He smirks as he goes back to licking my throat, small nips and longer swipes until I’m grinding on his lap. It’s probably heightened from having three bites so close together, but as I drench his lap in slick, he smiles like I just handed him a winner’s trophy.
“God,” I groan, slumping against his chest. “I didn’t come in here to get you out of your pants.”
“No?” he smirks, giving my scent gland a final kiss. “I’m pretty sure we’ve both got one-track minds right now.”
“Well, it wasn’t mymainreason.” I climb off his lap, wincing at the wet spot on his jeans. “How about I get you a hot drink. Cocoa or coffee?”
He sighs and looks down at the stack of papers. “Coffee is probably best.”
Which means he doesn’t want to fall asleep at his desk.
I bite my lip, forcing a quick smile as I pad out of his office and into the kitchen. There’s a light on over the range, and the security lights from the quad are shining through the window. Rubbing my tired eyes, I’m stepping towards the coffee machine when I catch sight of rapid movement out of the corner of my eye.
I duck sideways, a hard, flat surface glancing off my shoulder. It’s a dull pain, easily shrugged off, and Mimi hisses as she hefts the frypan a second time. But I’m not about to get hit twice by the same bitch. Blocking her strike with my forearm, my supporting hand clamps down brutally on her elbow. My muscles are still nicely warmed up from my training session, and I quickly lock her arm, hyperextending the elbow until she cries out in pain.
She drops the frypan with a clatter, her face a vicious mask as I step in to finish her off. A core principle of my fighting style is evasion, to never meet a weapon head-on. Footwork and body shifting is designed to step outside the line of attack. Disarm, disengage, create distance. But I’m not expecting Mimi to trade her cooking utensil for a carving knife, and when she swipes it off the counter, rage drives her forward so quickly I’m almost caught off guard.
Almost, because getting carved up by this venomous snake is not happening in my own goddamn clubhouse.
The rule of knife-fighting in Shorin-Ryu is to ‘defang the snake’ by neutralizing the attacker’s weapon-bearing limb. It seems a fitting approach to take with a Viper, but my blood is up, and I want to do more than just block and disarm. So, I snap forward with a fierce kick to her knee joint, and she crumples to the floor with an agonized scream. The fact she nicks herself on the knife as she goes down is just frosting on the fight cake.
“What the fuck is going on?”
For a moment I forgot that I was meant to be making coffee, not street fighting in the clubhouse kitchen, but Ark’s furious face quickly snaps me back to the task at hand. “Mimi jumped me. Tried a frypan, then a knife, so I kicked out her kneecap.”
My attacker is still moaning and cursing on the floor, and Ark steps up to her, his heavy boot coming down hard on the hand still clutching the knife. “Drop it!” he snarls, a moment before he kicks it out of the way. “Don’t move another inch.”
“She attacked me!” Mimi wails, cradling the cut on her thigh. I can already tell it’s nothing major, but I’m pretty sure her knee might need reconstructive surgery. “I was just passing by, and she dragged me in here. The bitch is insane! I grabbed the knife off her after she stabbed me!”
I raise a brow at this bit of fiction, and I’m relieved to see a similar skepticism on Ark’s face. “You disarmed a karate brownbelt? Come on, Mimi, tell me what you were really doing down here.”
I narrow my eyes, suddenly wondering the same thing. I’m about to lean down and slap her when she shrieks, “I’m so fucking sick of you and that slut! Parading around, acting like every alpha is just dying to give you a knot.”
I bark out a laugh. “Are you seriously designation-shaming me here?”
“What slut?” Ark asks slowly. “Are you talking about Wings?” Ice shoots through my bloodstream, quickly followed by an inferno of rage. I step towards her, but Ark stops me with an arm. “Answer me, Mimi.”
“He just won't stop going on and on about him.” Tears are bubbling up now, her scent bitter with resentment. “He was gonna bond me until that little slut started shaking his ass at him.”
In another world, I’d laugh at her delusional jealous streak. But it’s clear she believes every word, which just makes my rage burn that much hotter. “You think Wings was interested inJackpot? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“He didn’t look at him twice before he presented,” she snarls. “But then he couldn’t stop talking about the slut. It’s some kind of sick fetish…”
I sidestep Ark and slap her hard across the face, whipping her head to the side. She can’t evade me with her busted knee, but she grabs the metal leg of the counter and tries to drag herself out of my reach. Too bad for her, I’m not in the deflect and create distance mood anymore. “What did you do to him?” I demand, grabbing her shoulder in a vise, and grinding my fingers into the bone. “Answer me, or I’ll break every bone in your ugly fucking body!”
She raises an arm, clearly reading the murder in my eyes. “I just wanted him to go away!”
Her wailing pout is like nails digging into my soul, but I shove her back hard, already running to the cooler. I can’t explain how I know that Wings is in there, but my heart throbs with terror as I see the padlock on the door. “It’s fucking locked!” I scream, beating a fist on the insulated metal. “Ark, get the key off the bitch!”
He ignores me, grabbing a meat hammer off the bench and dashing to my side. One powerful swing and he shatters the lock, sending the broken pieces flying. I grab the door and wrench it open, bile crawling up my throat as I suck in a lungful of frigid air. It’ssocold, but it’s nothing on the ice running through my veins as I peer inside.Please, please let him be alright…
“Abbie?” My heart almost stops as Wings stumbles towards me, relief stark on his pale face. “F-fuck! I knew you’d f-find me.”
His teeth are chattering, and his lips are blue, but it’s the blood on his scalp that makes me see red. “She did this? She locked you in?”
He wraps a cold arm around my waist, but his eyes are like fire-hardened steel. “She ambushed me with a fucking frypan. Pushed me in there and did something to screw with the door.”
I whirl around, watching as Mimi crawls towards Ark on her busted knee, tears streaking down her face. “Don’t kick me out!” she pleads as she clings to the legs of his jeans. “Please don’t take my colors, Ark. This is all Jackpot’s fault.”
