8. malakai #3
“My friends told me you were dangerous,” she said, and there was something deliberate about the way she gave me the words. She wanted to see what I would do with them.
I set the letter opener down on the nearest desk without taking my eyes off her. “Your friends talk about me?”
“They talk about all three of you.” Her fingers moved to the front of my shirt, not quite touching at first. “Mostly warnings.”
She was still pushing, testing me. Echo had spent the last hour threatening a man she hated, pulling a letter opener on him, and now she was standing in a locked room with someone she had been told not to trust. Instead of backing off, she was leaning closer.
I stepped into her space until there was barely room left between us. “And you decided to ignore them.”
“I decided I’d rather figure you out myself.”
Her hand finally closed in my shirt. The movement was small, but it dragged my attention down to her mouth and back again.
I had been thinking about her since the hallway.
Watching her with Nichlas had made it worse.
She had looked happy when he was frightened.
Hurt when he mentioned her family. Furious when he tried to turn what he had done into something noble.
None of it had felt rehearsed. Every reaction had been hers, even the ugly ones.
I wanted more of them.
“What did he do?” I asked.
Echo’s hand tightened.
“Nichlas.”
“I know who you meant.”
She looked toward the door again, and for a second I thought she might refuse.
Then her attention came back to me. “He was my boyfriend. He knew what I was doing, knew what mattered, knew what would happen if the wrong people got their hands on it. Then he got scared and handed them my ledger anyway.”
I remembered the pieces I had heard in the corridor. “And ran.”
“Of course he ran.” Her mouth twisted, but the anger underneath it was too raw to be amusement. “That’s the part he keeps dressing up. He was scared, so he chose himself. Fine. People are cowards every day. But now he wants me to believe he did it for me too.”
Something in the way she said it made me understand why she had not killed him earlier. She was still angry enough to hurt him, but there was something tangled up inside that anger. Betrayal only worked if somebody had mattered first.
“You loved him, didn’t you?”
Echo scoffed so hard it almost became a laugh.
Whatever reaction I had expected, that wasn’t it.
She loosened her fist in my shirt just enough to look at me properly, like I had somehow managed to disappoint her.
“I could never love someone like that. He was easy, pliable, and had a dick that worked. You’d be surprised how rare that combination is. ”
That made considerably more sense with the woman I had just watched drag him against a wall.
There had been anger in her when Nichlas tried to explain himself, but I had mistaken the source of it.
Nichlas had betrayed her, nearly gotten her killed, and disappeared somewhere he thought she could never reach him. She had come to settle an account.
I let my gaze move over her face. “Sounds like you should’ve found a better dick.”
Her mouth twitched. “I didn’t know I needed to shop around. He was convenient.”
“And apparently disappointing.”
“I said it worked.” She shifted closer, her fingers sliding higher against my shirt. “That’s not the same thing as impressive.”
I liked the distinction more than I should have. I liked everything about the way she spoke about Nichlas now that I understood what had actually existed between them.
“So all of this is because he betrayed you.”
Echo’s fingers reached the base of my throat. “He handed people something that could’ve gotten me killed, ran, and apparently thought changing schools made us even. I don’t leave accounts open.”
I caught her wrist without moving her hand away. “And here I thought you crossed the country for an ex.”
“I crossed the country because I’m persistent. Nichlas just happened to be at the end of the trip.”
That explanation seemed to better fit the Echo I had watched in the corridor, the one who had looked happier the more frightened Nichlas became.
I tightened my hand around her wrist and stepped closer until the remaining space between us disappeared.
“Still think you could’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble with better taste. ”
“In men?”
“In dick.”
This time she actually laughed, low and brief, and the sound did something immediate to me. “You seem very invested in fixing a problem I didn’t know I had.”
“I’m generous.”
“No. You’re nosy.”
“Also true.” My hand slid from her wrist to her waist, and she let it. More than that, she moved into it, pressing closer until I could feel the heat of her through both our clothes. “But if Nichlas was the standard, you’ve been cheated.”
Her gaze stayed on mine. “That confident?”
“I’ve had time to think about it.”
“Since when?”
“Since you nearly walked into me.”
Something sharpened in her expression at that, interest replacing the last of the irritation she had carried in from the hallway.
Her hand finally closed around the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair as she drew me down just enough to make the invitation obvious without giving me the satisfaction of the kiss yet.
I leaned into her hold. “You need someone better to fuck.”
Echo’s eyes dropped to my mouth again. This time when she looked back up, she didn’t bother pretending she was considering it.
“Show me.”
I kissed her.
There was nothing careful about it. She met me with the same force, one hand twisted in the front of my sweater and the other already fisted in the short hair at the back of my skull, yanking me down.
The second her back hit the door, she sank her teeth into my lower lip hard enough to break skin.
Blood welled. I tasted it and laughed into her mouth because the sound of her trying to hurt me while she was already grinding against my cock was the single most interesting thing that had happened all day.