Chapter 10 Marcus #2
She murmurs something to Butterfly—an excuse, maybe—and steps off the stool. There’s a faint sway in her walk. One drink too many? Maybe. But more likely, it’s adrenaline threading through her limbs. She steadies herself quickly, and God help me, the effort is…compelling.
She’s coming toward me.
And my pulse climbs in a way I despise.
I stand still, my mask fixed, chin angled.
She draws closer—
And then the mirrored panel swaps her view of me, reflecting only her own silhouette back at her.
It’s the trick of The Trap’s mirrors at work.
Her frustration is almost visible, and she tracks the seam of the mirror with her fingertips as if hunting me through glass. At the far end of the mirror, a narrow gap opens into The Black Gallery. She slips into it.
I follow.
The room is dimmer. In the corner, a woman in black arches against a man in a tux, both of them in domino masks, her silk skirts pushed aside, their limbs tangled.
The Montecarlos.
The man lifts his head, turning his attention to her, the intruder, the woman I can’t stop tracking even in my own house, and extends a hand toward her.
“Join us, my dear,” he murmurs.
Something hard and primitive snaps through me.
An instinct I haven’t felt in years.
A warning shot inside my bloodstream.
She hasn’t moved yet. But the possibility that she might, the idea of her hands on him and her legs around him, sends a hard coil twisting low in my throat.
I’m the master of this house. If Montecarlo needs strangling to stop that from happening, I’ll handle it without ceremony.
Thankfully, she leaves the Montecarlos behind without a second glance, and I find myself moving before thought intervenes. I take the parallel corridor, angling toward her exit.
She enters the passage outside The Black Gallery.
I position myself ahead of her, where the lighting drops off just enough to keep the wolf mask from glaring white in the dark.
She sees me. Her steps stutter, and every muscle in her body locks in recognition—of danger or allure, I can’t tell. But something in her aura punches through my composure hard enough to make me stay rooted.
Her body tips toward me first, instinctively, not decisively. She wants to get closer. She wants me. And it shouldn’t matter, but the wanting gnaws at my restraint.
She comes forward.
I step back.
She reaches out again, her hand lifting toward the exposed part of my face, and heat bolts through me, sharp and unwelcome. If she touches me, I’ll abandon logic entirely.
Because I know who this woman is.
An activist trying to push a stray dog’s case into my clinic, now intruding into The Trap? This can’t be a coincidence.
So I stride into the side corridor and let the velvet curtain fall between us.
Just then, her voice disrupts the quiet. “Only cowards run from a woman willing to give chase!”
Her tone is the same pissed-off yell I heard at Avelis. But the words settle more heavily than they should.
No one speaks to Wolf like that.
Something surges, territorial and volatile.
I move.
But not forward. Instead, I move behind her.
She doesn’t hear me and doesn’t sense my nearness until I’m only inches from her back, close enough that she can feel me through the lace of her dress.
“I’m here,” I say, the sound coming out as Wolf rather than the man she knows.
She turns slowly, like she’s savoring the moment before a first strike. We end up a foot apart—my mask, her mouth, and her pulse hammering at her throat.
Her hand lifts toward me, wanting, bold, and unafraid.
I withdraw again.
She comes after me, bringing temptation within inches. If I stay, I know exactly how this will end, and I’m not ready for that.
“Wait!” she calls, her voice cracking on the edge of need.
Desire pushes against my spine while sense pushes harder.
I keep walking.
She tears through the curtain after me, but I’m already beyond her reach. I watch her silhouette merge into the next junction, a crossroads meant to confuse the uninitiated. She hesitates only a second before choosing left.
I exhale, forcing the surge in my blood back into something manageable. Then I cut down a side staircase and return to The Gallows. Max is already there, his arms folded, his grin locked and loaded.
“Well?” he probes, his voice too cheery as I lift up my mask. “You look like the hunt got into you.”
I ignore him.
My pulse hasn’t settled, and my hands haven’t either.
Liam glances at a monitor. “She’s on the balcony.”
The balcony is a dead end. She’ll feel cornered and restless, and part of me likes that too much.
Her outline folds into the crowd as they spill away from the balcony. Ladies clutch their headdresses while the men shield them with jackets against the Hudson Valley’s fall wind.
In the churn of bodies and fabric and movement, she’s gone.
