Chapter 9
NINE
GEMMA
“King, huh?” Something inscrutable flickered in his eyes, as if he knew something I didn’t. Before I could press, he continued. “Couldn’t I be your white knight?” He stepped closer, forcing me to take a step back, until I was flush against the window. “Rescuing you from captivity.”
I looked over his shoulder, at the party. Everyone was now too busy fawning over the gift bags my mother had procured. For once, no eyes were on me.
“My white knight?” I arched a brow at HSOG—the prince.
Maybe in a fairy tale. Where princes were noble, where someone like me was virtuous. But this was not a fairy tale, and this prince’s eyes had too much darkness to be my savior.
“What’s an innocent girl like you doing indebted to the Horsemen, anyway?” he asked.
“If you’re hoping I’m an innocent girl, you’re going to be very disappointed.”
He took a drink, smiling into his glass. “That so?”
I shrugged like maybe. “For a prince, you sure know a lot about the Underworld.”
“It’s a world not dissimilar from this.” He gestured around us.
“How so?”
“There are rules to follow and consequences for breaking them, like never touch someone who is claimed.”
I was taught at a young age to never be too eager.
If I asked a question, it could never belie my ignorance.
But Grim knew everything about me. He knew my deepest, darkest secrets, and I know nothing about his world beyond rumor.
This was the most I’d learned about Grim’s world in the years I’d known him.
So I did the unthinkable—I let myself be curious.
“What does that mean?” I asked. “Claimed?”
Prince HSOG’s blue eyes glimmered, as if he could see the war between propriety and curiosity raging in my head.
“A claim is the only thing respected more than a debt. That’s why they mark the claimed with a tattoo. So everyone knows.”
Unmarked. Unclaimed.
The words he’d spoken when we first met suddenly took on a new meaning.
“Until she has a tattoo, she’s up for grabs.
Once she’s marked, even the wrong look can be considered a declaration of war, but—”He leaned in like he was about to let me in on some big conspiracy.
“—it goes both ways. The Reaper's girl—or anyone who is publicly claimed—has a target on her head. They’ll want to hurt her, just to hurt him.”
“What people?”
He shrugged. “Rival factions. Petty criminals trying to climb the ladder. You name it, anyone trying to grasp a semblance of power.”
My eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
He smiled in response, teeth white and sharp. “So, you never did answer me. What are you doing talking to a guy like me?”
With that, he closed the line of questioning. Things like the Underworld didn’t exist anymore, our world was tea. It was like the sound turned back on. Soft, plastic laughter, the clinking of tea glasses, a sharp gasp as someone listened to juicy gossip.
What am I doing talking to him? Well, I’d wanted to know about his connection to Grim. But outside of that…
“I guess I’m here for you.” He arched a brow, and I explained. “My mother told me to seduce you in order to stop bringing shame to our family.”
He laughed.
“So then if I did this, your mother would approve?” He snaked his hand around my hip, grasping so tight I nearly gasped.
“Very much so.”
He stepped closer until I could taste spicy cigar smoke on his breath. “And if I kissed you?”
“She would be ecstatic.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He leaned forward and I sucked in a breath. This was so not proper. Maybe he would kiss me. Maybe I would let him. Get my mom off my back and piss off Grim.
Two birds and all that.
Then, all at once, he stepped back. I followed his stare and found his guards at the door, gesturing for him.
“Until next time, Gemma.”
I watched him leave. That tiny bit of excitement—of relief—from this world drained out of me. I felt wooden. Stuck.
My mother was still by the window, showing a new batch of victims her famous garden. I took the opportunity to slink out unnoticed.
Reaper’s girl.
If I became the Reaper’s girl, I’d have more targets on my head than I could count. If I became the Reaper’s girl…my life wouldn’t belong to me. My life would be entangled with his.
I don’t know why the idea sent hot, tingling shivers down my spine.
I could never be claimed. I couldn’t be Gemma Crowne and the Reaper’s girl.
When I got to my wing, my friends were already there. Blaire lay on my ivory couch, scrolling on her phone with one heel still on her foot, the other dropped unceremoniously to the floor.
Kennedy did lines on the coffee table next to her.
This wasn’t unusual. They often sneaked in here to get high. Hearing me, they turned their heads in unison.
