Can still see Abena’s slim hand tremble as it covered her mouth that was wide in horror and disbelief… But her eyes… her eyes told a different story. There wasn’t terror or shock darkening that wide gaze. Then, I was too numb myself to dissect the emotion. Only days later, while standing across from her over Ma’s elegant and majestically adorned body in her glass casket, did I decipher what I’d glimpsed in her dark eyes:
Triumph.
That’s when I knew two things beyond a shadow of a doubt.
One, she’d had my mother—her sister, our queen—murdered so she could supplant her as ruler of the Mwuaji.
And two, I would one day kill her.
“That doesn’t have shit to do with me,” he says, his dispassionate words and tone tearing me from the past. Part of me wants to go for his throat for it. “All I care about is that she tried that shit with me. And for that she’s going to die. Both of you are.”
“Seriously?” I arch an eyebrow. “You’re that much a stickler for the rules that you’re going to honor a contract after she came for your ass?” I snort. “I bet they just loved you down at the playground.”
“I wouldn’t fucking know.”
Silence congregates between us like gossipy bitches, and I just manage to lock down my wince. Shit. If anyone’s aware of his background, it’s me. Hell, I might be the only one. And that shit I just said was callous as a muthafucka. Not that I did it on purpose, but still…
“Malachi…”
“Don’t call me by that fucking name,” he growls, taking another step toward me.
Then another. And another. Until he’s so close that his leather-and-skin scent wraps its gunmetal cold hand around my throat. His size dwarfs me, but I’m sure if he suspected what he meant as an intimidation tactic only has my nipples beading tight under my bra and my pussy contracting like it’s in the middle of a coronary, he’d back up until his spine hit the opposite wall. “That’s my last time warning you.”
“Or what?”
No, really, I’m curious.
He edges closer, and that wide, rock-hard chest brushes my breasts. There’s no way he can’t feel the effect he has on me, but kudos to him, he doesn’t even glance down to get himself a look. That kinda discipline is hot as fuck. How would he use that if we fucked? Would he be as focused, as controlled? Or with me, would he allow himself to lose it?
I can’t decide which thought entices me more.
“Or I use that knife behind you to cut that little tongue from your mouth and tuck it in my pocket like loose change so you don’t have a choice.”
I close my eyes, and even if I wanted to, I can’t restrain the hum that rumbles from my chest or the shiver that rolls through my body. “I love it when you talk dirty to me,” I whisper, lifting my lashes. “If you want me to drop to my knees and get out my knife again, just say that.”
His jaw does that little flex-and-jump thing again, as if he’s literally chewing on another threat to my life.
“Where’s your aunt?”
He bites off the words as if he would be rather biting off my head.
I chuckle and shift backward. Is it so I can inhale a breath that isn’t infused with his scent and can concentrate on something other than how he sounds when he comes?
Maaaaybe.
“Why? I should let you beat me to the prize? Nah, yo. If anyone’s going to take that bitch’s life, it’s me. Tell you what, though: I’ll mail you a body part. Give you a li’l souvenir since you’re obviously into that.” I wrinkle my nose and contemplate him like getting him here wasn’t part of my plan in the first place. Well… after the blow job and not shooting him in the face. The plan that came to me on the way home from the cottage. “Unless…”
I lick my lips because I’m about to play a very dangerous game. Up until now I’ve been toying with the Huntsman—because I can. But what I’m about to do now… It isn’t the Huntsman I’ll be dealing with but Malachi Bowden. And it’s him who may decide to kill me.
It’s him I may have to kill.
A tingle tickles an empty space behind my rib cage, and I almost lift the hand still holding my Glock to rub it.
“What’s the saying, Huntsman?” I ask. “Enemy of my enemyand all that?” He doesn’t reply but continues to stare at me, his body unmoving. “You might not care about my mother being killed by Abena, but do you care about yours?”
Almost every reaction of his up until this moment has been cold, calculated, nearly imperceptible. But not this one. At the mention of his dead mother, it’s damn near volcanic.
In a burst of movement, he lunges at me, his beautiful features twisted in a terrifying mask of fury, skin pulled tight over those sharp cheekbones until they appear to be slashing through his golden flesh.
