Page 39 of Hunted

How adorable.

I keep my back to the wall, my eyes on the exits.

High above, through the slatted architecture, I feel him more than see him. A king watching his subjects pretend they aren’t praying.

Minutes pass. Then more.

It’s deliberate. I wasn’t early and I’m not late. This is a reminder. Payback, maybe, for evading his initial summons.

My jaw tightens as a man drifts closer. Human. Mid-thirties. Rich enough to think manners are optional. His gaze slides over me and lingers.

‘You’re dressed like a Revenant,’ he says softly, as if it’s a compliment. ‘You’re smaller than I expected.’

‘I get that a lot,’ I reply without looking at him.

He chuckles. ‘I hear you bounty hunters are very… capable.’

‘I hear you talk too much.’

That should end it. It doesn’t.

He reaches out, fingers brushing my elbow as if we’re intimate. As if he’s allowed.

‘I’ll pay you to kick my ass.’ He barks out a laugh. ‘Or try to at least. I like them feisty.’

Something in the room shifts. My body moves before my mind finishes being polite.

I pivot, catch his wrist and twist. His breath leaves him in a sharp, humiliating sound as I take him down, his shoulder hitting marble with a crack that turns heads.

Silence slams through the space.

I crouch, voice low. ‘Touch me again,’ I tell him, ‘and I’ll remove the hand. Permanently. Got it?’

His eyes go wide, wet and shocked, his head bobbing frantically when I release him and rise.

Only then do I look up, compelled by a force I despise and can’t seem to deny.

Don Valentin Moretti stands at the edge of the mezzanine, one foot near empty air as if gravity is something other people worry about. Black shirt open at the throat, suit immaculate, every inch the terrifying creature I’ve had the misfortune to come into close contact with twice now.

I didn’t fool myself into thinking he wasn’t magnetically beautiful and deadly before, but being reminded of it here, with every creature in the room silently orbiting him, sheens my palms with sweat and twists my stomach into knots I absolutely will not call thrilled.

We study each other.

His expression is unreadable. His attention is not. It’s sharp. Fixed. Deadly.

Then a sliver of something bleeds through, and I wish it hadn’t.

Interesting.

The wrong kind of interesting.

For a moment, I think I’ve made a mistake. Then I decide, fuck that.

Let him watch. Let him understand I’m not something that can be handled.

Movement breaks around me. Bodies scurry out of the way, and a hostess appears at my side. ‘Miss Cross, come with me.’

In the second it takes me to glance at her and back, Valentin is gone.