“She could’ve only gone to…the roof? Give me that angle.”
“We’ve got coverage from the opposite side. But I don’t think it reaches that corner.”
He’s right. It’s a blind spot. One I never bothered to cover because that corner was supposed to be nothing. There’s no access, no exit, and no reason for anyone to be there. But I guess I was wrong.
“Fuck!” I curse.
Before we can dig into it, another alert flares across the console.
“What the hell—” Max mutters.
Heat signatures.
Then it hits, faint at first, then undeniable.
Smoke.
“Shit.” My pulse spikes. “Is she here to torch The Trap?”
A muffled scream follows. A woman’s.
Okay, that’s enough.
As I pivot toward the back stairs, Liam steps in, slowing me for a single breath.
“Marcus, no. Fire crew first. Protocol,” he says.
“I don’t have time for protocol.” I shove past. “She’s up there.”
“Then let us—”
“I go,” I insist, putting the mask back on, my boots already hitting the first rung of the ladder.
Because if she’s hurt? If she’s trapped?
I’ll never forgive myself for staying downstairs and watching the monitors like a coward.
When I slam through the attic door, the heat rushes in a wave across my face. Smoke drifts along the rafters, and flames lick the underside of the old beams, turning them into brittle ribs of light.
And then, through the haze, I see her.
Black lace. Bare shoulders.
Hands letting go…
I move quickly before gravity can claim her.
My hand closes around her forearm, and the full weight of her jerks against my grip. She gasps, choking on smoke, her head snapping upward in panic.
“I’ve got you,” I say, though I don’t trust my voice to carry anything but command.
Her fingers curl around my wrist, useless from lack of oxygen, but she holds on anyway.
I haul her up in one brutal pull, dragging her against my chest. She collapses into me instantly, a dead weight, her breath rasping in broken pieces.
Her face hits the gap at my collar, her skin burning against mine.
For one horrifying second, I think she might go limp.
Not happening.
I press the comms button on my shoulder. “Found her,” I say, my voice steady despite the fire screaming around us. “Call Zebras. Prep O-Two.”
My arm tightens around her as I shift her weight, hooking her under me. She’s light, and her legs barely hold anything. I scoop her cleanly off her feet and pivot toward the service passage under the roofline.
The flames snap behind us, chewing through the old beams. I hear the fire crew pushing in, but I don’t look back. Smoke lashes my eyes, and heat scorches my collar, but all I care about is the rise and fall of her chest against mine. It’s too shallow, too fast. I’ve got to get her out.
She drags in a ragged breath. “Who are you?” The words tremble, half-delirious, half-accusing. Her fingers knot in my shirt like she expects the world to drop out from under her.
Who am I?
Tonight, I’m the only reason she’s still alive.
We clear the attic and drop into the Underwing, The Trap’s hidden spine, where problems get routed before anyone notices they exist.
Cooler air hits. It’s not much, but enough.
The Zebras are already waiting with kits open.
I drop to the floor with her, bracing her against me to keep her steady as one of them leans in to check her nose and mouth.
“Easy,” I murmur, not sure if she hears a thing. Her pupils are blown wide. She sees me, but she’s not with me. However, the urge to comfort her beats out everything else. “You’ll be okay.”
“No sign of airway obstruction,” Zebra says, then seals the breathing mask over her face. She exhales into it in shallow bursts, her lungs still trying to decide if they’re done panicking.
I stand with her cradled against me, too delicate to give up quickly. Soon, the stretcher arrives, and when I set her down, the Zebras move in to run her vitals.
“Oxygen saturation eighty-eight percent,” one reports. “Heart rate one-thirty-five and trending down. Blood pressure one-forty over one-hundred.”
I want it lower, but she’s stabilizing. Her temperature is elevated, though it’s nothing concerning.
I work my way to the rest of her, checking what the Zebras haven’t covered.
“Blisters. Nothing deep,” I note, inspecting her hands before I move down. Her legs are streaked with soot, but uninjured. “She’s good.”
The radio at my hip crackles with updates. Fire crews have the blaze under control, and staff are keeping guests contained. Thankfully, alarms stayed suppressed before anything could turn into a stampede. The Trap will survive the night.
My eyes fall to the woman on the stretcher.
Her party mask is useless for anonymity. It’s made with thin lace, and it’s delicate, as if meant to invite scrutiny instead of evade it. The straps are barely holding. It’s a piece made to seduce, not to hide.