“You started without me,” I said, and dropped down next to them to do a line. “Rude.”
We stayed like that until the sun had long since disappeared into black night, trading in our gowns for plush, oversize sweats.
“I need to get fucked,” Blaire said, sounding bored. She was on the floor now, her head propped against my couch at an awkward angle. “I only have, like, two days left before my period.”
“So?” Kennedy asked.
“So I don’t want some fucking psycho to tell a blog how he got his red wings with me,” Blaire snapped.
“Jesus Christ, are you sure you haven’t started it already?” Kennedy muttered.
As they bickered, I stared out my balcony’s French doors. A sliver of the stone railing was visible through the glass. I rubbed my fingers together, feeling the ghost of Grim’s ash from earlier this morning.
“Let’s go,” I said, standing up.
“Where?” Kennedy asked.
I know I shouldn’t want to go there. I should stay as far away from Grim as possible. And yet…
“The Underworld.”
Just a short while later, we arrived. In my silver-pink Hervé Léger, with my tits pushed up and rose gold hair to match my rose gold dress and stilettos, for a few minutes I felt at home. No quicksand, just time to be Queen Gemma.
Everyone thought of druggies as greasy, Requiem for a Dream addicts who steal your wallet.
Not only was that, well, crazy rude, but it was a straight-up lie.
Everyone I know is on something. From the Goody Two-shoes assholes at my old school who took addy to up their test scores, to my friends looking to party, to my own fucking mother.
It was a world of glitterati who are dead without an extra pill or two, where someone would pop a pill with one hand and donate to a senator who spent all his time funding anti-drug laws with the other.
And that was the world Grim Reyes ruled.
“I feel like I’ve already fucked every guy here.” Blaire sighed. “And no one made me want to go back for seconds.”
“That guy in the black turtleneck just exited,” Kennedy offered. “He’s worth, like, a couple billion.”
“I’m looking to get fucked tonight, so unless his dick is as big as his portfolio, no thanks.”
“Why don’t you go stand in line?” Kennedy said. “Maybe they’ll call you up.”
Blaire’s mouth parted. “I know you didn’t just call me a groupie.”
Everyone wanted to fuck a Horsemen, so many that there was always a line at the bottom of the stairs, just hoping one of them glanced in their direction and waved them up.
“The stairs are never guarded,” Kennedy pointed out. “Anyone can walk up them.”
Blaire glared at her. “Then you go do it.”
She wrapped her “definitely not filled or anything” lips around a neon-pink straw, staying silent.
My eyes traveled to the balcony, where one lone shadow stood, his back to the club.
Grim.
He’d been there since we arrived, never turning around. I stared at his back, and a feeling—an urge—took over. My mother called it a pathological need for attention, but it was also darker than that. Primeval. Something that had existed in my soul before I’d had a body.
I climbed onto the table and started to dance.
“We’re live!” Kennedy said, angling her phone toward me.
I bent over, blowing a kiss to the camera. My friends cheered me on as I twirled, doing my best not to pull an Abigail and show the world my…everything. This dress wasn’t designed for dancing. It was designed to sit still and look hot.
I did another twirl, all those years my mother forced me to play ballerina really paying off. As I finished the twirl, my gaze traveled back up to the balcony.
Grim was watching.
I stumbled, nearly falling off the table.
He bent over the railing and crooked his finger. Come hither. I waved, then transformed my wave into the middle finger, before blowing him a kiss.
His lip twitched slightly.
When I went back to dancing, the air changed. I could imagine his hot stare on my neck, and I was no longer dancing for whatever thousands of strangers watched Kennedy’s live. I was dancing for him. The night we shared rushed over me. How I felt then, able to let loose completely, be free.
My dancing transformed, no longer about what would go viral but about those few hours on the beach, the hot, whispered words that had slid into my veins.
Good girl.
I'll kill anyone who touches you.
I had bent over, grasping my ankles, when sharp whoops and cheers sounded from my friends. I snapped back to the present with whiplash. I wasn’t on the beach, I was here.
I froze on the table, suddenly feeling exposed.
What the fuck?
Seriously, what the actual fuck was wrong with me? Against my better judgment, I looked back to the balcony. He was gone.
I quickly climbed off the table.
