Chapter 16
16
ROBE
“He’ll warm up to her sometime.” Jon nudged my shoulder with his beefcake of an arm. Hell, the man made me look small.
“He blames her.” I stared into the forest, but the green wall remained still.
From Alan’s and Will’s intel, I had nothing. Gideon’s stronghold remained vacant.
“You know he will.” Jon planted his feet.
“I don’t think warming up to her is likely at this point,” I murmured, “though there’s a chance.” A slim one.
“I fucking won’t,” Miller grumbled somewhere around the region of my ankles. He disappeared into the dim light and then reappeared, his chest heaving.
I leaned over the veranda railing to peer into the depths beyond. “What the fuck are you doing down there?”
“Burying bodies.”
“Not under my fucking house.” Not that I cared, but the smell of dead things got to me after a bit.
“You’re in a right mood.” Alan pressed a froufrou of a pink drink into my hand. “Taste test?” He fluttered his lashes. Pastel pink glitter floated from his lashes onto the back of my hand. “Please?”
“Are you going to serve this to Mari?” I peered with no little dose of suspicion into the glittery depths, where tiny pearls danced in the bottom of the slanted glass.
“Thought it might sweeten Miller up.”
I snorted. “Good fucking luck with that.” Wrinkling my nose, I tossed the cotton-candy confection back. Sugar slapped the back of my throat. I prepared to gag on the rest when ginger and something green refreshed my palette. “That’s… good?”
“Excellent. Thank you.” Alan gave a swift bow, liberated my glass, and sashayed back to the bar.
My knees connected with the hardwood boards beneath my feet before I slumped. The ground came up at me fast. Both arms rose too slowly, and my nose crunched against the floorboards on impact.
“Six seconds. Might be your record. Good job,” Jon congratulated the stripper.
“Mmm. Could have overdone it on the sweetness.” Alan’s voice came from far away as I tried not to hurl the drink up on my own boots.
“That better not be for Mari,” I grated as I attempted to stand—and failed.
“Of course not.” Alan had the grace to look offended. “I would never hurt my girl.”
“She’s mine.” The words fell out of my mouth before I managed to raise my head all the way. Both knees solid beneath me, I tried to push up and couldn’t. I blamed whatever Alan had drugged me with that I felt zero embarrassment at exposing my feelings for Mari in front of them. “Not yours.”
“If you say so, sir.” Alan winked. “Stand?”
Biting back a groan, I pushed upward a second time. My legs trembled like a dancer with hungry feet, but they held. “Satisfied?”
Alan grinned and slapped me.
My cheek burned. Not a soft blow, but the kid had a plan, and I wasn’t privy to the intended outcome.
I stared. “Do you have a death wish?”
“Nope. Slap me back?”
“You do have a death wish.” I raised a hand—or at least I tried to lift one. Nothing happened. My fingers twitched at my side, but for the time being, my limits included not lying face down on the deck. “This better wear off.”
“I’m not wiping his ass,” Miller yelled from beneath us.
“Noted.” I took a swift catalog of body parts that appeared to be within my control. “What’d you use?”
“Vodka, triple sec, Cointreau, and ginger root. Oh, and mint. Quite yummy,” Alan replied, ticking off his ingredient list on long fingers, then licked his lips. “That drink is for Mari.”
“What else?” I ground my teeth together as feeling returned to my extremities. “Don’t fuck me around or I’ll slap you back, kid.”
Alan grinned and raised his hand. A slim ring was wrapped around one finger, plain and dull. When he turned his hand, it revealed a small spike sporting a lethal-looking pinprick point on the back, covered with a tiny glob of resin. “Coastal taipan venom. Small amount. Useless if drunk, very effective when mixed with GHB that can be applied topically. Through the skin. Liquid X on speed during cocktail hour,” he added at my blank look.
“Terrific. Who are we date-raping?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. A baddie here, a baddie there.” Alan fluttered his hand, showing me his ringless fingers.
“Damn quick,” Jon stage-whispered in my ear.
I nodded. I hadn’t seen him remove the poison ring either. “No missions without a plan. My plan.”
“Fine.” Alan pursed his lips and drew an image out of his pocket of a tall man with dark hair sporting a face we all knew too well. “Here’s a target I prepared earlier.”
Beside me, Jon’s breath picked up.
“No.” I clenched my teeth to the grinding point, ignoring the ache blooming in my jaw.
“But—” Alan objected.
I raised my hand, glad to have full control of my body back. “I said no, Alan. We’re not murdering, assaulting, or otherwise harming the mayor of New York City.” I cast a sideways glance Jon’s way. The big man stood rock still, his face pasty. I offered him a humorless smile. “No matter what sort of psychotic asshole George Petersen is.”
“But, Robe?—”
“I said no , Alan . It’s too dangerous, and you jeopardize the lives we’ve built here, plus who knows how many others, by playing games when we can’t be certain of the outcome.” I tramped down the stairs, intent on hiding beneath the house to avoid the discussion under the cover of working out what the hell Miller had dug up that really did stink. “My answer is no.”
