Page 3
Troy makes a sound I’ve never heard him make before, a startled grunt, and then Zevran takes him by the collar, and Troy’s feet are barely touching the floor.
Zevran pulls back his fist and punches Troy in the face.
The sound is wet and crunching. I’ve imagined this. In the dark, on the worst nights when the pain wouldn’t let me sleep, I’ve craved someone doing exactly this.
I should feel horror, but I can’t look away.
Troy’s head snaps to the side, and he would have gone down entirely if Zevran’s grip on his collar wasn’t holding him up. Blood pours freely from his nose, dripping onto the linoleum.
My husband resembles a puppet with its strings cut as Zevran drops him into a kitchen chair.
I stare at him, fascinated. I’ve seen Troy bleed after a bar fight once, but I’ve never seen him like this. His chest heaving, his eyes watering, and all that bluster punched out of him by a man who didn’t even break a sweat.
Zevran looks down at Troy the way you look at something you’ve stepped in, and the message is so clear it doesn’t require words.
Pathetic.
Troy blinks. “What—”
But Zevran isn’t done with him. He seizes a dishcloth from the counter and gags him with it. Then he reaches past me and wrenches the venetian blind cord from the wall in one savage pull. He binds Troy’s wrists behind the chair with quick, efficient movements.
Troy immediately throws his weight to the left, trying to tip the chair. Zevran puts one hand on his shoulder and pushes him back down without looking at him, the way you’d correct something mildly inconvenient.
Then Zevran reaches inside his jacket and takes out his gun.
My blood runs cold.
I’ve seen him use that gun. He put two bullets in a man without even blinking at the explosive noise. I remember thinking he looked bored, while I had never been so terrified in my life.
“You and I have unfinished business. But first, printsessa.” Zevran’s eyes find mine. “Does this kusok der’ma put his hands on you?”
I wasn’t expecting the question, or the way he says it. Searching and direct, like he actually wants to know. Like I matter to him, and not because of the stolen car or the errand gone wrong.
I don’t want his pity. I don’t want my life laid out for him in this dirty, cramped little kitchen for him to inspect. I’m managing. I’m surviving. I don’t need a man I barely know looking at me like that.
“That’s none of your business.”
Zevran waits.
I step forward and shove him one-handed, my palm flat against his chest. I could hit him with the plaster cast around my other wrist, but the remembered pain of the break makes me hold back. He doesn’t move an inch, which makes me angrier. I shove him again, harder. “I said, it’s not your problem. It has nothing to do with you. Get out.” My voice breaks on the last word, and I hate him for it. “Get out. GET OUT.”
Zevran looks down at my hand pressed against his chest, and his expression shutters and turns cold. He takes my wrist in an iron grip and pulls it away.
“You will not tell me?”
He turns, pulls a chair in front of Troy, and sits down, turning those glittering eyes on me.
“Then we’re going to play a game,” he says. “You, me, and your husband.”
Still holding the gun, he hooks a massive hand around my waist and pulls me down onto his lap before I can react. I land facing Troy, my back tight against Zevran’s broad chest and his muscular thighs rock hard beneath mine.
“What are you—” I gasp, twisting to escape.
“Tshe.” Zevran’s lips brush my ear, his low rumble vibrating right through my spine. “Be still, printsessa.”
His palm cradles the underside of my forearm, lifting the weight of the heavy cast with a deliberate gentleness that makes my breath hitch. He guides my uninjured hand to the cold steel of his gun, wrapping my fingers around the grip, one by one, like he has all the time in the world. Only when my right hand is secure does he gently rest my splinted left hand over it, his massive palm covering both of mine to bear the weight of the weapon.
My finger is forced onto the trigger. The gun feels heavy and too large in my hands.
