Page 35 of Deathless & Divided

“Your hands can stay off my ass,” Lily replied.

“Goal is to get you out of this dress—”

“That’s not going to happen. Back off a little, okay?”

He still wasn’t letting her go. He didn’t back off like she told him to, either.

Damian came up behind Lily, put a hand on her waist, and grabbed her tight. “Remove your hands from her body, or I will cut each of your fingers off and stuff them down your throat, asshole.”

Lily spun around, her brown eyes wide but dimmed with drink. Guessing by the tightness in her lips and the way her hand pressed on his midsection as if to push him away, she wasn’t pleased to see him show up. “Damian? What are you doing here?”

Damian didn’t pay her any mind. He was too busy staring down the fucker who looked like he was going to reach for Lily again.

“Go on, do that,” Damian goaded. “Touch her again, man. Let’s make my night perfect by spilling blood all over the floor of my cousin’s club. Here’s a fucking history lesson you ought to know before you go around handling females that don’t belong to you. Rossi. DeLuca. Trentini. Conti. Do those names ring any goddamn bells for you? This is Chicago—they’re the first names you grow up learning to stay the hell away from when you play on the streets.”

The man took a step back, his hands flying upward in a prone position. “Sorry, my bad.”

Damian laughed. “Yeah, that’s right. Get the hell out of here and don’t make me ask again.”

Lily’s lips popped open as she turned to watch the man slip into the crowd of moving bodies. Nobody seemed to notice a thing out of place.

“Damian!” Her tiny fist smacked his chest hard. Pretty brown eyes glared up at him with a fierceness that said she was ready for a fight. “You … you …”

“What?” he asked.

“Oh, my God. Why would you do that?”

Damian lifted a single shoulder. “He shouldn’t be touching you, Lily. You shouldn’t be surprised.”

“We were just dancing,” she half-cried. “And you … you come in here like you own me or something.”

“You’re my fiancée. That means I—”

“Fuck you,” Lily spat, sneering. Disgust colored her words thick. “No man owns me, Damian. Not you or anybody else.”

“It’s not about owning you, Lily. It’s about the respect. And if you want to go out and drink, party, or do whatever, you need to make sure you’ve got the proper chaperone with you. Especially now that you’re set to be married to me. Evelina and Abriella might run around behind everybody’s backs doing whatever in the hell they want to do, but you know better, and frankly, so do they.”

Lily’s fists met her hips. “Says who?”

“Me. Dino. Any man in the Outfit.”

“Screw the Outfit. I’m twenty-one-years-old. I stopped needing to check in for permission when I hit eighteen.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, but it doesn’t work that way. We’re trying to keep you out of trouble here. Don’t you get that?”

“No.” Lily’s laugh was full of scorn. “What I get is you thinking you’ve got some kind of say on the things I do or don’t do. Reality check, Damian. You don’t. At all.”

Lily spun on her high stiletto heels. Damian didn’t let her get too far. He caught a shrieking Lily around the waist, picked her up as she fought against his hold, and cradled her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing more than a bag of flowers.

“You’re a bastard,” Lily hissed, smacking the spot between his shoulder blades with her opened palm.

“Ouch, hit a little lower. I didn’t know you liked it rough.”

Lily stilled in his grasp before her wiggling started up again. “You’re … impossible.”

“You’ll grow to like it.”

“I doubt it,” Lily bit out.