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Sighing again, Keenan drummed his fingertips on the smooth table. “No. I proposed a wager.” He relayed all the details, adding, “Naturally, I won.”
“Naturally. Which, of course, you knew would happen. And I’ll bet you also knew that you’d find it next to impossible to stop at feeding from her. You were tempting fate.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m not judging you for any of this, Keenan. The only person who saw harm in you making a move on Khloé was you. If you don’t want anything more with her, it’d be wise to keep it at a one-night stand, though, given that your demon is at risk of becoming attached to her.”
Keenan felt his brow crease. “It’s highly possessive of her. Wants to collect her. But it hasn’t developed an attachment to her, and I can’t envision it ever doing so. It doesn’t form connections easily. My demon’s got bigger trust issues than I have. The only people it truly trusts are you, Harper, and the other sentinels.”
“Well, at least it’s learned to trust.” Knox’s brows inched up. “It never had such faith in Thea?”
“No.” And it had urged Keenan not to trust her either, but he hadn’t listened.
“While we’re on the subject of Thea, I called her and set up a meeting for tomorrow. I’ve made it clear that I’ll give her one chance to be straight with me. If she was another breed of demon, I’d delve into her mind and dig out the truth for myself. But the only thing a person finds when invading a nightmare’s mind is their own personal nightmare. As such, I’d like you to be at the meeting. You know her better than I do. You’ll have a better shot at sensing if she’s lying.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that—I bought her bullshit too many times.”
“Because you wanted her to be telling the truth. Not because she’d fooled you.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. In any case, if you need me to be at the meeting, I’ll be there.” But he wasn’t looking forward to it. Keenan rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any luck locating Enoch?”
“None whatsoever. You’re still angry that Khloé didn’t inform you of Enoch’s attack herself?”
“Yes. I know it’s irrational, but I’m still pissed. From what I heard, she didn’t call out to anyone—not even someone from her own lair—until the threat had passed.”
Knox’s brow creased. “I don’t think Khloé is quite as vulnerable to attack as you seem to think. If she was, Jolene would have her very closely guarded at all times. Harper isn’t pushing for that to happen, so I can only assume that Khloé can defend herself quite well. She survived the attack, didn’t she?”
“That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t benefit from some added protection.”
“I realize that, although you’re unlikely to admit it aloud, Khloé matters to you. I realize that you want to play some part in protecting her. But you’ve made the choice not to be in her life, Keenan. You can’t have it both ways.
“Of course, you can speak to Jolene about it. She may allow you to play bodyguard for Khloé for a while. If so, Larkin can temporarily take over guarding Asher. But it’s highly unlikely that Jolene will agree. In her situation, I wouldn’t bring in an outsider to protect someone within my lair. I’d consider it my responsibility to keep them safe, and I wouldn’t appreciate the insinuation that I wasn’t able to do so.”
“I’m not saying Jolene can’t protect Khloé—”
“Then leave it be.”
“And if it was Harper? Would you just leave it be?”
“Harper’s my mate and my anchor, Keenan. To you, Khloé’s quite simply the relative and employee of one of your Primes. You won’t let her be anything else.”
*
Settled on her sofa with a tub of ice-cream, Khloé dialed Teague’s number. Jolene was right; she couldn’t let him find out about Enoch’s bullshit from someone else.
Her anchor answered after only a few rings. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite girl in the world.”
She snickered. “You’re so full of it, Sullivan.” Smiling, her demon rolled its eyes. It adored the hellhorse on a purely platonic level. “That’s a whole lot of noise in the background.” It was a wonder she could hear him. “Where are you?”
“A horse racing stadium. It’s nothing like hellhorse racing, but it’s still fun to watch. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”
She twisted her mouth. “Well …”
“Khloé, what is it?”
She scratched the back of her head. “I just wanted to tell you that, um … deadpeoplebrokeintomyhomelastnight.”
“Dead people what?”
She quickly brought him up to speed on everything. “Motherfucking fucker,” he spat. “Tell me Jolene at least has a clue where this Enoch bastard is hiding.”
“She’s working on finding out.”
He bit out another curse. “You shouldn’t have kept this from me, Khloé. Yeah, I get why you did it, but I still don’t like it. And I absolutely loathe that I’ve been having a blast, completely oblivious to the fact that you’re dealing with this bullshit. You wouldn’t like it either if it was the other way around.”
