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Wildfire. Pain and pleasure. The pearl of ecstasy.
My nipple slipped from his mouth and his hand slid up my body to my neck where his fingers curled around it, not tight, but firm. “No one takes you from me and expects to live.”
Something I didn’t recognize lingered in his eyes, a rage or maybe it was a hint of fear.
I leaned forward and kissed the corner of his mouth then did the same on the other side.
His grip on my neck tightened as he kissed me again, this time soft and caressing like a silk feather caressing my bruised lips.
“I want you inside me,” I murmured.
He groaned then picked me up by the ass. I looped my arms around his neck as he carried me to the tub. “Soon, baby.” He placed me on my feet in the bathtub.
I was confused because something had changed in him. He was stiff as he peeled my arms from his neck. “What’s wrong?”
He leaned to the right and picked up a facecloth and passed it to me. “Don’t like that place all over you.” Then he walked out.
I stood in two feet of hot water, staring at the closed door.
Kai had control all his life. He owned it. He was confident at whatever he did because he had nothing to lose. But I felt his loss of control with the way he kissed me, with how he touched me.
He had risked everything to free me from Vault. Free his sister. He was trying to trust Deck and his men when he’d spent his life not trusting anyone. He had his sister back. He killed his mother and was going after the farm. A place that made him into who he’d been for most of his life.
Kai was spiraling into unknown territory. He cared. He trusted.
The reality was Kai had always been the Amur leopard, the solitary hunter, and now he wasn’t and he had a vulnerability—me.WE STOOD IN the kitchen going over the possible fall back, one of them being police involvement with Vault’s insiders. Deck had already put a call in to the chief of police and a few buddies he knew within the different precincts.
“We take out their strengths,” I said. “The farm and the drug. Unfortunately, I have no idea where the farm is or who oversees it, but there may be someone who does. A board member.”
“Who?” Deck asked.
“Peter Dorsey.”
“Fuck,” Vic said, shaking his head.
“Won’t be easy getting near him,” Deck said. “Take time.”
We didn’t have time.
Dorsey owned two hotels in Vegas, one in New York and several more across the States. He didn’t trust anyone and was a bastard with a dirty hand. I’d met him a few times, even done a few jobs for him a number of years back. He’d also know that I’d turned.
“His weaknesses… greed and power. He wants it all and pretty much has it, except for one thing—he doesn’t call the shots with Vault. Mother controlled the drug and another man runs the farm. Dorsey is a minion and if he has an opportunity to change that, he will. Mother’s dead. He’ll want the control of the drug.”
“What about the other members?” Deck asked.
I gave them what I had on them. There were two others, but they were founding members like my father and I suspected weren’t fully on board with the direction my mother had taken Vault. But it was the one other member who remained anonymous who was going to be a problem. Our link to him was Dorsey. In order to give Dorsey something he wanted, we needed that something to draw him to us.
“So, we need the drug,” Deck said.
I nodded. “I have Mother’s files. She claimed she had the only copy of the formula. Knowing her, she did. Mother wouldn’t want anyone else to have the power over her.”
Vic said, “And Dorsey will want control of the drug now that your mother is dead.”
“Yes.”
“And the farm? I hate to ask what that is,” Deck said.
“It’s where Chess and I grew up.” Both Vic and Deck stiffened. “Children, like Tristan and Tanner, kidnapped from their homes and… conditioned to do Vault’s dirty work.”
“Jesus Christ,” Deck ran his hand back and forth over the top of his head.
“And you don’t have any idea where it is?” Vic asked.
“No. Once you’re eighteen, you’re removed from the farm, and you never go back. The only one who ever escaped is Tristan.”
“If he escaped, then he knows where it is,” Deck said.
“Unfortunately, no. He escaped and we were moved within a day. We were blindfolded and drugged, so I can’t be sure where the fuck we were taken. Our only lead is the third member, who is unknown. I think I’d recognize him, as he’d been at both locations of the farm, but way more often when I was sixteen at the new location. That’s why I suspect he oversees it.”
