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“Dana’s aware you’re taking a sick day,” he counters without pause.
The familiarity in his tone when he speaks her name makes my stomach drop.
“She encourages you to rest, since you,” he lifts his free hand and does the finger quotes, “work so hard. She’s got the office under control and will make sure no one calls to bother you. For fuck’s sake—” When I continue at a snail’s pace, Felix loses patience and sweeps me up into his arms.
I scream out in surprise, wrapping my bound hands over his shoulders so I don’t fall. “What the hell are you doing?!”
“You’re gonna learn that I don’t do slow, Darling. I don’t walk slow, I don’t talk slow, and I refuse to wait a decade to get my morning coffee.” He turns on his heels so I see nothing below us but the steep cliff of a staircase he could so easily toss me down. “If you were ninety and frail,” he reasons as he starts down, “I might be more patient. But you’re not. And I know you’re about as hyperactive as I am, so stop fucking around.”
“Let me leave!” I turn stiff in his arms like I’m not afraid of being dropped. “I do not wish to be here.”
“And I do not wish to not be fucking you right now.” He smirks andlooks directly into my eyes. “That was a double negative, I think. But what I actually meant was: wanna fuck?”
“You’re an animal.”
He sniggers. “I fuck like a beast. Hundred percent customer satisfaction, guaranteed. First one’s free. Wanna sign up for a trial?”
He’s insane. Impossible. And as he traverses the stairs and turns right at the bottom, leading us deeper into the house instead of going left toward the front door, I realize I’m not leaving anytime soon.
“You shy, Ms. Cannon?” His fingers stroke my thigh as he walks, strong enough to carry me and tender enough to touch at the same time. “I didn’t peg you as the coy type.”
“Not coy,” I sneer. “But I have taste. Class. These are things one is born with, by the way. Not something you can purchase with blood money.”
He only continues to smile and trudge through the shadowed hall.
We emerge into a well-lit kitchen, but my focus shoots directly to a new set of green eyes, and I cling to Felix Malone like he’s somehow my safety. My guard.
“Christabelle Cannon,” Felix declares, making a beeline for the next doorway, “Micah Malone.”
“You’re going to prison!” I squirm in Felix’s arms and attempt to make myself as heavy as possible. “Both of you.”
“Darling, we’ve been in prison together our whole lives.” Felix kicks open the back door and reveals a glistening pool and a beautiful, lush garden filled with a rainbow of color that takes my breath away.
“The beauty of being us…” he comes to a stop by a small patio table, then lifting me higher to unhook my arms from his neck, he bends and sets me in the cold chair until my feet touch the icy concrete, “is that nothing can ever be as bad as the things we’ve already experienced.” He presses his palm to my shoulder when I try to get up and run. Then lowering into a crouch, he stares into my eyes and grins. “The best thing about knowing the devil already, is that no one else can hurt us.”
“She injured?”
I spin in my seat to find Micah standing in the doorway, dressed in sweatpants and a shirt, the latter of which clings to his broad chest and draws a woman’s eyes.
He looks me up and down, the way I do to him. “She can’t walk on her own?”
“Nah.” Felix jerks his head in the world’s smallest shake. “She can walk fine. But she thought she could play the damsel and move an inch an hour. I’m hungry, and you know I’m not a patient man, so…”
“So you carried her.” Micah brings a mutilated hand up and slides three fingers and a thumb against his jaw. “Got it.” He nods back in our direction until I follow his gaze to the table and find plates of pastries already set out.
The sight of them is ridiculously strange. Like the fricken mafia went to the local bakery to buy up half their stock before their kidnapping victim woke from her forced slumber.
“Breakfast is still fresh,” he murmurs. “Croissants. Bread. Fruit and yogurt.”
When I peel my eyes from the display and look back to the third-born Malone brother, his eyes dance with mirth. “I also put cheese and salami and shit in there, since some people are into that stuff.”
“I’mintogoing home.” I lift my chin and draw my focus back around to Felix when he pushes up to stand.
His presence is a tangible shift in the air around me. His proximity, a warmth I feel. So when he moves away to pour a cup of coffee, his absence is not something my body is able to ignore.
I swallow the lump of dread nestled deep in my throat, and cringe when he sits down opposite me with his coffee, snapping open today’sCannon Dailynewspaper in his lap.
“Please let me go.”
