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“Duane,” I tsk, shaking my head and picking up a knife, a little thing, not big enough to kill with one strike, unless I dig it deep into his neck. “Are you familiar with the concept of death by a thousand cuts?”
There’s a flash of hope in his eyes as he eyes the little knife. He thinks he might survive this. He won’t, even if he doesn’t die by the time I get to the thousandth cut on his skin. We can’t have rats scurrying around, nibbling on our cheese.
He licks his meaty lips and nods. “I am.”
“Good. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going to answer it. Everything you refuse, I’m going to cut you twenty-five times. Every time I have to repeat a question, I will cut you twenty-five times. Any time you give me an answer I don’t like? You guessed it, twenty-five cuts. And you’re going to count them, every single slice. If you lose count, we start all over again.” I lean closer, until his head tips back to keep me in his sights, until I can smell his rancid fear tinged scent, even through the scent blockers I pump into this room. “Do I make myself clear, Duane?”
He swallows thickly and nods. A little jerk of his head. “Yes.”
I beam at him and slap his cheek lightly. He screams in response, a quick yip of fear that makes my dick swell. Fuck. I love this so fucking much.
“Good. Because I gotta be honest, Duane. You being a fuck up tonight is keeping me from the other half of my soul. So I got a lot of things to work through with you. It’ll be better if you just tell me what I want to know.” I push away from him, stretching my arms over my head languidly, releasing the muscles in my back. As my hand comes down, I slice into his forearm. So quick I don’t think he realizes he’s been cut. It takes a beat for the pain to register and then he jerks, eyes wide.
“Why’d you do that? You haven’t even asked me a question!”
I shrug. “I told you I have some things to work through.” He deserves it and more from keeping me from my pretty little beta. I flip the knife in my hand, grinning. “Now then, shall we get started?”
The moment I step into the elevator that leads to the pack penthouse, my dick gets hard. Now, my dick gets hard for a lot of things. Warm blood, grunts of pain, a wet pussy. But it’s never gotten hard from an elevator.
I tilt my head back and take a deep inhale, pinpointing the reason for my dick’s sudden insistent throbbing. My mouth waters when I catch the scent a few hours old, but delicious all the same. Cherry pie and vanilla ice cream. Mine.
My alpha rumbles his pleasure. I’m inclined to agree. This scent, whoever it belongs to, is definitely a match. A fucking scent match in our elevator.
I hum a little tune as I hit the button for the penthouse, then let the scanner do its thing. Only it doesn’t work right, because I have too much blood on my palm. Cursing, I rub it on my jeans and then try again.
This time it accepts the scan, and the elevator rises.
I go back to humming. It’s the song that was playing in the cafe this morning when I saw the pretty beta and gave her the card to get into The Market. I’ve had it stuck in my head all fucking day, and that’s okay, because it reminds me of her silvery gray eyes and red painted lips. I wanted her then, and I want her now. But that was before I caught a whiff of my scent match—our scent match.
Maybe I can have both?
I frown as the doors open. Silence greets me, which isn’t uncommon after I’ve been working, but I’d thought for sure if they’d found our scent match, they would be up fucking the shit out of our omega. Why wouldn’t they?
It’s what I’m going to do as soon as I see them.
Maybe they already got on with the fucking and now they’re all cuddled up in the nest?
Shit.
I’ve lingered too long wrapped up in my thoughts and the elevator doors are sliding shut. I jerk forward, hissing at the doors as they try to close on me, just barely avoiding the metal. Logically, I know the elevator won’t eat me, but I’m rarely logical.
I open my pack bonds and tug gently, feeling all of them upstairs, together in the main bedroom that is Maddox’s, but more often than not, we all share. What can I say? We all like a puppy pile.
But as I move toward the stairs, the scent of cherry pie fades. I pause in the center of the living room, not understanding why our omega’s scent wouldn’t follow the same path as my packs.
But it definitely doesn’t.
Frowning, I turn on my heel and follow the faint whiff of my scent match to the downstairs hallway. Just about as far as you can get from the room where my pack is cuddled up together.
Maybe this isn’t a scent match. Maybe they know something I don’t. But I even as I have the thought, I reject it. There’s no denying the alpha instincts. When you know, you know. And I know that whoever bears this mouthwatering scent is my fucking match.
I follow the trail to the third door on the left. An interior room we thought about using for storage, but then put a bed in it instead. Frowning—what the hell were they thinking of putting her in here when we have much nicer rooms upstairs? Hell, she could sleep in my room—I reach for the handle and silently push inside.
There’s no light.
It’s pitch black in the room.
No windows mean no ambient glow from the city.
