Page 148

“Yes.” It was a rasp.

“Lower it two inches,” I muttered.

Her movements were stilted as she eased the picture down, held as if we were swimming in a vat of honey.

I leaned over the top of her, lifting the hammer and thumping the tiny nail that slanted through the hook to attach it to the wall.

I dumped the hammer to the side so I could grab the sides of the painting, and I helped her lift it to its spot.

I had no reason to stay there once the painting was secure, but I couldn’t move. My chest fastened to her back like a scuzzy fiend trying to touch on what wasn’t his.

“It’s perfect,” she murmured into the quiet chaos that whipped around us.

Hazy rays of fading light flooded through the drapes and into the room. Casting a spell, the ethereal of the painting turning otherworldly.

“Yeah. A treasure,” I rumbled low.

Reaching out a trembling hand, she ran her fingertips over the grainy figure in the background. “Who do you think this is?”

I’d been there, of course, the day when the artist came in to meet with Elena to exhibit her portfolio. She’d eyed me with the same kind of speculation that most did.

Instinctual fear and morbid curiosity.

The figure in the painting was looming. Big and muscled. Dark and radiating sinister energy.

Still, I said, “Think he’s faceless. Someone yet to be found.”

I tried to frame it nonchalant, but it still came out sounding like I was a fiend.

“Maybe Dice?” Her tumultuous words scraped through the stifling air. “He was outside when she came.”

Before I could suppress it, a growl got free, and I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I settled my hands on either side of her waist and leaned even closer.

Plastering myself against her back as my mouth brushed over the shell of her ear. “You want him, Elena? That what you’re trying to tell me?”

She was forbidden to every Crow. It wasn’t even unspoken. It was part of our pact.

Not really fair considering they were basically the only men she was allowed to know or interact with.

I wanted to tell her if she did want him, I’d help facilitate it. Talk some sense into her brother so she could go after what she wanted.

But with the way possession bound up my insides like I’d rolled around in a vat of superglue, I’d probably cut out my own damned tongue before I let myself do it.

“You think I want him, Trevan?” There was a challenge carved into her low-slung question.

“No.” Maybe that was my own fucking admission.

I could feel her working up to something. Her body trembling, heart beating so fiercely I could feel it slam against my chest with each violent drum.

“Then who do I want?” There she went. Opening herself to me. Begging me to do it back. “Tell me who I want.”

“Elena.” I pleaded her name, clutching her to me for far too long.

Guilt screamed in the middle of the thrashing volatility. In it, I somehow managed to peel myself away.

Pain sliced through me at the distance, and I forced myself to step back.

Though I couldn’t get far.