Chapter 13
13
“ Y our vitals are looking wonderful, Posey.”
Doc pops his stethoscope out of his ears and steps back, wrapping the cord on itself.
“Please, just call me Poe.”
“Well, Poe, I’m pleased to say there’s no arrhythmia or irregularities I can detect right now. We can run another physical in a month or so to be sure. Once I get these bloods taken a look at, I’ll be able to confirm for certain that you’re out the other side.”
He flashes a look my way before continuing.
“For certain?” Her brow creases as she shifts her weight while perched on the edge of the gurney.
“We just want to make sure… there are a few specifics only the lab results will allow us to look at.”
“What kinds of things should I be concerned about?”
Doc pushes his sweater up his forearms, then takes his glasses off. Another glance my way.
“Just spit it out, you handsome prick.” I fold my arms and shake my head.
The three of us are all gathered inside my workshop in order for Doc to look over the girl. She’s been quiet as a field mouse this morning, and while I wouldn’t have minded having a bit of spitfire to contend with and maybe need to tame, I’ve let her traipse after me as we left the house and made our way to my darkened little corner of the mansion.
“We don’t know for certain if they administered any of the drugs during your captivity by needle, so that’s one area of potential concern.”
Her dark eyes widen. “I don’t think—”
“You wouldn’t know without any shred of doubt, though, would you, love?” I ask.
She gives me a look that holds enough pain to soften even the hardest of hearts. It’s no wonder Angel fell so goddamn hard and fast for her.
He can’t stand seeing anyone else suffering.
Doc clears his throat. “There’s also the matter of venereal diseases. Things of that nature.”
The silence in here is oppressive.
“Not to mention the risk of pregnancy.”
She sucks in a hasty breath.
“No. There’s no way.” All the blood drains from her face like a falling tide. I swear this girl looks like she’s about to pass out.
Ever the gentleman, Doc moves forward, about to reassure her because that’s just the type of good fucking man he is, but something jolts inside me.
I’m beside her before Doc has even taken a step.
“It’ll be fine. We’ll make sure of it.” With one hand, I tilt her chin, letting our eyes meet.
The dark, ebony depths well up with tears as she blinks hard and fast.
She’s got the kind of heart-shaped face that makes her look even younger than her age. Thick lashes flutter over naturally bronzed skin. A prominent cupid’s bow beneath an elegant nose. Posey Reed is the type of beauty that will continue to grow old while still hanging onto a youthfulness some people chase and chase and chase without success.
This girl will probably still get carded buying alcohol when she’s in her forties.
I can’t find myself attracted. I just fucking can’t.
She’s not ours.
“They didn’t do anything…” The words struggle to get past her lips. “I know I was out of it, that I was drugged up, but I know enough. That much I can remember.”
Doc collects his bag, looking long and hard at me as he does so.
“I’ll leave you to it, but I’ll send through the lab results before this evening.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“Take care of yourself, Poe.”
She mumbles something polite in reply. Except I can see her mind is anywhere but with the man departing the room.
“Coffee?” I step back. Putting a little distance between us now that I know she’s not going to sway off this gurney and split her skull on the concrete floor.
“I think I just want to go back to my room.”
“C’mon, it’ll do you good.” Crossing the floor, I feel her gaze fall on my back. “Hazelnut and extra sweet, hmm?”
I can already hear her curiosity before she opens her mouth.
“You have coffee … down here?”
“Well, I’m not exactly going to walk my ass all the way upstairs to the club every time I need caffeine now, am I? Besides, Hawke got pissy with me leaving bloodstains on the carpet.”
As she stops beside me, inspecting the coffee machine in question, her pretty little head tilts to one side. Those dark eyes narrow on me.
“How do you have hazelnut creamer here?”
“So suspicious for such a little thing. ”
“Can you blame me?”
“I knew we were meeting Doc here today. Asked them to stock what your preference would be.”
“Everyone seems to know everything about me,” she mutters to herself, as her curiosity draws her to examine the shelves along one wall with my trophy jars. With arms wrapped around her stomach, she stops periodically and dips closer to get a better look at the various floating organs.
