Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Dante
I haul the man out of his chair and into one of the private rooms where girls can dance for extra cash. The only one who’ll be dancing in here is this fuckwit. And he’s going to dance off the mortal coil.
“What the fuck,” I snarl, wrench his arm up, and back as I slam his face into the wall, “do you think you’re doing? Touching my girl?”
“I didn’t know!” He screams as I break three fingers and then turn him to punch him in the stomach.
I pull my arm back and land a punch in his face as he doubles over, falling to the ground. I haul him up by his hair.
“Didn’t know? Didn’t fucking know? Were you missing from school the day they taught fucking manners? You don’t touch in here. Ever. And especially not her.”
“Everyone touches a little,” the guy says, sputtering up blood. “Nothing meant by it. They get tipped big. I tip big!”
I fucking grab his balls and twist, enjoying the inhuman howl. “Nothing meant by it, huh? How about I tip you big?”
“Let me go, please! ”
“I’m going to fucking pull you to pieces, feed you to the crows, fucking dance on your bones for touching her. And in such a fucked up way. She isn’t yours, get me? She, like everything else in this place, is mine , and when you come to my place, you respect my fucking things.”
“Dante?”
I shoot a sharp look at Lizette who stands just inside, stock still.
Fuck. I realize the outfit’s wrong. On her, it makes her look like she’s dressed like a stripper, or an expensive escort. She looks both classy and filthy, cheap and gorgeous. She’s a walking fantasy and this guy’s going to fucking die for thinking he could even have a taste of her. I’ll take his eyes. I’ll?—
“Boss.”
Behind Lizette, Darcy appears and her expression is one of annoyance, snapping me back to my senses.
“What?” I say, not willing to let this go.
“You can’t kill him.”
“I’m the fucking Unholy Trinity. I can do what the fuck I want.”
Her expression doesn’t flicker. “For one, he still needs to pay his bill, and it’s a hefty one. And two, I think he’s learned his lesson.”
“I didn’t know,” the guy starts, but I cut my eyes to him, and he shuts up.
Darcy pushes Lizette out. “Go back to work, kid.”
Then she rounds on me as I let the asshole go. He tumbles to the ground and curls in a ball.
“Dante?” She stalks up to me. “He’s a good patron.”
“I’ll get cleaned up,” I mutter. “He’s not welcome here anymore.”
Darcy pulls me close. “I love being part of this pack. You know I do, but either fuck that girl or get rid of her.”
“We can’t.” I pause. “Yet. ”
“And we can’t give our clients a reason for a grudge. I’ll handle this.” Then she shoves me out the door. “Mr. Albion, you touched the bosses’ bitch,” she says as I hold the door open a little. “You didn’t notice his mark on her throat? It’s why her hair is up. She’s very much off limits. I’ll get someone to take you home and see to your injuries. And well make sure you’re taken care of?—”
Fuck that. Fury still whipping through me, I stride off. Lizette’s at the bar, shoulders hunched as the bartender puts drinks on her tray.
She gives me a stricken look as she goes back to serving.
No one else dares touch her.
Good.
I know I’m being a fucking dickwad, but the man put his hand between her legs. He’s fucking lucky Darcy stepped in.
Shame slides down my spine. Not at hitting the jerk, but because it took Darcy for me to see reason. I pride myself on my control, and I lost it in a millisecond because of her.
Angel walking in set me off more. Made my blood start to go from boiling into steam.
Shit.
She’s fucking dangerous.
The most dangerous thing I’ve met.
Knight’s hot headed. I’m way more reasonable.
Except, apparently, when it comes to her.
I look up as she jerkily walks to the bar once more, and fuck, even like that, the ass has a slight wiggle, an airy bounce unique to her.
And she’s definitely not wearing panties.
The shorts are like second skin in some of the lights in here, showing off every damn line and crease of interest on her.
Inside me, things shift, grow restless, and I rise and go to her. “When I said not to wiggle, I didn’t mean sex robot walk.”
“You’re a violent ass, Dante,” she says, looking down. “I’m walking . This is how I walk. It’s not a crime.” She then drags her gaze up, and she goes from subservient with brat energy to furious siren.
Because she is a fucking siren. Men would bash themselves to death on rocks to glimpse that body and face, and her voice when she sings…
The memory grips my cock.
I suck in air. “He touched you, and he should’ve died.”
“But I’m not yours.”
“You’re ours. As long as you’re with us, you're ours.”
“Servant or payment?”
“Candy treat, Angel. One with a kick.” I lean in. “They’re in suits, most of them, and they have money. But don’t be fooled. They’re feral fucks so don’t let them touch you.”
