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Not when I might have ended up just as much a prisoner as Chloe.
10
DANTE
“Check these for any tech,then get rid of them,” Maddoc says, tossing Riley’s clothes at me as she follows Logan upstairs.
I catch them without commenting on the way his jaw clenches as he watches her leave, even though it takes some serious willpower not to give him shit about the way she so obviously got under his skin.
I hide my grin by lifting the soft leather of the sexy-as-fuck jacket Riley had on up to my face and drawing in her scent. It’s a fucking aphrodisiac, making my body remember exactly what it felt like to be buried inside her last night.
Guess I don’t hide my grin well enough, though, because Maddoc’s eyes zero right in on me, narrowing into slits.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he growls.
I’d be lying if I said a part of me doesn’t want to fuck with him just for the fun of seeing whether or not he’ll actually lose his cool and throw down. But now isn’t the time for that, as fun as it can be to let loose with my brothers now and then. Work some aggression out of the system.
I can’t help goading him alittlebit, though.
“Just checking for bugs, like you said. Can’t have West Point listening in, can we?”
“Go do it right,” Maddoc grunts, seeing right through my bullshit but not rising to the bait. No need to guess why.
His gaze slides back toward the stairs and his jaw subtly clenches again.
I’d say he takes shit too seriously sometimes, but that relentless intensity of his is why the Reapers have dominated where so many others have fallen, so even if I like to poke at it sometimes, I definitely can’t fault it.
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t actually believe I’ll find anything in Riley’s clothes any more than I do. Still, we both know better than to take chances like that. A gut feeling is all well and good, but at the end of the day, it’s only cold hard facts that can actually be counted on.
And the fact is that none of us know for sure why Riley really came to us.
Maddoc was right. It’s a hell of a coincidence. But then again, sometimes shit really does go down like that.
Madd is still trying to death-ray the staircase with his eyes. It’s entertaining as fuck to watch, so I stay right where I am as I sort through Riley’s clothes, doing a preliminary check for any listening or recording devices and getting another whiff of her scent for my efforts.
My cock sits up and takes notice, twitching with interest in my boxer briefs. The sex last night was fucking incredible, and that seductive lily and vanilla scent of hers has already embedded itself into the pleasure centers of my brain.
But it’s more than just that.
Riley intrigues me.
She did last night when she caught my eye while she was dancing, then even more so when I saw the fire in her eyes as she fought off that juiced-up fuckhead who attacked her outside the club.
And I saw that same fire in her again when she walked into Clancy’s tonight.
I grin, glad Maddoc is still preoccupied so he doesn’t ask about it. She really is a princess, though. Not a pampered one, but a regal one. A fucking warrior princess who doesn’t back down, not even from Madd.
And that backbone, the spark in her, the way she pushes through her fear and keeps on coming, daring life to try to push her down again? Not gonna lie, that shit gets my cock going at least as much as her tight, fuckable little body does. Maybe even more, since hot bodies are a dime a dozen.
But the contrasts in her… those get to me.
The world is a dark, shitty place, and I grew up knowing exactly how deep that darkness goes, since no one can hide how tainted by it they truly are when they’re locking eyes with their own death.
When you’ve watched enough men stare down the moment of their demise, you see the truth. You see the darkness. And you fucking appreciate… not the light, but thebright.
The color that exists around that darkness.
The life.
