Chapter 21
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Killian
“ I sn’t this fucking cute? Holding hands.
My heart might actually be in danger of beating.
” I glance at Iris, then at a smug Xavier and place a hand against my chest. “No. Nothing.” I look at the old-fashioned exercise book I have, and pencil in a note about what we need more of for the next shipment.
Iris snatches her hand away and a sliver of glee passes through my blood.
“Must have just been indigestion,” I say.
The small back room seems crowded. It’s not big, but the size hasn’t bothered me ever before. I set the book on a barrel and lean against shelving.
Are we low? I just got the shipment.
I think about not answering Xavier.
But it seems a little petty. They didn’t fuck. Sex doesn’t permeate the air.
Need does.
Desire.
Some of that might be from me as well as him. And her. But her desire has the wildness of spring to it. Like she’s waiting to be pollenated.
My fucking whimsy needs a quick and brutal death.
She smells like an Omega on the cusp of heat, an early scent that tantalizes and excites.
No, I sign to him. Thinking of things we should get in. I like thinking ahead. And why the fuck were you two holding hands?
Jealous?
I sign back, Not in the least.
And I’m not.
After all, her clothes are in an intact state, and I know he wants her like I do, but it’s not a wanting her for himself.
Usually the girls we keep as our own don’t ever appeal to us both. It’s like a connection happens, and the air crackles with something I can’t define when a female we’re going to share steps into the same space with us.
Sometimes it’s just a wanting, other times we know it’ll happen.
Iris… Fuck. I don’t know. I should let him have her and keep the fuck away.
Xavier always likes the catnip scent of upper-class women.
There are so many who like to play, and he likes to indulge.
Almost as if fucking one of them protects him.
I’ve seen the man carry a crush so delicate, so big, for a female from his class and he hasn’t done a thing about it.
Guided her to others.
The catnip call of upper class is also a shield for him.
I just don’t like them. They’re fucking trouble. The only good an upper-class woman’s done for us is give us Emmie.
And this one?
She’s going to give us something, too.
Eyes, as they say, on the prize.
If I get to have fun then so be it, the three of us can have fun, and pretty Iris can take that with her when she goes. When her fat, rich mate grunts and wheezes on her and fills her with his fucked offspring she can fantasize about us.
Even if we change things, she’ll still have that mate. He’ll be old, too. Ugly. Probably spectacularly un-endowed and not know what to do with it.
Fuck, he wouldn’t know the gift of a brat if he tripped over Iris.
I’d hate him if he wasn’t so fucking pathetic and made?—
“You broke your pencil,” Iris says, eyes narrowed and on me as though she can read my mind.
“Things on my mind.”
“Like what?”
“You,” I murmur silkily.
She swallows and takes a step back, running into Xavier.
Asshole , Xavier says in my head.
True. But I don’t explain myself.
“How did I make you break a pencil?” She asks, taking a step forward, curiosity shining bright as she looks around the small room, skirting me as much as she can. “Is this where you keep your contraband?”
Xavier grins and gives his head a small shake.
I let out an irritated sigh, just indulgent enough to get her all annoyed.
Iris glares as she stands in the shadows.
“You’re a brat in need of discipline.”
A tremor runs through her, upping that scent, the sweetness of iris flowers, the musk and spice and spring of that real scent surging to the front.
Icy’s all excited by the thought.
Xavier signs at me, Is this really the time?
Probably not.
She picks up an old bottle and examines it.
The bottle’s full and the label only has an etching of a silhouette on the rocks of a wild sea, hair whipping out, face raised up.
It’s a bottle of Siren rum, old, expensive and it means nothing to her clearly, and then she sets it down on the rack.
I know how this looks back here, the room off the alley.
Ugly and utilitarian, different to the bar itself.
Not that the main bar’s overly pretty, but this is just nuts and bolts with barrels and crates and shelves of booze.
The door’s usually shut between the bar and here.
We keep most of the legit supplies that need to be put away here, a few choice old bottles of expensive bribe bottles like the Siren, along with the backups for the bar.
But basic is what it fucking is.
Then again, Iris isn’t privy to anything here, so if it’s not up to Princess Icy’s damned standards, I don’t give a damn.
Iris takes in the room and then she turns those quizzical eyes on me, and as she steps into the harsh light I take her in.
She’s a sight, from the hairdo that’s meant to be romantic and would suit her if she happened to be a dowager, down to the horrible gown.
“Is—”
Stopping, I take her in all over again. The hair and dress just aren’t hideous, her hair’s a little askew and there’s a bruise on her throat.
I drop my gaze down. On her wrists, too.
I take in the tears on the glittery ruffles of her dress—some a little torn—and can imagine bruises on her inner thighs.
