15. Champion
Chapter Fifteen
CHAMPION
I hated walking away from my wife. It was good for me to walk away, because even out there in public, that moment she’d kissed me, my mind went blank except for that taste, that sweetness, and I’d wanted to carry her into the back room and find a locking door.
I wanted her. No, that wasn’t the correct encapsulation of the concept.
I needed her with a building urgency that wasn’t slightly mitigated by her easy acceptance of a marriage without sex.
Every single thing she did, every single word she said, all fed into my need to make her mine, and give her everything she’d never had before, including all the flowers, all the dancing, all the sweetness she could possibly handle.
And pleasure. I needed her pleasure even more than I needed mine.
She was made for delight, for fun, for long mornings in bed with the sun shining on her perfect body.
But the thought of hurting her, even for a moment, I couldn’t stomach it.
There had to be a way to manage the process without hurting her.
I’d do research. But how could I take her virginity when we were only going to be married for six months, when I couldn’t offer her my heart?
I had no heart. I’d made sure to cut it out of me a long time ago so no one had anything to manipulate, but Sunshine didn’t know that, and when I was with her, I forgot how heartless I was, too.
The truth is, I was smitten. She wasn’t the Las Vegas ideal, but she was mine. Except that she was a virgin. I was still freaking out about that, deep inside where hopefully she couldn’t see it.
She was too sweet. What if she really was just the sweetest, softest, best person alive?
And I’d brought her to Las Vegas? I’d have to come to clean to her about my whole livelihood, because there was no way she wouldn’t see me on a billboard with my shirt off and think I was a stripper or something.
She really should have run a background check on me before marrying me.
She shouldn’t be that careless with her safety. My wife.
Tom had slipped me an extra phone as I left, so I could log into my account and then see all the messages, all the videos, all the chaos and mess that I hadn’t missed while I’d been kissing my Kitten out of her socks.
None of this mattered. Why wasn’t I still with my wife?
I could have told Tom to leave, but Tom was the least intrusive one on the team.
If Trix came after me in her assault vehicle, it would probably give Kitten a heart attack.
What was I doing with such a soft woman? My team would scare her to death.
I called Daniel, because that was the first step into straightening out all the messes. He picked up after one ring.
“Cousin. Where did you disappear to? Is everything okay?”
“Well,” I drawled, “That depends what you mean by that word. Dupre shot me, but Kitten does neat stitches, so I suppose okay works. That’s Sunshine Ray Wilson to you.
We’re officially together. The arrangement’s going to last six months to both of our mutual satisfaction.
Inform the Crocodile, if you’d be so kind.
I don’t want her personally involved with Kitten. She’s skittish.”
There was silence on the other end for a few beats. “And Dupre, did he hurt her?”
“I already told you he hurt her last time, but you didn’t seem to care.
When he shot me, he didn’t hurt her physically, just psychologically, but not as bad as when he sent her poetry.
At least she doesn’t speak French, so she just had to be appalled by the lingerie.
It was pretty classy, I guess. Pity. Will probably turn her off lingerie for good.
” Burning rage went through me at the memory of her eyes when she remembered Dupre while she was with me wearing the sweetest nothings you could imagine.
Smiley faces were clearly her preferred motif.
Odd for a stoic, but perfect for her. And me.
She’d tasted so good, but the uncertainty in her eyes, and then the fear…
Daniel said, “She’ll just have to lounge around naked. Sad day. She told you she doesn’t speak French? French is a sign of good breeding. I didn’t expect you to choose the down-to-earth option. I take it that she wasn’t a virgin after all.”
“Her breeding is fine,” I said and then had a flashback of her looking up at me like I was the only thing in the world.
I cleared my throat. I wasn’t going to talk about her virginity with a psycho like my cousin.
“Pass that along to the Crocodile, if you’d be so kind.
Are you personally busy? I need a full report on Michael Dupre. ”
“I’m not allowed anywhere near him. I almost killed him four times.”
“Almost? I didn’t know you were so tepid when it comes to these things.” Seriously, he killed with a great deal of absolute conviction that gave him a terrifying reputation, even at his age.
