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He captures my hand, kissing my palm before staring into my eyes. “If it were just me, I’d marry you in a second, princess. But with the way shit works, it’s probably best if it’s Maddoc when it comes to the legal stuff.”
“He said no,” I whisper, my heart still a little bruised from that even though I do understand.
Dante’s smile turns wicked. “Yeah, well, he once said none of us were allowed to touch you, either. Don’t fucking give up on that. Logan and I will marry you in spirit and fuck you just like real husbands, but I haven’t seen you give up on something you want yet, so don’t start now.”
My breath catches, a warm glow spreading through my chest. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” He tips my chin up and kisses me. “Just keep asking him until he says yes. You know none of us can resist you.”
It’s exactly what I need to hear, and when we finally get out of bed a little while later, he gets me laughing about how sore we each are. He’s still moving slowly, and as we make our way to the shower, I’m limping a little too.
I wince as the hot water runs between my legs, reminding me how well used my pussy was last night.
“Look at us,” Dante teases, supporting himself against the slick tile with one hand while carefully soaping me between the legs with his other one. “You took a good beating too.”
I smack his chest. “That’s not funny. There’s no comparison.”
“You got that right,” Dante says, his voice husky as he turns me away from him and lathers up my hair. He drops a kiss on my wet shoulder. “Nothing’s ever gonna compare to you.”
It’s not what I meant, but I let it go.
What happened, happened, and the biggestfuck youwe can ever give an arrogant sadist like McKenna is to truly forget about him. Something that’s easy to do when we head downstairs to find Logan cooking and Maddoc fighting with the new coffee maker again.
I grin, my heart lifting at the cozy domesticity of the scene, and go nudge him aside so I can actually get some caffeine out of the thing. Maddoc’s hopeless with it, and that doesn’t even take into account how many of these things have taken a bullet for the man since I first met him. But for the first time since I arrived here, things feel peaceful. Settled, even though I know there will still be repercussions on the horizon from what went down yesterday, and in this world—the dark, criminal underground that the respectable parts of Halston like to pretend doesn’t exist—words like “settled” and “peaceful” won’t ever truly apply.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it while it lasts.
Which, as it turns out, isn’t all that long.
I’m not even surprised this time when the doorbell rings a little while later and it’s The Six’s representative, summoning us to see them down at Saraven later tonight. Nervous, but not surprised.
“It’ll be okay, princess,” Dante murmurs, leaning heavily against the door jamb once The Six’s representative leaves. He’d held himself upright, stoic and tall, while the man was here, but he still has a lot of healing to do, and it shows.
Just like his love does, since his first instinct is to reassure me.
“I know,” I say, nodding jerkily. It’s a lie. I don’tknow. After all, this will be the third time we’ve been called before The Six after breaking their first cardinal rule. Even though Logan deflected the authorities’ attention from Reaper involvement, the incident itself has been all over the news.
Still, we have no choice but to go. We can’t defy The Six by not showing up. Whatever consequences come from the showdown with West Point, I’ve got no doubt that they’ll pale in comparison to what would happen to us if we chose to outright defy The Six.
I distract myself from that by turning my attention to Dante. “You should lie back down.”
He grins. “Is that an offer? Because I wouldn’t say no to a little company.” Then he sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. “But actually, princess, we’ve got work to do.”
“You’re hurt!”
He lifts an eyebrow. “A few bumps and bruises? Nah. This shit ain’t gonna slow me down.” His face turns serious. “Besides, we’ve got a shit-ton of work to do to reclaim our territory and make sure no one else rises up to take McKenna’s place, right, Madd?”
Maddoc nods. “There’s a lot of cleanup to do to deal with the fallout from yesterday, and we need to move fast. West Point is fractured and leaderless. Something or someone will have to step in to bring order to everything McKenna built, and if we leave that to chance, we’ll regret it.”
He’s right. I may have woken up feeling euphoric, but this isn’t a honeymoon. We’ve got work to do.
“How can I help?”
“By claiming what’s yours,” Maddoc says, giving me a hard kiss. “Logan’s got some time-sensitive paperwork for you to deal with that will probably make your eyes cross with boredom, but it has to be done to reclaim your money now that McKenna is dead.”
The fact that I’m going to get it all back still hasn’t fully sunk in, but it turns out Maddoc’s not wrong about how mind-numbing the process is. With Logan’s guidance, I manage to get through it all before we have to leave for Saraven, and when we finally head to the upscale club in the evening, it turns out that, this time, it’s just us who have been summoned before them. There’s no West Point representative, or any other member of Halston’s underground, in sight.
I hold my head high as we’re led back through the club, to the room we’ve met them in twice before. They’re waiting for us, faces grim.