“Hope you’ve got a strong stomach.” I watch the golden crema drip into the cup. “Not everyone is built for this particular area of Noire House.”
She pauses and tilts her head to read the label on one of the bottles of preserving alcohol.
“And yet here you are, flourishing amongst it all.”
“Is that your way of telling me I look hot while I’m at work? I’ll take the compliment, little flower.”
She exhales heavily.
“You can call me Poe, you know.”
I cross over to her with coffee in hand and let my gaze dip down her body for a moment. “Take it you don’t like being called Posey.”
She shakes her head; loose hairs skimming that delicate jawline.
“Is Grey your actual name? Or a nickname?” As she cradles the coffee between her palms, she rests against the workbench at her back.
“It’s what I prefer.”
“You don’t like your full name either?”
“Something like that.” I sip my coffee, watching her as I do so. “It’s full to the brim with cyanide. Arsenic, too. Made sure to stir as much in as possible while you weren’t looking.” It’s obvious in the way she’s hesitant to bring it to her lips.
That night she’d first woken up, Angel had texted me an endless string of updates. In amongst them all was one saying she had been reluctant to trust any food or drink.
“Not funny.” She gnaws on her bottom lip.
“Be a whole lot funnier if we went to all this effort to get you healthy, only for me to successfully poison you down here in my workshop.”
Her lips twitch.
I’m getting closer to cracking that brusque exterior, I know it.
“All for the sake of hazelnut fucking coffee.” I press.
“Fine. Fine. I’ll drink your stupid coffee.” Rolling her eyes at me, she takes a big sip.
As the taste hits her tongue, I see the way her shoulders visibly sag a little with relief.
“So this really is your murder room, huh?” With a little dart of her tongue she licks her lips, then wanders further along the array of shelved specimens. “Are those all tongues?” Her nose wrinkles.
My gaze follows hers toward the large glass jar in question.
“Yup.”
“Did you…” With her thumb and forefinger, Poe mimes a pair of forceps pinching together, making the action of a crab claw in the direction of her mouth.
That makes me chuckle. “Every single one.”
A shiver runs through her.
She’s quiet for a long moment, and I watch on as this intriguing specimen continues to wander and drink her coffee like she’s exploring a natural history museum on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
“Even if they had—you know—which they didn’t—” Her voice is soft, but floats across the room. “I can’t be pregnant. I’m on the shot.”
Why that makes my chest tighten, I couldn’t say. She might be gorgeous, but ultimately, she cannot mean anything to any of us. None of this shit is our concern in the slightest. We’re just here to continue Poe’s initiation, to follow orders, and in doing so, make sure we keep our own goddamn necks intact.
“It might not have been effective, especially after doping you up so heavily. Can’t hurt to make sure.” I roam my fingers over the short strands of hair on top of my head.
“Well, I know they didn’t succeed on that front.” She keeps walking, browsing the minutiae of my life that exists within this basement.
“When will you require another? The shot, I mean.” I study her profile even though it’s probably a terrible idea, and I try to tell myself that I’ll be able to look away any time I please.
Poe lifts one shoulder. “Maybe I don’t. Whoever it is that supposedly owns me might want me ripe and fit for impregnating for all I know, right? Unless you’ve got their number, and we can just call them right now and hash out the deal? Figure out what status they want their new pet’s uterus to be in.”
She says the words calmly, but I can feel the hurt rolling off her from across the room. As she leans forward to look at my mask situated on the shelf, strands of hair fall in her face and she hooks them absently behind her ear.
For once, I don’t have a smart reply, or a quip to bat back her way.
“So, you’re copper. ” Poe changes the subject, reaching out to brush a finger over the hollow eye socket. “Angel has the bloodied mask… and doesn’t talk. Then there’s the asshole with the God complex and gold mask.”
My lips curl. “Fitting, no? Gold for the god of this place.”
“He runs Noire House?”
