36. Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Six
“You aren’t going to beat me,” Rook said, reclining in his chair with a smug little smile like he’d already won.
“No, I’ve been practicing, and today is the day,” I assured him, rubbing my finger over one of the pieces on his chessboard. His was less ornate than mine, a simple black and white board with chunky, undetailed pieces lined up in rows at the edges.
After he’d left the penthouse, I’d spent two days distracting myself with something that felt less dire than everything else in my life—studying chess as if it were the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning.
I’d been good in school, but years had dulled my memory of the game.
That was something that could be fixed, and today I was going to wipe that look right off his perfect face.
I’d sold a cursed deck of tarot cards once, and as I’d carefully flipped through them to make sure they were all there, an image of a heart skewered by three swords slipped into my memory.
That was my heart now as I sat across from Rook, watching him sprawl in morning leisure, entirely at a loss for how to make him love me.
I let it pinch for one second before I renewed my eagerness to defeat him. Simple. Clean. Mundane.
He made his first move and I followed immediately. For days, I’d memorized tactics to destroy him.
“After we kill Emmett, do you want me to help you with the Prague stuff again? You don’t have to do it by yourself.”
“Shhh!” I pressed a finger to my lips, thinking through my counter to his next move.
“It’s faster if there are two of us…”
I glanced up at him, eyebrow cocked and gaze flat. “You are trying to distract me, and it won’t work.”
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, skin touching skin where there were ragged holes in his jeans. “Austin, baby, I don’t need to distract you. I’m going to win.”
“And I’m going to make you eat those words,” I swore. I slid a piece into place. “Now make your next move.”
He slid a piece with his fingertip without even looking. Cocky son of a bitch.
“Do you really think this is the best way to handle your emotions?” he asked.
“Oh, now you want to talk about emotions?” I didn’t check to see how he was looking at me. My eyes were too busy darting between options.
“You’re sleep deprived, you’re grieving, and quite frankly, you look like shit. This weird little fixation with the game won’t make any of that better.”
“Stop acting like you know what’s going on inside my head and play the bloody game.”
Another casual move on his side, and my heart leaped.
A wrong choice. Maybe I wasn’t the one distracted.
We were fifteen more minutes into the game, our pieces fanning out with rapid moves and quiet clicks of stone against the board, when he realized what a terrible position he was in.
His eyebrows drew together, but there was no undoing the mistakes he had made.
“Checkmate,” I said when his king was properly fucked and there was no way out of it.
Rook groaned softly across the table, his eyes scanning the board again. “There’s no fucking way.”
“There is absolutely a fucking way!” I cried gleefully, gesturing to the vanquished king. “That’s what you get for being so pompous about it.”
He wrenched my arm and pulled me right over the table, smashing our mouths together and scattering pieces everywhere.
He sank his teeth into my lower lip until I yelped and then grinned at me.
“Fine. You win. Enjoy that victory boner for as long as it lasts. In the meantime, I’d like to get my hands on a literal one. Did beating me get you hard?”
“No, but your fucking mouth is doing it for me right now.” The whole board crashed to the floor as he stood, drawing me close and dragging me toward the bedroom. He kicked the door closed behind us with an echoing slam and threw me on the bed. And then he showed me exactly what his mouth could do.
***
I lay in the crook of his arm, his forehead pressed to my temple, and both our pulses finally slowed from the last hour we’d spent fucking.
We’d trashed the bedroom—a lamp broken, clothes everywhere, half the sheets hanging off the bed.
There was nowhere I wanted to be more than in the middle of chaos with him.
“Thursday,” he said, drawing me back from idle sleepiness. “We’ll kill Emmett Thursday, and Monday, when the fights are off again, I’ll come help you with the Prague collection.”
“I said you don’t have to do that.”
“Sometimes you say stupid things.” He brushed his lips over my tense brow and sighed. “How do you want to deal with Emmett?”
“My power is the easiest way; how I killed the man at your club. I’ll be sick for a few hours afterward, but it will be cleanest.”
“May I suggest breaking into his house and waiting for him to come home?” Rook said.
I nodded against the pillow. “Too risky at the Council building, and maybe too many eyes in other places. I’ll get the address.
It sounds like he’s been working late, but worst case scenario, he gets off at five, so we’ll have to set up mid-afternoon.
Expect wards, maybe alarms and cameras. I can disable it all, and if you subdue him as soon as he walks in the door, we can use the element of surprise to avoid much of a fight. ”
“It’s sexy when you’re all organized,” he joked. “I would tell you to shut that brain off and get some sleep, but you’re going to stay up all night examining every angle and possible setback for this whole plan.”
“Maybe not.”
He snapped his teeth over my earlobe and yanked. “Liar,” he whispered, his breath hot against my ear.
“Do you think I’m going to be cold forever?” I asked. Even with Rook next to me and a comforter pulled over my chest, I could feel the chill inside me fighting the warmth around me. “Literally. Ever since I predicted Gray’s death, I’m cold all the time.”
He shrugged. “No idea, but you’re going to be great company in the summer. I don’t have A/C here.”
I slapped his chest and glared at him. “It’s not a fucking joke. There’s something wrong with me. And why don’t you have A/C? You aren’t hurting for money.”
“I liked the apartment and the location, so I took the bad with the good.” He wrapped his fingers around my chin and tilted my head. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect.”
I sighed into his mouth as he claimed my lips, but quickly pulled away. “It happened again.”
“A vision?” He slipped his arm from beneath me so he could prop himself up on it and see my face clearly. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know. It was vaguer this time, but I didn’t like the way it made me feel. It was just a heartbeat and blood, getting slower and slower, a clock ticking, and someone’s voice like I was listening to it through water.”
“Maybe it’s the next victim. The masked man is getting closer to you. You could be sensing what he’s going to do next.”
I closed my eyes and grumbled, “A lot of good that does me if I can’t see the person’s face.”
“You’ll figure it out. Maybe it’s the kind of thing that gets better with practice.”
“Practice?! I don’t want to practice predicting people’s deaths! I don’t want to be like this at all—”
He mashed two fingers into my lips to shut me up.
“Maybe when you kill her, it will go away. Stay focused on what’s important.
Now, you’re going to tell me every little detail of this Emmett plan that’s spinning in that pretty brain of yours until I fall asleep, and once you empty out all that anxiety, you’re going to doze off and not leave this bed until noon. Am I clear?”
“You want to go to sleep to the sound of me over analyzing?”
“Yep. It’s like a lullaby. Start talking.” He flipped onto his back and nuzzled deeper into the pillows, his lashes fluttering over his cheeks, and a small smile twirled in the corners of his lips. Ridiculous. That’s what he was.
And I loved him.
So I began.