“If I want them to?”
My insides twist and something searing hot cuts through my lungs. Somehow, I manage to breathe normally. “Think about that, very carefully.”
“Will you add it to my punishment?” Her voice quivers as our own little world wraps tight around us.
I move closer to her, brushing against her, and she makes the kind of sound that fuels erotic dreams. “You want that, don’t you? I won’t let you come, Angel. Not until you’re mindless for it.”
“Then I’ll let these men touch me.”
I look at her, every muscle in me snapping taut. She’s all fucking bratty defiance, the smallest of a sheltered litter confronted by hungry wolves with snapping teeth. Smelling blood. And she thinks she can tease. Then pet them.
She’s a meal waiting to be devoured.
Tension ticks.
“Angel, do that, they die.”
Our gazes lock. Fuse.
And I want her mouth. I want to taste her magic, the sweetness. I want to delve deep. Test us both to the edge of limits and madness and lust.
Fuck that. I’m the hungry wolf with snapping teeth. A beast of nightmares just below the surface. I don’t want to kiss her. I want to devour, suck sweet marrow from her bones.
And then I want to burn us both in a pyre of desire, one that’s made of pure fucking flame.
When she rises, she’ll be changed, morphed, rebuilt into something utterly mine.
“Don’t think I mean it?” I say softly. “I do. I’ll paint the fucking place with their blood. Brand you with it. And then I’ll fucking punish you.”
A shiver races through her, and her pupils dilate. Her lips part. She sways, just that tiny dip toward me. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
She sucks in air and looks at me. “Then I’ll let Knight, a-and Reaper touch me. I’ll give myself to them.”
I let my lips caress her ear, and I’m filled with her, that scent, the heady note of sexual want that infuses it. She’s fucking beyond potent. She’s deadly. “You’re going to do that, anyway. And you’ll lose yourself, come. But you know what? With each wave of pleasure, a part of you will think…”
“What?” She sways against me. “How good it is?”
I grin against her, breathing her in so she melds with my molecules. Fuck, her attempt at fight riles in all the right ways.
“A part will think, what’s it going to be like with Dante?”
There’s a little moan and then she pushes at me. “No, I won’t.”
But we both know she will. Her breathing gets heady, gives her away.
I laugh. “Get back to work.”
The moment I step back, the air clears a little, and she moves away, stops, and turns back.
“Those rooms? I’ve seen some of the dancers take a man in there. The other waitress, too. What?— ”
“Private dances, lap dances for money. No touching, but…” I narrow my eyes. “Not for you. Get back to work.”
She stomps off, and I pull up the feed when I’m at the bar, taking Pandora’s tablet and watching upstairs.
Knight’s leaning against the bar, glass of wine, charming the metaphorical pants off five different women. There’s at least one pissed off boyfriend who doesn’t quite dare to do a thing. I’ve seen it before.
The little shit’s beyond charismatic and charming. Women fucking love him. And they make the mistake of thinking he’s harmless.
He isn’t. He’s a fucking shark who likes to play and dress up in preppy clothing.
Except with his little omega.
There’s a side I’ve never seen she brings out. A realness in him he’s never shown other women, even ones he’s been totally obsessed with.
It’s Liz. Lizette. Angel.
He finishes his wine and gets another, an excuse to look at the feed. He gives me a not-so-subtle finger. Asshole.
Christ. Even Reaper’s different with her. He’s always him, but with her, he’s more himself. The Reaper I knew when he was a kid. A teen. Before we got out and went separate ways.
Thank fuck she doesn’t affect me like she does with them. One of us needs a level head.
But maybe there’s something to what Reap told me. Not the bullshit tale, but the three of us marking her.
I look around, but she’s not there.
Frowning, I wait, but she doesn’t reappear. “What the fuck, Angel?”
I glance at the bathrooms. She’s probably taken herself there. The moment between us got intense, and she’s ridiculously innocent. Fuck, if she’s crying, she can do that shit on her own time. We’ve got customers, and even if I don’t like her out there, she’s good for business. They like pretty. They like her.
So, I start heading that way to drag her out, but I catch a glimpse of Sierra. She nods her head to the private rooms and holds up four fingers.
For a moment the world stops.
Room four?
What the actual fuck?
Did some man drag her in there?
I don’t wait. I stride over, ready to let hell rain down.
Ready to fucking kill.
The door’s ajar and the heavy curtains aren’t quite shut so I slide in, about to pull them wide, when I hear her speak.
“You can’t tell the alphas,” she says, sounding young and playing it sexy.
My blood turns ice.