“Hawke oversees everything, but he isn’t the man at the top. He’s worked his way up from the very bottom rung, earned his current position, and done what was necessary in exchange for his soul along the way. ”
“ Hawke .” She repeats his name. Slowly testing the letters as they gust over her tongue.
“An irredeemable asshole, Hawke Calliano most certainly is, but infuriatingly he’s also the kind you would crawl over broken glass to defend and pledge yourself to, because I can tell you now, he’s one of the best.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like him.”
“No. In fact, you can hate Hawke all night long if you like. In multiple ways and positions, too. He won’t mind.”
Poe rounds on me with a disapproving look, and it’s too adorable. Fuck my luck, this is the girl we have to do this with.
“Does Angel ever talk?”
“Not in all the time I’ve known him.”
She thinks on that for a moment. “Is he able to? Or just not at all?”
“Maybe you should ask him.”
Poe gives me another withering look, and I let my lips tip up on one side.
“This secret society underworld thing…” She places her empty cup down, then hoists herself up to sit on the edge of the stainless-steel workbench. “What are you gonna do? Smuggle me onboard your supervillain yacht? Take me to an underground bunker?”
I leave my own coffee on the table and fold my arms.
“Haven’t you ever wondered who really makes the decisions? Who controls the markets and the news? Who decides if you’re going to go home to your miserable little life?”
“I liked my life.”
“No, you didn’t. You don’t have to pretend with me.”
Her mouth opens and closes with a soundless argument before eventually finding her choice of words to clarify. “I like having my freedom.”
“Maybe you’ll find it, just in a different way to what your tiny existence and previous set of rules looked like. ”
This time, she averts her eyes.
“This Hawke… is he the one who decides all this?”
“No, not him. There are times when you have to follow orders without question, and this is one of those instances. Sorry if that isn’t the answer you want to hear, love, but it’s the truth.”
She tugs at the sleeve of her oversized black sweater.
“Do the three of you do that… often?” Poe says, after a pause.
“Might have to elaborate on that.” I know exactly what she means, but I’m being an asshole and intend on forcing her to talk about that night. Just to see how she thinks about it. About us.
I should want her to hate us. That would make everything so much fucking easier. Yet, there’s a spark flickering and glowing deep in my gut that makes it so much harder to ignore the reality of how it was between the four of us.
“What you did. Sharing me. Initiating unsuspecting women into this place.”
“You know this mansion is a sex club? All those floors above our heads are dedicated to the endless ways people chase after pleasure and fantasies.”
“So that’s a yes?” There’s something dangerously like disappointment in her voice.
“We haven’t been required to initiate someone before.”
“But you’ve gang-banged plenty of chicks… got it.” This time, she really does let that crack appear, and she slides off the table.
“I’ll walk back to the house. You don’t have to worry about me trying to escape or anything; I know you’re only gonna hunt me down again, so there’s no point.”
I’m standing in front of her before I realize my feet have moved.
“You want to know things, little flower?” My hands find the edge of the stainless steel, caging her in. As her breath puffs out in a mix of surprise and irritation, her scent of sweet summer rain mixed with the hazelnut left on her lips drifts over me, taking me right back to that night and her and all the ways we got to be this tantalizingly close and more.
“Hawke doesn’t attach himself to anything or anybody. He comes and goes from that house we share like he’s nothing more than a shadow. Angel and myself, on a rare occasion, like to play with others. But I’ll tell you this right now, we might enjoy a fuck every now and then, but we’re not running around chasing after pussy every night, and we’re certainly not preying on anyone.”
She doesn’t know where to look. As I study her eyes, I wait for the moment they might flicker up to hold mine, but she refuses. Instead, her gaze bounces across my jaw, my Adam’s apple, down to the open collar on the front of my shirt.
Her throat works down a swallow, followed by a brief dart of her tongue to wet her lips.
“Pain is the job, love.” Stepping back, I gesture toward the door with my chin. Letting her go.
“However, I’ve got all the time in the world to dish out pleasure for those who deserve it.”