“You’re no fun,” Alan called to my retreating back.
I didn’t respond.
* * *
Working again felt good. My shoulders took the strain of moving earth beneath the house at a half crouch. I’d straightened early on and crowned myself on the damned underside of the cabin, and the faint throbbing in my head was enough to make sure I kept it ducked down.
“Dig there.” Miller pointed out the low spots surrounding the footings. He followed me around like a nursemaid, hauling a sackcloth loaded with gravel to drop into the pits I dug to create a net of drainage aimed at preventing the entire place from rotting prematurely.
“Yes, sir.”
“About damn time.” Breath whooshed from him as he hurled what looked like half a ton of gravel into the purpose-built hole. “Offer respect more often, little apprentice.”
I grimaced and attempted to straighten my back. “I thought respect was a thing you showed for your elder.”
“Nah, you’re turning into a cripple, old man.” Miller returned to the heap of gravel that seemed to grow on its own beneath my house.
I straightened and banged my head on a length of timber I laid beneath the house to give it structure when I built the thing. A hiss slid between my teeth as I rubbed the offended patch beneath my hair, grateful for the distraction the bite of pain offered. Miller was right, even if he didn’t recognize it. I’d hit grumpy old man before I’d even made it to forty.
While I didn’t have the option of a future, he did. Miller knew he held all the cards—his main one being the option to throw me under the bus to get himself a short stint in military holdings and eventual freedom, though so far he’d refused to use it.
Same with Alan and Jon. I didn’t want to be responsible for removing what little chance they had left for some semblance of a normal life they could garner outside my literal patch of the woods. Every time I tried to kick one of them out, the assholes kept on coming back.
Grumbling under my breath, I scooted out from beneath the house, taking perverse joy in the simple action of straightening my spine. Something cracked and creaked, and I was pretty sure the sounds came from me.
“You’re falling apart.” Mari startled me out of my reverie.
“Starting to,” I grunted, pounding at a muscle that chose that moment to knot my shoulder into the semblance of a pretzel I couldn’t undo.
“Mmm.”
I opened my eyes and stared down at her.
She stared right back. Something akin to defiance flickered in her gaze.
Lowering my hand from my shoulder, I took a step closer, then another until I crowded her space in the middle of the clearing, much like I had the first time I met her.
She didn’t flinch or shove me back. Mari’s conflict-avoidance strategy seemed out of character enough for me to give her a little push.
“Talk.”
“About?”
My gaze narrowed. I dropped my hands to her waist and gave myself a single, opulent moment to sear the impression of her violent curves that hollowed between hip and rib in a slope I could fit my hands around before pulling her body hard against mine. The soft swells of her breasts contacted my chest. My heart raced in tandem with hers.
She sucked in rapid, shallow breaths, her thick lashes flared wide. Still, she didn’t pull away. All those nights sleeping with her tucked to my chest must have twigged something inside that busy brain of hers.
“Don’t you brat out on me, girl.”
“Who said anything about bratting out?” She smiled, a coy little thing that curved her soft lips into a wanton smile.
A smile that went straight to my cock. Flipping her around and fucking her against the nearest tree might be wrong, but it didn’t make the fantasy any less appealing.
“Don’t test me, Mari,” I growled into her face, tightening my hands on her hips, waiting for her to freak out and back away from me.
She did neither.
The single reaction that’s held true about you, pretty girl.
She never ran from me or flinched in true fear, and I loved that about her.
She pushed up on her toes, her slim arms curled around my neck, putting that luscious-as-fuck mouth inches from my own. “What’s there to test?”
Visions of Alan ravaging her mouth, his hand sunk deep between the vee of her legs, colored my vision red. A feral growl broke in my chest. I held her gaze, then dropped mine to her lips. My own tingled in response as I dipped my head.
The hell are you doing? She’s been abused, asshole.
She’d also been living in my house for the better part of four months, during which my entire household fell head over heels and giddy as fuck for her.
Though Alan had proved me wrong for all the right reasons, I still couldn’t bring myself to tear through that barrier for fear of hurting her. Their dynamic was special, and Mari and I… we didn’t share that connection. I suspected that every man in the house had similarly taken the opportunity to test their strength of will during the hours I gave her to them for training.
I sucked in a short, fortifying breath and moved her backward, untangling her arms from my neck with a methodical efficiency designed to retain my sanity and preserve her honor at the same time.
“Go inside, Mari. Stay safe.”
“From whom?” Her liquid eyes shimmered. She wound her arms around herself, highlighting how thin she’d become despite Jon gently pushing her to eat like a mother hen. Her bones still protruded at sharp angles from beneath the pale pink knitted thing Alan had acquired for her.
From the monsters who roam the woods. From me.
I raked a hand through my hair, spinning on my heel. The lure she dangled was a hell of a lot easier to ignore if I couldn’t see her, though the fresh scent of lilies lingered where she’d wrapped her body around mine.
Long after she left me to torture myself with a fantasy I should have made a reality, I realized she hadn’t asked which monsters I wanted to protect her from.
She asked who.