight.” Dante leans back in his chair. “Fuck.”
“Will do.” The kid cuts his eyes at me, but the sharpness bounces off. Then he sighs. “That dude you killed? Fucking creep.”
I know. He told me everything.
Right before I killed him.
“What about the other one? Jake?” Dante asks .
Knight’s grip on the tablet tightens. “Disappeared. Not sure if Jake’s his real name. I’ve got a Jake Jones, but…I’ll play with the security photo, cross reference on facial ID. Maybe it’s a different name he goes under. Or he’s so protected, he’s not online.”
“Don’t bother. Reap, tell him what you found.”
I sigh and take a drag on my cigarette. Then I pull over a shallow dish I think’s an ashtray. Not that I care.
“Does it matter?” I ask.
“Maybe.” Dante gets up and helps himself to a drink, pouring a whiskey for the wine-drinker, Knight.
He points the bottle my way, but I nod at my glass.
“David Finch informed him that they have a ring of girls. Omegas.” Dante takes a deep swallow of his drink. “They pick one out, often finding them on the verge of heat, and then… They fucking use the bite to control. They work girls, push them into sex work, a particular type, where they take them, mark them, and keep on deepening the mark.”
“You could have told me this earlier.” Knight turns to me.
“If you’re thinking, Knight, that you can find information online, you can’t. This is low brow, old school, word of mouth and secret fucking handshake shit,” Dante says.
“I wanted to find out if anything had gotten through. Or if there was anything else of worth. A different marker.” I take a drag.
Knight isn’t a happy boy. “I could’ve searched certain arenas. I could?—”
“No. You couldn’t.” I shake my head. “This isn’t a big ring. And it’s so illegal that everyone would end up in prison.”
And I don’t want that. I want to, when the time comes, hunt down every last fuck involved and kill them.
“He’s not a fucking threat to us. This Jake stumbled on her, got lucky. Or,” Dante says, “got unlucky, and on our radar. He’s on the hunt for omegas. Nothing more than a low-end fucking recruiter. ”
“How do you know?” Knight asks, as the tension in the room gets tense and thick.
“Because we’ve seen it,” I say. Then I add the detail David told me. One that’s stuck with me because right place, unwilling girl… “The omegas wear a locked, thick leather collar around their neck.”
The tension changes, becomes charged.
They both see what I’m seeing.
A way to play with a seemingly willing girl.
Then Knight’s face morphs to disgust as he puts what it is into the scenario. “Holy shit. A chastity belt for the throat? Do they barcode them? Fun and games are one thing, but this…”
“Unwilling fucking girls.” Dante’s gaze flicks to me. “Not Unholy Trinity business.”
“My business now.” That’s all I say on the matter.
I stub out the cigarette and finish my drink.
As they discuss our issue, I slip out and into the early hours of the night.
Clouds blanket the predawn in gray, and the water’s choppy, the brine thick with that brackish scent from the pools of stagnant water remaining under the boardwalk. Even from here, it cloys.
I hunted for information last night. The lowest haunts. Places not owned by us.
It’s easy for me to slide into that world.
But the talk was banal, and I think I need to find one of the omegas who got out. People always do. But that’s going to take patience, time, an archeologist’s brush. Fine by me. I’m a master in the art of patience and teasing off miniscule layers to get to what lies beneath .
I’m also good at murder with extreme violence and fast moves.
I do, however, know what this takes.
So why the fuck am I heading to where I put Lizette? This time is perfect to uncover things.
A movement catches my eye, and I go still.
There she is, her scent like rich and heady perfume on the air, displacing the brackish water, mating with the salt.
She doesn’t notice me, though there’s a hesitation to her step.
Lizette’s hair is back in a ponytail and she has a shapeless dress on and her leather jacket. No hat. Her bag’s slung high on her shoulder, and she dips her head and powers on.
I keep back and tail her, then the moment I work out where she’s going, I make the shortcuts to get there before her.
This is my world, the streets and their secrets, and I wait by the tree where I watched her before.
Her damn apartment.
A car pulls up and a woman in heels and an expensive suit gets out with a man.
I don’t know them. I don’t have to.
I know what they are.
They disappear inside and make a hatchet job on the lock. I can see it mangled from here.
Lizette comes into view.
Now she pauses, at the corner, looking around. But like someone who hasn’t had to do this herself, she doesn’t pay attention to the tree.
She starts to walk down the path as lights here and there come on in windows and the street lamps go off.
When she turns up to her building, I glance at the windows of her place. The blinds are up, lights on, and two silhouettes move to the door. I know the layout now.
So, I move.
Fast .
Silent.
And I take her. Hand clamped on mouth to stop the scream, arm around her waist.
I drag her bag into the shade of the tree, turning her, trying not to let her scent in.
This is the first time I see her fear.
Real fear.
I want to sink my teeth into her throat and bite, then lick the fear and sex up and claim her as my own.
But the fear switches to shock and then anger.
“Council members are in your place right now.” I lower my hand and bring my head to hers, our lips a moment apart. “Coming, I think, down the stairs. So, I’m going to kiss you. It’s too late to run.”
Too late because she’s with me.
I can’t move unseen with her. People are known to try to avoid looking at public signs of affection. It makes them uncomfortable, so I use that to our advantage.
The kiss is a drink from a forbidden fountain and she opens for me, her tongue seeking mine. I crumble a little, licking and dancing with her tongue. A taunt. A game and then, as the motor roars and fades, I break that kiss.
She’s breathing hard.
So am I.
Fuck, my thigh’s pressed between hers, and she’s hot, damp, I can feel that sweet dampness. My hard on pushes into her and she moves. Rubbing up against me.
This time, when I drop my head, I lick along where Knight bit her, and she shudders out a low moan.
There’s fire, and then there’s burn your house down. This is veering into the latter.
So I release her and step back.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask.
Lizette drops her hands from my shoulders. I didn’t even notice her touching me, just that connection to her .
“Are you sure they were Council, Reaper?”
“They looked it.”
“If they weren’t?” she asks.
“Then they were an unknown and worse than the Council.”
Lizette sucks in a breath. “There’s worse?”
“Yes.” I pause. I want to taste her again. I count to ten, then step back. “Why did you come?”
She frowns. “I…wanted a necklace I thought I had.”
“Jewels?”
“Something Dad gave me when I was little. Worthless. Priceless to me.” She darts past me and takes a step in the direction of her building.
I grab her arm and drag her back in the shadows. “Don’t go in there.”
“But—”
“It might now have spy cameras, sensors. What does this necklace look like?”
“It’s a tiny heart on a chain. Gold.”
She’s easy prey. Too easy. Too trusting of the world.
“I’ll get it. When it’s safe. So go back to where I put you. Now.”
She hesitates and then she takes off, back the way she came.
This, I hope, is enough to send her into the arms of the Unholy Trinity.
Then again, I don’t operate on hope.
I get my phone to send a text.
Then I start to follow.