2. Daphne Distortion #2
Molly swallowed, but I could feel her indifference quietly searching for the lies we build to keep from breaking.
Rinley didn’t raise a hand to her, but her life wasn’t safe, and for a pregnant woman running on hormones and a faulty nesting instinct, a hospital could be the one place that set her entire world on fire.
“Fuck me,” I filled my lungs with the bitter smell of sweat and sex. “Where is Jace?”
Dr. Jace Townsend was the resident surgeon that Wolfe kept on payroll despite being an asshole that nobody wanted to deal with.
“Two guesses. You know how he likes to share in the spoils of victory. He is probably upstairs getting his dick sucked with the rest of them.”
I peered at the black caution tape and then back at her.
“Aren’t you a doctor? Isn’t this your job?” she grumbled, the pulse in her neck beating uncomfortably.
“Molly, I am in training to be a midwife. You require medication, tests, labs, fetal monitoring, and possibly hospitalization. Right now, I need you to stop being Rinley’s girl and act like that baby’s mother.
” I gulped, throwing the obvious punch and hating how everything in the Underworld was a fight.
Nothing here came easily. And certainly not reality.
Molly made a face, glancing down at the roundness in her womb, the way all mothers do, with X-ray eyes and a fear that would never leave them.
“Fine,” she conceded.
“Okay,” I squeezed her hand. “Don’t move,” I ordered, sprinting for the staircase. “I will be right back.”
Her sigh was loud enough to hear over the constant pumping of music and fuzz, but I took it as an omen she wouldn’t run. I glanced hard at the half-naked girl standing at the bottom of the stairs, wearing an expression I learned from the men who raised me.
“And you are?” Her eyes roamed my body, then bounced to her clipboard.
“Daphne,” I bit out.
“Daphne, what?” Part of me wanted to throat punch her into the middle of the room, but I suppressed the white in my knuckles, channeling it into my concern for my not-at-all friend lying naked on a dirty sex sofa.
“Daphne Kara.” I made a face. “Or Gavros, if you want to keep looking at me that way.” I hated throwing his name around like it was a goddamn dagger, but here we were.
“Go ahead,” she tilted her nose in the air, and I hoped it smelled like shit. Fucking asshole.
There were only fifteen stairs to the top, but as with all things leading to Threx, there were too many and not enough. I lulled my pace, building that slow wall, step by step, until I was sure that whatever I was about to see would not break me. Knowing damn well it probably would.
The smoke was heavier up here, coming through in bleated swirls of expensive cigars and pot that loomed overhead like a storm. It was heady, and immediately I felt swiveled, pushed aside, and drifting, but I could not fall through. Not yet, anyway.
“Do you know where the doc is?” I asked the topless server moving past me with drinks balanced on a tray. Her eyes were dark, and her tits were tired.
“He is railing Kiley in the back,” she said, pointing toward the silhouette of a man thrusting another shadow into a wall.
Soft moans drifted through the air, and my stomach turned. Maybe I was possessive, or perhaps I just hated that all these men I adored with my whole heart craved such empty things.
Or… they didn’t, and that was the problem.
Annoyed, I rolled my neck, shifting my eyes ever so slightly before they caught on the one thing they never learned to look away from. Thayor Gavros.
Thay was a six-foot-six monster, his tanned skin burned with tattoos that wound up his arms, chest, and throat, reaching the line of his ear before imploding into ravens.
His dark brown hair looked black in the off-light, his steely gray eyes catching just enough to make them glow.
He was jacked, muscle stacked over muscle, all valleys and ridges, built like the beast he’d become.
And he wore it like a weapon.
Even now.
Thay reclined shirtless in an oversized green chair, letting five girls crawl over him as if he owned the air they breathed. I swallowed, blinking, watching one of them press her mouth to his neck while another dragged her tongue along his ribs, leaning over the girl pressed between his knees.
I paused, turning my head at the way the redhead stroked through his braided hair.
Thay wore it like a Viking: shaved on the sides, mythic on top, and if I hadn’t known him my whole life, he would be the mythos.
I licked my lips at the way his body leaned into the sensation of them, a slow breath puffing from his chest, when he fisted the mouthy one by the ponytail and forced her head down harder and faster, to take him inch by inch.
Threx was big.
Thick.
The kind women read about but never want to encounter in real life.
His eyes swept open, locking on mine for a soundless second before he slammed them shut again, allowing his head to drop back. I traced the way his jaw flexed, and my usual brand of tension spread across his collarbone.
“Daphne?” Wolfe’s voice came from behind, startling me into my body, though not for long. He was a different kind of drug.
I whirled, falling into a set of amber eyes that, after ten years, still made my knees do a thing. Where Threx was all doom and thunder, Wolfe was rugged and wind! A barely shaven, messy-haired god, kissed by sunlight and pain.
Just how I liked him.
“What are you doing here?” He glanced over my shoulder, tugging me down a step to shield me from the five women getting my soulmate off.
Too late.
“Like in this very spot?” I laughed, shooting him a look that told him I wanted to die.
“For starters,” his eyes softened, the way they always did when I was standing in front of him, and I steadied myself against the guardrail, because where Threx needed five… I only ever needed one.