Chapter 5
Tink
As tempting as it is to knee Hook in the balls, I am overly aware of Father Elijah watching us. He’s a good man and one of the few things I found bearable during my time with Peter—at least until that was taken from me, too.
In the end, he was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
After Peter forbid me from attending church, Father Elijah tried to intervene.
In the aftermath of that, it felt like I woke from a long sleep.
I’d known I wasn’t getting out of my relationship with Peter alive, even if I couldn’t admit it to myself at the time.
But realizing that I’d take down innocents, too? That I couldn’t stand for.
So I ran. Took the route and resources I’d been too terrified to contemplate before, and fled to Hades, where I begged him to save me. He could have demanded anything and I would have accepted. By comparison, five years is a bargain.
Now I’m making a different kind of bargain, though it’s just as driven by fear as the last.
I lift my face and let Hook press a surprisingly sweet kiss to my lips. I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. I have to fight not to step forward, not to close the distance between us, not to nip his bottom lip so he’ll really kiss me.
He lifts his head and grins. “Let’s do this.” Then he takes my hand and tows me toward the door.
Father Elijah gives a rough laugh. “Don’t be a stranger, Tatiana.”
It takes two tries to form words. “I won’t.” Every time someone calls me by the name I intentionally left behind, it feels like they’re forcibly shoving me back into a skin that’s too small. I’m not that girl anymore. I don’t want to ever be her again.
And yet here I am, right back where I started.
Hook might not have set up his headquarters in the same house Peter dominated, but so much of it is the same.
Various people, all obviously armed, moving about with purpose in their steps and violence in their eyes.
One doesn’t run an entire territory through charm alone.
Threats must be delivered and examples must be made.
And Hook does it all. He wouldn’t be able to hold his power without getting his hands dirty.
Rationally, I know he’s nowhere near as evil as Peter is. I’m not even sure he’s evil at all. But he chose to take over this territory, and that decision more than speaks for itself.
Hook doesn’t quite drag me through the halls, but I have to step fast to keep up with his longer strides.
I try to memorize the building’s layout, but though it seems like a straightforward business from the outside, the inside has been completely gutted and renovated into something else entirely.
We move through what feel like smaller apartments, hallways, and then a living room, and then another hallway.
It’s really brilliant as a way of forcing an invading enemy into pinch point after pinch point, but it’s discombobulating.
I’m lost before we make it halfway through the main floor, and that irritates the hell out of me.
He hauls me to an elevator and ushers me inside. The second we’re behind closed doors, I yank my arm free. “Manhandling is not sexy.”
“I beg to differ.”
I ignore the innuendo in his low voice. I may have intentionally blocked out his presence in the Underworld whenever I could, but there was no escaping the end-of-shift reports with my fellow employees.
We were information gatherers, and everything we learned went into the impressive files Meg keeps on anyone of interest in Carver City.
I know more about what gets Hook off than I have any right to.
I also know that he’s been paying attention to me this entire time.
He knows my kinks. He’s seen them on display.
I can’t think about that too hard or I won’t be able to fight the blush buzzing beneath my skin. “Not like this,” I manage.
“Okay,” he agrees easily.
I give him a sharp look, trying to sense the shape of the trap he’s letting me walk right into.
Hook might fake being agreeable, but he is faking it.
I don’t know why Hook won’t move on Peter without this sham of a marriage, but I can’t afford to be picky right now.
Not when I can still feel that bastard’s fingers digging into my wrist. It will bruise, and that pisses me the fuck off.
These days, the only bruises on my body are the ones I want there. Not from him. Never again from him.
The doors slide open, and Hook ambles out into a massive bedroom.
I whistle before I can stop myself. The ceiling arches high above us, and it’s made entirely of glass.
I bet at night, the stars look close enough to touch.
It’s a struggle to drag my gaze back down to earth and the room itself.
It’s set up in a studio style with a surprisingly top-of-the-line kitchen taking up space on the left and a series of hardwood wardrobes on the right, half of which look like they’re in the process of vomiting clothing onto the floor.
