Page 85 of Bared

“How…the fuck…” Trystan stammered. “You—you were on the floor of that pub! Out cold! Gervais—”

“Clocked me so hard it was like a gong or some shit? Yeah, I kind of know. I was there.” But right away, Brickham swapped his sarcasm for virulence. “So let’s clear some shit up for you, yeah? This isn’t the movies, asshat. If you hire a thug for your unpleasantries, better be sure they’re willing to get their hands dirty. Really dirty.”

As he went on, his voice got even more treacherous. Maybe it just seemed that way since she could fully see his face now. Creator have mercy, his face. The thick dark brows, now looking like wings lifted in furious flight. The sharp grooves across his forehead, slashing toward the bridge of his nose, which was flared as if he had snorted raw sewage. The frightening jut of his jaw, which only emphasized his clamped teeth more, before he parted them to form more seething syllables.

“Mistake number one: you really should’ve killed me while you had the chance,” he continued. “But since that point’s as tired as your dick, let’s jump to bad decision two. You choosing to represent your country by jumping on your princess like a sewer mongrel.”

“And you represented yours any better by doing the same thing?” Trystan’s snickering finish was not a relief for the twist in Jayd’s belly.

But if the charge was a shock to Brickham, he showed it not. “You and I aren’t the same in any way, shape, or form,” he finally growled.

“Is that so, now?” the bonsun quipped.

“That’s definitely, absolutely, so.”

“And you are planning on elaborating the point, then?” Trystan timed his pause with ruthless finesse, making sure nothing got in the way of a fresh blast of sirens. “I am certain the magistrates will be—how do you say it?—all ears about your explanation.”

Just like that, Jayd’s middle torqued with double the pain. “Damn it,” she muttered, and then repeated it. “Brickham. Brickham!” But when her plea barely flinched his thunder-dark focus on Trystan, she gathered her strength and yelled louder. “Sir. Please! He is not worth—”

“I hear you, Pixie.” His interjection was like a nuclear tank rolling up in the storm. Low, quiet, malignant. “But right now, you need to stay out of this.”

And now the vile cooperated, slowly churning up her throat. Trystan’s gleeful cackle only worsened the assault.

“‘Sir’?” he sang out. “And ‘Pixie’? Well, my, my, my, Princess Slut, you really have made the most of your Paris adventure.”

Damn it, damn it, damn it!

She stopped the litany at the triplicate. Even a hundred times more would not help now. She was hideously sure of it for torturous seconds before Brickham snapped forward and hauled Trystan up by the back of his shirt. As soon as she was free of the monster’s awful weight, she used her feet to scrabble back into a corner of the truck bed. But she stopped short of climbing all the way out. Though a glance through the window revealed a slumped and unconscious Gervais, what if the imbezak came to and started the truck? She would not abandon Brickham, just as he had not given up on her.

Even now, as she looked up to see the man with his full focus on another cause.

A purpose not boding well for Trystan.

Who was twisting and yowling like an animal that had been shot.

Who, she suddenly realized, was an animal that had been shot.

She could not deduce any other theory, after gaping at the smoking gun in Brickham’s free fist and the crimson bloom across Trystan’s knee.

“Eeeaggghhh!” The bonsun crumpled against the tailboard. “You—you—what the fuck did you—yeeeowww!”

Brickham barely lowered his hand after ensuring Trystan would have a horn-sized welt from the butt of the pistol in his grip. At once, Jayd recognized the weapon. She had watched the Pura cockroach shoot her father with it.

“Major mistake number three, Carris,” he snarled. “Deciding to leave the shreds of your humanity behind with your smoking gun.”

“Fuck you!”

“Hmm.” Brickham cocked his head, contemplating the pistol once more. “No thanks.”

For a flash of a moment, Jayd allowed some girlish flips into her stomach in place of the bile. The aroused butterflies took a spin through her soul, as well. Yes, the same soul that envisioned how easily this man and his twisted humor would fit right in with her acerbic but adorable brothers.

But not now. Not ever.

Not with the men who were not even her brothers anymore—though at the moment, the core of her urgency was to get moving again. If she allowed Brickham and Trystan to stay in striking range of each other, Creator only knew what kind of a call Evrest would be getting next. She refused to be the cause of even more strife for him, Samsyn, and Shiraz—especially now, as red-and-blue lights bounced into the sky over the buildings.

“Brickham.” She clutched at his elbow. “The police!”

Between hyperventilating, Trystan flashed a sweaty leer. “Who are going to be so interested in hearing why you found a missing princess but kept it a secret. Before, of course, killing her paipanne in cold blood.”