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He looks at the scene in the room and doesn’t even need to ask, just the way I didn’t. If they’d managed to take out Ilya, the atmosphere would be very different.
“You didn’t get him.”
“No,” Ransom agrees, shaking his head. “He got away, but so did we. And he still doesn’t know who we are.”
Vic curses under his breath, but nods. “That’s something, I suppose. It could have been much worse. What happened to your leg?”
They tell the story of running away from Ilya, keeping ahead of him enough that he couldn’t get a look at them, and Ransom getting cut on a gate. It’s not as horrifying as it could have been, but that doesn’t do much to settle my mind.
Malice finishes stitching Ransom up, gathering bloody gauze and stuffing it into a bag to throw out.
“We need a new plan,” he says. “And we need one fast.”
“Now that he’s spooked, he’s probably going to move locations,” Ransom points out. “I wouldn’t stay someplace I’d just gotten shot at, even if it is a good spot to hide out.”
Malice cracks his knuckles, looking irritated. “He seems like the type to work alone, which is at least one thing in our favor. We shouldn’t have to deal with any bodyguards or paid goons, no matter how spooked he gets.”
“That’s an assumption, though,” Vic counters. “And one we don’t have nearly enough information to make. He could have an army backing him up. Or some chunk of the Russian mafia that he’ll call in now that he’s realized he’s being targeted. We don’t know enough.Still.”
It’s easy to tell that he’s as irritated with their lack of information as Malice is by their failure tonight.
I listen to them go back and forth, throwing ideas out and shooting them down or agreeing with each other. It seems like this is their process, something they do all the time, and I wonder for a moment if they’ve forgotten I’m even here, considering how openly they’re talking and planning in front of me. But then I realize Ransom is still touching me idly, and I’m still tucked against him.
There’s no way he’s not doing that intentionally.
So they have to know I’m listening, and they’re just… fine with it.
It’s just another reminder of how much has changed between us. It wasn’t all that long ago that Malice made a point of telling me I wasn’t allowed to sit in on their meetings, and now I’m sitting right here while they hash things out.
“We can track his movements,” Vic says. “And it’s probably reasonable to think that he’s going to be keeping an even lower profile now that he knows someone is after him. I’ll try to find out where he goes, and we can move from there. If we work quickly enough, then he won’t have time to shore up his defenses, and we can take advantage of him being caught off guard. Hopefully.”
“And next time, he’s not walking away from it. Next time, he dies,” Malice grunts firmly.
Ransom nods. “We need to take care of this before it can bite us in the ass. We have enough shit doing that already.” He reaches for the bottle of whiskey that’s still on the coffee table, takes a couple swigs, then rolls his neck and shoulders with a groan. “I’ve gotta get to bed. Today took it out of me.”
He keeps his arm hooked around me, keeping me close as he stands up. I go along with him, not fighting his hold. The two of us head up the stairs toward the second floor, and although I can feel Malice and Victor watching our ascent, neither of them makes a move to stop us.
Once we reach his bedroom, Ransom closes the door and then takes a step closer until he’s right in front of me. He reaches up, pushing my hair back behind my ear before cupping my face in both hands.
When he leans in to kiss me, warm and soft, I melt against him, heat moving through my body. It’s a slow trickle at first, like molasses being poured, but it’s undeniable. I put my arms around his strong waist and lean into his kiss, humming against his mouth, my eyes falling closed. His hands move, and one of them skims down my back, stopping just before he gets to the curve of my ass and resting there almost possessively.
It makes my heart beat faster, and when we part for breath, I can taste him on my lips.
I think again about the feeling of Malice’s and Vic’s eyes on us as we left, and I wonder how they feel about us being up here together. Now that the ban on fucking me has been lifted, they have to know what was on Ransom’s mind when he brought me up here, the same way I did.
It makes me nervous to ask, but I really want to know. So I screw up my courage and whisper, “Have you three… ever shared women before? Like you did last night?”
Ransom smiles, not seeming bothered by the question at all. “Yeah, we have. Malice and I have fucked the same girl before. Not Vic, though.”
I nod, biting my lip a little. I’m not sure how that answer makes me feel. It’s good to know they won’t be jealous of each other, but at the same time…
Ransom seems to read the thoughts that are bouncing around in my head, and he tips my face up with fingers under my chin.
“Nothing and no one has ever been like you, angel,” he says. “We’ve shared before, but no one else has ever gotten to us the way you do.”
The way he says that, so sincere and earnest, goes right to my head. A quiet, hungry noise spills from my lips, and he grins, pulling me into another kiss. There’s nothing soft about this one. It’s deep and searing, and when he plunges his tongue into my mouth, I can feel his piercing rubbing against my tongue, working me up.
I moan against his lips, wrapping my arms tightly around him, and when he presses a thigh between my legs, I can’t help but grind against it.