She did this.
She fucking did this. To defy me. To push me. To rile me.
Angel dragged a man in here.
Lizette might think she’s in control. That this is innocent. But it’s not.
Things happen in private rooms.
Especially to little girls who think they can play with fucking wolves.
I’m betting whatever fucking dead man she has in there’s got a boner that could break stone.
And he’s planning on using it on her—maybe getting her to jack him off. Use her mouth. Touch her.
His hands. On her sweet fucking body.
That ice melts. Things boil as anger, thick, black and potent, rising from the depths of hell, fill my limbs.
After he dies, I’m killing her.
The guy says something but it’s too low to catch. Shit, there’s no music. And he’s sitting there like the place pulsates with sex-filled music.
The breathing corpse is literally sitting there. Planning on tasting her flesh, fucking her. Having what’s off limits to everyone but her alphas.
“And,” she adds, “you can’t touch.”
She says that, but he’s not going to listen. No man, not even one living on borrowed time, would. They’d touch, grab, take. Fuck.
That blackness of rage surges into red hot. I need to kill him. Now. I pull back the curtains.
Oh. Fuck me.
“Angel? Get the fuck off that asshole, right now.”
She freezes, turns, and stares at me. She’s fucking straddling him, those slinky booty shorts that show every fucking line and crease of her rise up in the back showing ass cheek. And his eyes are locked on her pussy lips, outlined in the front.
I don’t need to see to know that. I fucking took note out on the floor.
The man’s eyes raise, and his hands—that are on her hips, in the middle of sliding down and around, which more that seals his fate—go out to the side.
“I said get the fuck off him, Angel.”
The man registers my face. The rage. Who I am.
He almost throws her across the room. She lands hard on her ass on the floor before scrambling up to her feet.
“Out.” I don’t look at her.
The man rises and takes a step.
I do, too. Towards him, the anger and rage pumping through me instead of blood.
“Not. You.”
“D-Dante?” Liz says, voice hesitant.
I don’t fucking look at her because I might lose my shit altogether. I’m very, very close.
“Get the fuck out, Angel. Now.”
“No. ”
“Now, or I’m not responsible.”
She doesn’t leave. I feel the warm, fluttering buzz of her presence, but it isn’t enough to stop the storm in me.
I grab the man and slam him against the wall. “What the actual fuck? You know the rules.”
He whines, the sound scraping over my senses, rousing them into a wilder frenzy and every cell is dark and out for blood. His.
“Everyone does. They pay?—”
I grab his throat, digging my fingers in, not caring that he starts making choking noises. They just fuel me, that terrible fire consuming me, tunneling my vision to him and me and what I’m going to do.
Each time he tries to scream, it’s an unholy sound. And it only makes me squeeze harder, more vicious until he loses consciousness.
Lizette’s terrified scream rings in my ears, but I ignore her.
I drop the barely breathing man to the floor and kick him hard in the ribs. He rolls, sputtering. Then I bend, grabbing his shirt, and sucker punch him so hard his nose breaks, his lip mashes against teeth and we’re both sprayed with blood.
My ears are a roar of my own blood, my heart’s beat. It’s not like a living heart. It’s one of hate, fury. All the vile, unspeakable things are in me now.
And that sound, the thump thump is all I have. He’s just an open maw, needing to be shut down for good.
He fucking touched her. Had his fucking pants undone, dick at the ready. If I had time, I’d torture the shit out of him, slice his dick off in measurements. Like I’m peeling a fucking carrot.
Then I’d slice and dice parts of him, leaving him alive. Letting him feel every excruciating moment for thinking it’s okay to touch what belongs to the fucking Unholy Trinity.
What belongs to me.
If she has that mark on her, she belongs to the pack. To us .
To me.
The rage whipping through me is blinding, consuming. I don’t even realize I’m crushing my fingers into his throat again and wrenching it at an angle. I’m pushing so hard, more and more, until something finally snaps free, his neck breaking and his body sagging.
I dump the worthless bag of bones on the ground.
And rise.
I should calm, feel better. But I don’t.
Standing, there’s an audience behind me now.
Knight. Darcy.
Lizette.
Darcy leaves, muttering.
Knight’s pissed off.
And Lizette?
Oh, sweet fucking Lizette.
I’m not finished with her.
The bloodletting, the primal, pagan killing hasn’t softened a thing. Something savage now prowls my veins. Ravenous for her. For a punishment. For a feast only Angel can give me.
“Out, Knight.” I don’t look at him.
I settle my gaze on Lizette.
“My office,” I say, my voice a primal rumble. “Now.”