Something very dark, very ugly moves through me.
I meet Xavier’s gaze.
Not at him taking a piece, but in the way—I stop. Recalibrate and the darkness burns now, hot, with a jagged edge.
Xavier didn’t touch her.
He’ll play rough, but at the request of the girl. And he looks like he stepped out of some fucking hip magazine. Not a thread is astray.
I narrow my eyes.
Suddenly I want it to be from a little rough and tumble play with Xav.
Not. Me.
Those two words slam into my guts.
I turn to him.
She’s fucking fine.
I wait. Holding the eye contact. He doesn’t continue so I throw out angry, sharp signing, Do I need to kill someone? Feed them their own entrails right after I rip them out?
Calm down, he signs back. They tried to scare her, and I took care of them.
They? I sign this slow, deliberate. I want names, addresses, weapons. Fuck, I want to castrate them in the most extreme way possible for daring to touch property that isn’t theirs to even look at.
I don’t even need weapons.
Two of them. Young. Drunk. I took care of them like I just said, Kil.
Six feet under? Because he doesn’t mean scare. He means assault, and he’s trying to smooth the edges of my anger so I don’t scare her.
But the thing about Icy is she’s a fuck of a lot braver than he might think. Resilient, too. Not that Omega girls are my thing anymore. Not rich ones.
No, he signs. But like I keep saying, I took care of them. Happy?
That’s a complicated word.
“This some kind of date?” I ask him. “When I said to watch her, I meant keep an eye on her and follow her to the rendezvous point. Not hold hands like you’re thirteen, Xav.”
He looks heavenward.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” she snaps, crossing her arms.
I smile. “Sweet Icy, he wasn’t meant to babysit, he was meant to keep his hands to himself and make sure you didn’t bring the Council down on us.”
“And here I thought this was a date,” she says, sarcastically. She arches a brow and looks around. “I assume this where you bring all your dates, you seem the type. Next time let me know and I’ll dress up for the occasion.”
Girl’s got claws, Kil, you should watch it. Maybe your charm’s met the proverbial brick wall, Xavier signs.
Asshole.
“Don’t do that. I like my women wearing what I dictate them to wear.”
“A real modern man,” she says.
“I am. And I know what I like women wearing.” I flick my gaze over her ridiculous dress.
She narrows her eyes. “And what’s that? A potato sack? Lingerie?”
I step up to her but I don’t touch. Something tells me touching her right now’s dangerous and wrong. I believe Xavier when he says she’s fine.
The guys didn’t get far at all, but still there’s a tremor she can’t control and a tiny, involuntary step back. So yeah, I don’t touch.
I do move in closer. “Interesting choices.”
She smells a little stronger, all those blooming fucking irises with their subtly tantalizing scent under her blocker that reacts to her skin.
Abruptly I move away. Because too close, and I get why those two Alphas wanted her.
“I don’t care. I didn’t run off from the ball to be taunted, Killian. Why are we here and not at the spot you texted?”
“Because that’s not where it is.”
Fuck, Kil. Nice one , Xavier signs and I ignore him.
Her eyes narrow. “You think just because I’m young and come from the Upper Side you can fuck with me? I looked it up. You were sending me to the worst street in the Lower Side, and?—”
“Calm down, Icy, it’s not the worst street.” I give her a slow smile and I pull down a bottle of unlabeled small batch whiskey and take a sip. “Second or third worst at best.”
She stalks up, the dainty shoes that aren’t her peeking out as she does so and she snatches the bottle from me and necks some. Color me fucking impressed. “And you were leaving me there.”
“C’mon, Icy,” I say, taking the bottle back as Xavier slips around us, “I’d have been there, watching, and then picked you up.”
“Pick me up, like what? A common hooker?”
I smile slowly now, my prey in my sights.
“You think you’d be above common? What makes a hooker common?
Or uncommon?” I say, stepping right up so there’s almost no space between us now.
“Let’s focus on uncommon. What kind of skills does your upper-class Sabine schoolgirl upbringing hide?
Are you good with your mouth? Or are you all access all the time in all the ways? ”
Killian .
Somehow it’s a snarl in my head from Xavier. After we both marked Tamara, and after all the time we’ve spent together, sometimes we’re able to feel each other in our minds. Like a sixth sense, and Xav’s warning is coming in loud and clear. She just got assaulted and I’m pushing buttons.
But she’s holding up, head high, cheeks stained, pupil’s black and wide.
She’s so fucking edible my stomach wants to growl.
Kil.
There he is again, poking my brain.
“Maybe you and I and Xav here can skip the meeting and get to know you and you can practice those skills?—”
And suddenly a voice pipes up, shattering the mood.
“What skills, Daddy? And what’s a snooker?”