EPILOGUE
Connor - December
D irk had a spot open at his tattoo parlor and called me personally to come back so he could update my snake tat.
“Bring the eyes,” he’d said gruffly.
Raina’s eyes.
Not a photo. Not a reference. Her eyes right there in the room. He wants to get the green right. Not the color of envy, but the wild, molten hue of jungle and gold and fury that I see in my wife’s eyes every day, every night, and especially when I make her come.
So here we are.
Except, we’re in the back room at the moment behind a black curtain, and my belt’s already undone.
“You have five minutes,” she murmurs, legs wrapping around my waist.
“Five minutes?” I grin against her throat. “You wound me.”
“I have to meet Father at the consulate in an hour.” Her fingers thread through my hair as she rolls her hips, already slick and hot through the thin barrier of her lace panties. “And no bite marks on my neck. I’m wearing that off-the-shoulder dress to Sunday dinner.”
I’m dying to taste her cunt, but she pulls me higher, lips parted in anticipation.
The bell above the shop door chimes, and it shouldn’t mean anything, but hearing an accent like mine stills me for a heartbeat.
Raina tenses around me. “Is that?”
I glance through the slit in the curtain. “It sure is.”
Standing in front of Dirk’s glass counter, my cousin Rhys towers over a redhead .
“Rhys, my father isn’t going to like all those tattoos,” the woman nags him.
Raina and I shoot a look at each other. “That’s Fallon,” she whispers. “His neighbor.”
With all that happened in the last few months, I never got up there to meet her.
“And what does she mean, her father?” my wife whispers. “Who’s her father?”
“No idea. Rhys told me Trace checked her out.” I nudge her off my lap and quickly start redoing my belt. “Something’s not right.”
Raina adjusts her dress with a frustrated sigh. “This is what we get for trying to screw in public to knock down that kink list of yours.”
The list I made after reading her books.
“I can’t believe you’re actually forcing me to meet your father,” Rhys mutters, flipping through a book on Dirk’s counter. “D, how long will it take to tat a skull on my neck?”
“No!” Fallon says and glues herself to his body, arms wrapped around his torso.
My cousin goes absolutely rigid, and for the first time, I notice that his neighbor is a...bombshell.
He he...
“I cut my hair for you,” he says.
“Wait, what?” Raina elbows past me. “Holy fucking shit. He actually chopped it all off.”
“Daddy doesn’t like long hair,” Fallon says.
“Oh dear God,” I murmur. “Did he get her pregnant?”
“We should go out there.” Raina glances at me over her shoulder. “Someone needs rescuing.”
“Hang on.” I hold her back.
Rhys mutters something that sounds vaguely like a confession and definitely like regret. “I told you, I had to get a new tattoo as part of that deal.”
Pouting she says, “This is not what I had in mind when I said you need to do a couple’s errand with me.”
“I went ice skating with you,” Rhys says. “And remember, I’m just doing all of this to keep you quiet.”
Quiet for what?
“Doing what, Rhys?” Fallon looks adorably confused.
My cousin scrubs a hand down the back of his freshly shorn neck. “Please go sit and—”
“Can I sit on your lap?”
Looking closer, I see Fallon is wearing a sweater with embroidered poinsettias and a very short red plaid skirt that flares when she spins toward him. Her auburn curls bounce all around her.
“Not, right now.”
“Are you still mad at me because I bought us matching pajamas?” she says, arms crossed. “How else will my family know we’re a happy couple on Christmas if we’re not coordinated?”
“Christmas?” I mutter.
Last year, Rhys went back to Dublin for Christmas, and I assumed he’d take the same trip again this year. He does some kind of nature retreat every year. Now he looks like a man seconds away from detonation.
“I agreed to be your boyfriend for the holidays and—”
“You are my boyfriend,” Fallon says brightly. “Forever. And I have witnesses.”
“What witnesses?” Rhys snaps.
“My plants.” She hugs him again. “ Our plants.”
Rhys dumps his head in his hands.
Raina’s whole body trembles with restrained laughter.
Dirk returns in his charcoal apron stained from past ink jobs. “Tatt is being pressed on the sheet. Needs a few minutes. How about you, sweetheart? I can do a nice butterfly on your—”
Rhys pushes Fallon behind him. “ Do not finish that sentence, mate.”
My cousin turns possessive in such a flash that I have to blink to absorb it.
Fallon sighs and flops dramatically into the nearest chair, fiddling with the gold star earrings dangling from her lobes. “You know, most boyfriends are happy to meet Daddy.”
Rhys stares at her. “You’ve introduced other boyfriends to your father? Who?”
“Plenty of boyfriends,” she responds, not realizing that’s waving a red cape at a bull.
“Fallon may not be fully connected to reality, but she knows how to play your cousin,” Raina snickers, voicing my observation.
Jealousy is Quinlan kryptonite.
“And where are these boyfriends?” Rhys folds his arms, a snarl building on his mouth.
“You know what?” Fallon tilts her head as if remembering something. “I don’t know. They meet Daddy and then... They disappear.”
My jaw drops open, and I make a mental note to dig further into Fallon and her father. My da was a capo, Raina’s father heads the Albanian Brotherhood. I think I can handle whoever the hell that is.
Fallon looks to be having some kind of panic attack.
Rhys strokes her face. “Breathe, Fal. When we get home—”
“Not your place. All that blood... I can still smell it.” Her voice drops an octave, distant now.
The smile disappears like it was never there.
“Shhhh.” Rhys puts a finger against her lips. “You got this, Fal. Show me you’re strong.”
“Blood?” Raina whispers. “Do you think...”
“Oh no,” I mutter.
Something happened at his apartment, and she saw it. She’s a witness. It all comes together.
“Maybe I’ll think twice about crawling into your kitchen if you water the plants.”
“And next time, don’t take a nap on my sofa.”
“Good thing I took a nap under that blanket or they would have seen me.”
“They won’t hurt you,” Rhys growls.
“Ares saw me. He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him,” she says, shuddering.
My blood goes absolutely cold. “Ares...”
“Is she talking about Ares Zervas ?” Raina asks me.
“Gotta be. Ava’s brother is the head of the Greek Mafia, and we’re in bed with them.” My throat is vibrating. “Come on. We’ve gotta get them into the tunnel and figure out what the hell’s going on.”
Thank you for reading Lovely Venom.
Rhys and Fallon’s story is next. Order Wicked Deception today!
Scroll for a Bonus Epilogue for Lovely Venom...