“It already has, like, a hundred thousand likes,” Kennedy said, showing me the video. “Don’t worry. I angled it away when you bent over—people are pissed, though.”
“Don’t forget to tag everyone,” Blaire said. Kennedy waved her away, like, Duh. Kennedy tried to show me something from the live, a comment from some rich playboy actor.
I stared at the empty balcony, the shadows moving like smoke.
“Uh, great.” I ran a hand through my hair, damp with sweat. “That’s great. Look, show me later. I need…water.”
“We have water?” Blaire held up one of the many complimentary Fiji waters that came with a private booth and bottle service.
I didn’t respond, weaving my way through the club, toward the back. Far enough away from the main floor, in the shadows where I’d first met Prince HSOG, I watched my friends. Kennedy had climbed on the table, dancing as Blaire filmed.
I rubbed my chest, heart pounding.
What is happening to me?
“What were you doing?”
My heart stuttered and skipped at Grim’s voice, but I refused to turn.
I could feel him next to me. Feel the heat of his shoulder next to mine.
Smell his unmistakable and irresistible scent, one that belonged only to Grim—dark and earthy, like his soul.
It felt like protection. Hear his steady, even breathing.
I could practically see the way he dragged his thumb across his jaw.
The heat in his stare.
“Uh…” I swallowed. “Dancing.”
“Someone must have told you it looks good,” he said, and stood in front of me, forcing me to acknowledge him. An inky, wavy lock of hair fell haphazard across one eye. A warmth in them that made my gut twist.
He leaned forward, lips at my neck, like he had a secret. “It doesn’t.”
I shoved him off, finally turning to face him. “I already have a hundred thousand likes. It hasn’t even been two minutes. So someone thinks it looks good.”
He clicked his tongue. “I don’t know, I remember someone commanding a lot of attention at a school dance.”
My mind flashed back to ten years ago, to the only school dance I’d ever gone to. The rare time Abby and I weren’t at each other’s throats. Trauma bonded through the shitty school our grandfather forced on us. We’d gotten drunk in my room and decided, fuck it.
It was supposed to be a joke, a way for us to laugh at townies. My mother put me in dance as soon as I could walk. I didn’t dance for fun; it was just another facet of my carefully orchestrated persona. Gemma Crowne can waltz and shake it like Britney.
But then a stupid, silly song from our childhood came on and Abby dragged me to the dance floor. Abby was always the best at rebelling. My heart thrummed at the memory. It was one of the only good ones I’d had as a kid.
“Oh my God!” I said. “I was fifteen.”
Grim’s lip twitched. “You almost took out a rib.”
The beat of the club pounded in my blood as what he’d said, what he’d meant, washed over me. Grim had watched me, even back then.
“So this is how you want me to dance?” I threw my arms in the air, dancing like I was with Abby again. “To look like a fool?”
I shook my arms and head, spinning and twirling and not giving a shit if my dance was cringe or had good angles.
For a moment I actually was fifteen again.
Then the song changed, and reality slapped me in the face.
I stopped abruptly, feeling all at once stupid and vulnerable.
Like my skin had been stripped to only raw nerves.
Except, Grim didn’t look at me like I was a joke.
His stare was lethal.
Hungry.
“I’m all sweaty and gross now. Happy?” I pushed past him to get space between him and that look in his eyes when he gripped my wrist, dragging me back.
Against him.
My back to his chest. Flush.
“Wha—”
He captured my hair, moving it to the other side and exposing my neck.
He slid one hand down the side of me, my curves, and we moved. In the dark of the club, where no one was watching, he moved us together. It was more than a dance. It was a memory inside a promise.
Of when he’d moved inside me on that beach.
“You can’t touch me like this,” I breathed.
The Horsemen don’t trade in sex.
The Horsemen never touch their contracts, let alone fuck them.
Whatever was happening between Grim and me was off the books. Tomorrow we would pretend none of this happened.
His open palm slid over my belly, stopping just above my pussy, holding me closer against him. His cock grew hard on my ass. I sucked in a breath I knew he could feel.
As if to prove me wrong, he dragged me closer. Moved me. Commanded me.
“I like you sweaty, Gemma,” he rasped against my neck. “Dirty. Ugly. Messy.”
I closed my eyes, sinking into him—but he was gone.