Page 126 of Untamed Sinner

Her hand is still over mine, still pressing it against her throat. After a moment she loosens her grip, and I ease back, both of us catching our breath in the steam.

She turns around and drapes herself on me. I hold her to me, inhaling her.

Then she says, "The poof watched us have sex. The perv. We’re going to have a conversation about boundaries.”

I know the quirk must have originated in captivity, when she had no one to talk to, but it’s a part of her that I hope never changes. Somehow, she came out of hell with pieces of herself they never managed to touch.

I smile against her skin. “I’m not the one who brought him into the shower.”

“Victim perpetrator language.” She pinches my ass. “Nice.”

I laugh.

She looks up at me, and something in her expression changes. “We’re okay,” she says softly.

It’s a question.

I brush her wet hair away from her bruised face. “We are.”

Her arms tighten around me.

And standing there with hot water running over us, her battered body pressed against mine, and a purple poof judging us from the corner, I realize something.

This is the part I never had before.

Not the sex.

The after.

Lifting her chin, I kiss her lips. “Let’s go to bed."

90

GABRIEL

Mandy Reed is paranoid—this is not new information.

It's one of her more endearing qualities, somewhere below her loyalty and considerably above her habit of calling me when she needs something—like someone kidnapped.

Technically, she hasn't asked me to kidnap Clara Whitlock, but she did ask me to make sure she's safe. And also technically, I didn’t agree to do it, but I did say I’d look into it.

Which is why I'm standing in a museum full of Montana's wealthiest people pretending to give a shit about contemporary art.

I tug down my sleeves, checking my cufflinks as I scope the lobby. Inside it’s all soaring ceilings and polished marble floors that throw back the light of three modern chandeliers. They’ve tried to doll it up to make it look special, but it just looks like a museum with a liquor license and delusions of grandeur.

I take a glass of mediocre champagne from a passing tray and scan the room. Clara Whitlock wasn’t on the guest list, but I have it on good authority that she’s going to be here tonight. No sign of her yet.

Plenty of other rich-as-fuck people though. Lots of old money in Montana, and it has a posture that’s easy to recognize. They stand in front of ridiculously priced art in thousand-dollar shoes looking mildly disappointed by everything.

My family does the same thing. We're just usually more unhinged.

My phone vibrates in my pocket.

I pull it out.

Mandy.

I decline the call. I'll call her when I'm done proving she dragged me across the state for nothing.