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“Please.” I clutched Talon’s leather-clad arm. It was hard for me to beg, but for Rio, I’d do it. “Let him stay here. He has nothing to do with this. We’ve only known each other a few weeks. He helps with the bills, that’s all.”
Talon glanced around my tiny apartment, his left brow hitched up. Something he did when he was curious or disturbed.
Probably wondering what had happened to the money I’d left Canada with. But he was a rich vampire who lived rent-free in a goddamn castle. He wouldn’t know that in Williamsburg, even a one bedroom went for four or five thousand dollars.
He folded his lips in. “The kid’s insurance,” he told me.
“Insurance?” I felt the steel bars of a cage closing around me.
“To make sure you come with us, no tricks. Soon as you get on the jet, he goes free. If not—” Talon moved a big shoulder.
The door to the cage started to swing shut.
I searched his face, trying to find a hint of affection, or at least, softening. “Don’t do this.”
Talon’s lip curled. “Don’t do what? Take your lying, betraying ass back to Lilith Island?”
I glanced at Rio’s tense face. “It’s okay,” he told me.
But it wasn’t okay. Rio had left Ohio to escape the bullies in his small town. He shouldn’t have to deal with Talon and company.
“I don’t care what you to do me,” I told Talon. “I’ll go back with you, I promise. But leave Rio. He has nothing to do with this. We just share the apartment.”
Talon narrowed his eyes. “He sleeps in the living room.” He glanced at the sheet we’d hung across the middle.
“Yeah, of course.” I frowned. “Wait. You thought he was sleeping with me?” Rio was still a teenager—and besides, he was interested in boys, not girls. “For fuck’s sake, he’s practically a kid. I’m five years older than him.”
“That’s why he’s still alive. If I thought you were sleeping with him, he’d be dead.”
I gulped. “So let him stay. Please.”
“He comes,” was the unyielding reply.
I briefly closed my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I told Rio. “I never meant for you to be involved in this.”
His chin jutted. “Fuck them,” he mouthed at me. “I’m not afraid of them.”
“Funny,” said Adrian under his breath. “You don’t look stupid. Now let’s go.”
“You too.” Talon urged me forward after them.
The cage door slammed closed.
My head pounded. Tiny lights danced at the edges of my vision. It was too much after being on my feet all day at the shop, and then picking up groceries. Plus, the last time I’d eaten except for an apple on the way home was at lunchtime five hours ago.
I swayed on my feet.
“Eden?” Talon took me by the shoulders.
I was falling down a dark tunnel. I clutched his upper arms. Even angry at me, he was still an anchor, the man I’d fallen in love with despite that stupid thrall contract.
“What’s wrong with her?” Talon demanded. He sounded…worried.
The world shifted, and then I was in his arms, my cheek tucked into the curve of his neck. He smelled so male. So familiar. Leather and earth and crisp autumn air.
“She’s pregnant, you asshole.” Rio’s voice. “And you’re stressing her out.”
The darkness pulled me under.
