Page 128 of Deadfall

A blush tinted her cheeks. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Oh yeah? That dress is fucking criminal,” Seven groaned.

“You both have seen me naked,” she said incredulously.

“Yeah, and that was spectacular too, but—” She glared at him and he held up his hands. “I’m sorry—I won’t look—” He covered his eyes. “Fuck—the memory is already burned into my brain.”

Somehow I picked my jaw up off the floor long enough to stalk over to her.

“Why’d you ditch comms?” I growled.

The minute she’d gone dark, I’d lost my shit. Brooks had shown up to ensure we didn’t plan on crashing the party, so we’d had to deal with him. By the time we made it to the great hall and found which room she’d been in, I was a wreck and beyond livid.

Emersyn glowered and held her ground. “I couldn’t concentrate with you shouting.”

Seven chuckled and shook his head as he moved over to the bar and poured himself a glass of whiskey. He threw it back and poured another. I bit back every single thing I wanted to say to her. I wanted to chew her out for taking risks, for shutting me out, for putting herself in danger—and I wanted to do a whole lot of other things too that had nothing to do with any of that.

“Are you good?” I swiped at a few drops of blood on her jaw. “Did he touch you?”

My eyes dropped to the line of blood that was clearly hers on the swell of her breast, and my rage flared, hot and violent.

“Easy Cujo.” A slow smirk took over her face. “He’s already dead, does it matter?”

My jaw tightened and my words were like ice as I looked up at her.

“It does. I need to know who I have to hunt down in hell.”

Her eyes darkened to an oceanic blue as her lips parted. She leaned in, an absolute storm in her eyes.

“He touched me alright,” she breathed. “He put his fingers inside me.”

There was a choking sound, and Seven sprayed whiskey across the bar. I wanted to strangle her, and it must have shown in my eyes because she huffed a laugh and her lips twitched in wicked amusement.

“Does that make you mad, Griffin?” She purred. “Does that make you want to stake your claim over his? Or whatever it is you men are so fond of doing to your territory?”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Seven wheezed somewhere behind me.

“It does make me angry, yes,” I said. “It makes me want to kill him all over again—preferrably slowly, so you can see exactly what I mean when I say no one touches you.” I stepped closer. “But, no—you’re not my territory—you’re mine the way a river inevitably collides with the sea.” I leaned in, my lips barely brushed the shell of her ear, and I watched a full-body shiver travel up her spine. “When you’re ready to know what that means, you let me know.”

I pulled back to see a look somewhere between annoyance and intrigue in her eyes, then picked up her hand that was gently bleeding onto the floor. I pulled a strip of bandage from my vest and wrapped it. I’d just yanked the knot secure, when the door slammed open.

We all turned as one, with guns trained on the intruder. Angel stepped into the room. When he saw the guns pointed at him, he held up his hands. In one of them was a tablet and he had an urgent, serious look on his face.

“Your tech guy isn’t subtle at all,” he said without preamble.

“What are you talking about?” Seven asked.

“This is all over every tablet in the manor,” Angel said, his voice strained.

He tossed the device to Seven who held it up for me to see. “That’s Rune alright.”

Rotating slowly in the middle of a black background was Rune’s symbol in gold—a mixture of different Nordic runes that made up his unique signature.

“How do you know that though?” He asked Angel.

“That’s not important right now. Mahoney is livid about—” Angel waved his hand at the tablet, but cut off when he saw Octavius dead in the chair. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head.

“Oh fuck—oh, that is—hmm.”