“Yeah, he’s hard to kill. Super babies can be frustratingly resilient. He comes from a mutated strain that I thought would kill him off, but sadly, no. Just makes him more unbalanced.”
“He’s a serum baby?” I ran a hand through my hair. “Of course he is. That’s useful information. Can he be controlled by his family’s alliances with the House of Beasts, or will he show up at some point even knowing who my mother is?”
“There are several strains of the serum that lead to death.”
I frowned and a random guy caught my gaze and tripped until I replaced my expression with an easy smile. “That wasn’t an answer. I haven’t ever had to worry about them because the psychos are dead.”
He laughed, and there was something extra unbalanced about it. “Heaven forbid you worry, Nix Death-Hammer.” Now he was being mean.
“Sounds like you’ve been working too hard for the house. Come out here and work for me. You’d look fine in silk shorts. I’m getting too old for this game. Time to bring in some fresh blood.”
“Blood? You mean meat. I don’t like people watching me rip someone apart. They inevitably get in the way.”
“Ah. Well that wouldn’t do. Killing can be an uncomfortable compulsion.”
“I’m not a compulsive killer. I’m a cold-blooded killer.
There’s a difference. Fighting isn’t killing, it’s therapy, and sometimes it leads to an unfortunate death, but that’s not its purpose.
Then again, it might be slightly novel to fight in front of an audience.
Do you like her? Do you think you can last six months with one woman? ”
I sighed heavily. He reminded me so much of me sometimes, but there was something seriously wrong with his brain.
“It’ll be a good change of pace.” Six months of wanting something so much that I couldn’t have?
And then could I really think of other women when I was more transfixed with Sunshine than I’d ever been with anything else?
I cleared my throat. “What I really want is to rip Dupre apart. Maybe his family. Maybe his country. I don’t know how far I should take it, but he shot me while I was protecting some debutante with perfect breasts. ”
Now I was sounding psychotic, but it was Daniel.
“Sunshine’s now regulated as some debutante with perfect breasts?”
“Christina. I was stuck with her, who is absolutely worthless in a gunfight, but Kitten was brilliant. It was the nicest gunfight I’ve ever been to where I didn’t have a gun. Sorry for getting blood on your upholstery.”
“There was a lot of blood. I actually worried about you. You guys are staying in your house?”
“Providence. There’s more security there, and I still have the games to run. I never go home during the season, anyway. I’m having Tom watch her back. You remember Tom?”
“Yeah. You saved his life and he decided to become your lifelong slave. This is why I don’t save people’s lives. Who can walk around with that kind of baggage?”
“What else are my impressive muscles for other than carrying extra baggage?” I hung up on him.
He was getting weirder all the time. I’d left home at eighteen, and at that age he’d made an effort to join my mother’s world.
At some point he’d realize that he wanted to live his own life, or maybe not.
Maybe my mother was better at manipulating him than me.
I was awfully hard to manipulate unless I wanted to be.
Still, he seemed to have too much conviction for someone who killed for someone else.
Someday he’d probably start his own house.
Maybe he’d inherit. Was that his goal? Would he try to take me out as a possible threat for his own ambitions?
I smiled at the thought. No. He knew me better than that.
If I wanted my mother’s house, I’d have it.
If I wanted Daniel’s death, I’d have that.
I always got what I wanted. And now I had Kitten.
I must want her an awful lot. Except that I couldn’t take her without hurting her, and that’s the last thing I wanted.
I closed my phone and walked into city hall.
It took less than five minutes to get everything settled down.
All of a sudden, after one call to my cousin, no one wanted to prosecute Snowdrop, no one needed to talk about zoning, it was all green lights wherever I wanted to go.
Not killing my mother was the hardest thing I always had to do.
She was like me, talented at getting her way, more than talented, supernaturally gifted, so not taking her life, living my own instead, was the most difficult and impressive achievement I could make.
Killing her, I’d inherit her enemies, her allies, her money, her connections.
They wouldn’t just go away. I was still the heir no matter how hard I cut all of that out of my life.
But with this deal with Sunshine, I’d finally have the Crocodile out of my life for good.