“Yes.”
“Bighead.”
“Hardly! I’m not lying either.”
“Well, I’m here now,” she declares. “I attend with you. And if I can’t come, then you can’t either.”
I press my hand deeper into the divot where her hips meet ass. My fingers settle there, spreading over the small of her back. “Ms. Possessive.”
“Tomorrow, it’ll be Mrs.” Her unapologetic tone has me grinning at her until she murmurs, “Misha’s incoming.”
“What? How do you know what he looks like?”
She rolls her eyes. “He used to be one of my guards, remember? You both got old but I remember your faces.” As I grunt at her sass, she continues, “He’s stepping onto the dance floor. Three, two, one?—”
“Victoria, there’s a call for you.”
I glare at him. “Are you being serious?”
“For me? Who’d call me through you?” she asks in confusion.
Misha doesn’t answer, just shoves his cell phone at her.
I guide her off the dance floor and over to a quieter corner then, into her ear, direct, “Put it on speaker.”
“Who is this?”
“Vitam impendere vero.”
Her shoulders straighten with recognition.
“In the next ten minutes, we will send you coordinates. Be dropped off there. A brother will be waiting to collect you. Go with them alone. They’ll transport you to a secondary site where the next rite will commence. Take nothing with you. Not even a cell phone. We will be watching.”
The call ends.
“She can’t go,” Misha immediately argues.
“I have to.”
I step between her feet and push her into the corner. Then, I press a kiss to her lips. Using the shadows to hide my actions, I call on the pickpocketing skills I haven’t used in years to slide my switchblade over her chest. Of course, that’s when I realize I can’t access her cleavage and I hiss in annoyance.
She lifts her arms slightly, and I take the hint. Slipping the knife under the armband, I find the bones of the corset I suspected of being there earlier and I tuck the weapon into it.
She’s wearing it so tightly that it must constrict her lungs, but itmeans that the knife should remain in situ unless she chooses to remove it.
When I pull back, I question, “You sure you want to do this?”
Obstinacy turns her expression mulish. “Of course.”
“Kill if you have to.”
Her eyes shutter. “Yes.”
“Maim if you can’t.”
That earns me a smile, but it’s nothing like the buoyant joy I’ve been flooded with the whole night.
I could kill those motherfuckers myself.