And damn me, it works.
Her lips are parted beneath the oxygen mask, her breath fogging the plastic.
We monitor her until the numbers settle into something I can tolerate. Then, I force myself to step back, to reclaim the distance I need.
A Zebra gestures me aside. “What do you want me to do with her, sir?”
Focus. Remember why she’s here.
I draw a length of blue velvet from my pocket. The sight band should belong to the Game, not to whatever we’re doing now.
“Sorry. Protocol,” I say, my Wolf voice vibrating between us. She does not see where she’s going next. She does not see any hallways past the turn.
I draw the blindfold down over her lace mask, my hands curving around her head to secure it.
She leans into the last point of contact, her breath stuttering.
Christ. She’s aroused and attuned, waiting for more, and it shreds the clinical intention behind the gesture.
What should be protocol thickens into something intimate and possessive.
I straighten, giving the Zebras room to wheel her through the restricted wing, past locked doors and staff who know better than to look twice.
The momentum breaks, and with it her assumption that I’m the only one meant to manage her. She doesn’t like that. Midnight tenses, her fingers twitching toward the blindfold as if needing to confirm where she is, who still touches her, and who doesn’t.
We halt.
“Tie her wrists and ankles,” I say. “Nothing harsh. Just enough to keep her down.”
The Zebras move to comply as Midnight rocks her hips restlessly. I press lightly on her shoulder to still her, but she twists again.
“Let me go!” she screams into the oxygen mask.
Fully restrained now, she finally goes slack, and we move again.
The back elevator opens and lowers us floor by floor. When the doors part, the hallway forks left and right.
“Now that you’re here,” I murmur, “what should I do with you, Miss Vaughn?”
There are two paths. One takes her toward the answers I intend to extract, while the other is freedom.
She doesn’t answer. Instead, her throat bobs with a hard swallow. She’s far too weak for the interrogation room, but she isn’t walking out of my world untouched. There are other ways to draw truth from someone. And her fate is sealed in my mind.
“Give her water,” I say.
One Zebra lifts her head so she can sip a little water, just enough to wet her throat.
“Wolf…” she breathes the moment she’s done.
I lean in. Her mouth is flushed from the heat and strain. I shouldn’t be noticing any of this, not now, not ever, but her lips pull at my self-control like a wire drawn too tight. I’m ready to let the Zebras deal with her, but against my better judgment, I turn back to her.
One of the Zebras replaces the oxygen mask, sealing it over her nose and mouth. With her wrists bound now, her fingers twitch as if reaching for something. Or someone.
“Wolf, you there?” she rasps.
My hand rises, the urge and temptation braided tight. I’m a breath away from curling a finger under hers just to feel the small, impossible pull of connection, but I stop myself.
She doesn’t even reach the fabric of my shirt.
“I’m always here,” I murmur. “Yet you never catch me.”
She’s testing every boundary I’ve built. The night has to end now.
I signal the Zebras to move her out.
The blacked-out limo waits beyond the service doors.
My men step forward to load her, but my heart, damn foolish thing, won’t let her be dragged there like this.
“Don’t touch her,” I instruct.
Everything stills—hands suspended, a flicker of surprise, maybe even amusement—but no one argues when Wolf gives an order.
“I’ll take it from here,” I continue.
The Zebra nearest me pauses with the stretcher’s restraints, then glances up for confirmation.
I nod. He works quickly, loosening the binding from her wrists and ankles.
Midnight barely stirs, but color has returned to her skin, and her breathing is steady enough that she doesn’t need the oxygen mask.
When the final bind comes free, I slide my arms under her. She’s warm and unsettlingly pliant. Her head settles against my chest as though she knows the shape of me. As though she belongs there.
I don’t let myself react as I settle her into the passenger seat. She doesn’t resist, not even a tremor. Her hair skims my skin, her breath ghosting over my collarbone before I pull back.
The blindfold stays on. Her wrists rest loosely in her lap, so I take them, guide them behind her back, and tie them with the same length of satin that held her before. There’s no struggle as her breath takes on a rhythm that feels too much like anticipation.
Part of me is certain she likes this, being handled and claimed for the moment.
But part of me doesn’t know what the hell to make of it.
The night is not over yet. I close her door and circle the hood, taking the driver’s seat.