Seeing that chaos makes my blood pressure rise to dangerous levels, so I turn to the wall that appears to be made of vaguely translucent tile.
The door next to it confirms it as the bathroom, and when I walk over to investigate, I roll my eyes.
The entire wall is the shower, which means anyone standing there will be outlined almost perfectly for viewing from the rest of the room. Great.
Then there’s nowhere else to look but at the bed. It’s large enough that only the term orgy-sized would fit. Considering the scenes I’ve witnessed Hook participate in, that doesn’t surprise me in the least.
I want to hate the whole room. I really do. But it’s weirdly cozy and decadent and as long as I don’t look at how he disrespects his clothing, I kind of like it.
I point at the bed. “You had damn well better change the sheets if you want me anywhere near that thing.”
Hook drops onto the edge of the mattress and, good god, that’s a scene right out of the fantasies I refuse to admit to having.
The top few buttons of his shirt have come undone somewhere along the way, and the deep V of his medium brown skin with a dusting of dark hair actually makes my mouth water. He leans back, letting me look my fill.
To annoy him, I do exactly that. Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I let my gaze roam over the strength in his shoulders and way his thighs fill out those slacks.
I save his hair for last. It’s almost as long as mine and thick enough that I’m envious.
I need creative use of a straightener and a whole lot of product to achieve the same amount of wave in my hair. Hook’s is all natural.
And then there are the piercings. I once heard Hercules describe Hook as a sexy pirate and he’s not wrong.
Between the long hair and the neatly trimmed beard and the rings he has on multiple fingers and …
My attention snags on the labret piercing nestled below his full bottom lip.
I can’t look at his mouth without wanting to kiss him, which exactly the wrong kind of mentality to have about this shit.
“See something you like?”
“My jailer.”
His grin only widens. Hook’s perverse like that. It doesn’t matter how many times I turn him down or how mean I am, his response is always to seem downright delighted by me.
It’s a marked difference from the few times we interacted before, when he looked at me with pity and some emotion I never dared name.
Peter’s other men either ignored me or lusted after me—at least when he wasn’t looking.
Not Hook. I could always feel his attention drilling a hole through my carefully curated numbness.
I don’t know what changed in those months between my leaving and his taking over the territory.
He tried to see me once, but I couldn’t stand the thought of any connection to Peter touching my fragile new life.
Plus, I didn’t trust him. Hades might have promised me safety, but if Hook dragged me back to Peter, would he pursue?
I didn’t know, so I went the safe route. I hid.
There’s no pity in Hook’s dark eyes now.
No, there’s just pure delight at my snark.
I don’t understand it, and I don’t trust it.
Even in the Underworld, there were Doms who saw my attitude as an invitation to break me down.
I learned to avoid them, but I don’t have the safety net the club offers now.
He waves a casual hand at the atrocity that is his closet area. “I’ll send for your shit. Put it wherever you like.”
I sift through the words for a hidden meaning but find nothing. “And then what?”
“Tonight we announce our happy union in the only appropriate way for people like us.”
I know what he means even as I try to deny it. There’s only one way to communicate this kind of big change to the entirety of Carver City. It’s possible I’m wrong. “How?”
He pushes to his feet. “The Underworld.”
“No. Absolutely not.” I swipe my hands through the air as if that will make a difference. “You said no sex.”
“I said I wouldn’t fuck you, and I won’t until our terms are met.” He wades into the mess of his clothes and digs through the middle wardrobe while I gape at him. Surely he can’t mean … He definitely doesn’t mean …
Hook retrieves whatever he was looking for and stalks back to me.
He holds out a hand, and I gingerly place mine in his.
It’s hard not to notice how much larger he is when his big palm is dwarfing mine.
I watch numbly as he slips a ring with a giant-ass diamond onto my finger.
It fits perfectly, which will piss me off later, when I’m not so shell-shocked.
“What about you?” I don’t mean to ask. I really don’t.
He laughs. “I have one, too.” He pulls a matte black ring from his pocket and slips it onto the ring finger of his left hand.