Jesus, I want to cross that moat.
Haul her into that murky water with me and bathe in it.
Shit.I’m digging a hole here.
“Because your brothers wouldn’t want you wandering aroundhere.” Truth.
Partially.
She scoffs. “Right. On behalf of my brothers, who control every damn facet of my life. The ones who don’t even want me near Ivy and Celeste or the rest of you because of some random attack.”
It wasn’t random. She could’ve been hurt. Killed.
And I wasn’t even there.
I couldn’t breathe.
Crunch. Squeak. Blood. One wrong choice.
Our life, the life I live with my unconventional family—my three best friends, who are more like brothers, and two of their wives, who are like sisters—is complicated. Dangerous. Because Wells and his wife, Ivy, are two of the five leaders for the country’s most powerful cabal, KORT. Liam and I are their seconds-in-command. And Gage is our enforcer. Dangerous is an understatement. It’s a till-death-do-us-part role.
So, her brothers aren’t wrong.
Knowing I need to reinforce that, I switch gears. “They’re strict because they love you. They want you to be safe.”
Her green-hazel eyes soften—today, they’re green. Sometimes, they have hints of blue or gray. Darker rims and flecks of golden brown. She glances away for a beat, cataloging the flurry of activity around us, before planting them back on me. “And what do you want, Ty?”
Christ.She says my name pretty. It has me envisioning how it might sound if she screamed it. What her face would look like when she …
Fuck me.
I shove my hands in my pockets and blow out a stilted breath. What the hell am I doing?
Unable to wait for me to get my bearings, she cups my cheek with her hand, pressing into my scruff with an alluring bristle, and my whole body goes stock-still. “What’s wrong? You’re not yourself.”
I’m more myself than ever. It’s just that very few people know this side of me. I’m always in hiding.
If I dropped my shield for half a second, I’d admit that this girl has had her claws in me for years. She slips into my dreams and awakens a part of me I try desperately to suffocate.
I want to hold her, protect her, spoil her.
Own her. Claim her.
Know which song she’s been listening to on repeat and what inspired each of her piercings.
She consumes me. Which makes this innocent Noire empress the most dangerous being in my world, regardless of what my family and I do.
She has the power to revive a beast, and she doesn’t even know it. If she did, she wouldn’t be caressing my cheek. She’d be running.
That’s why I don’t allow myself to think about her. Because despite my intrusive, battering, frenzied thoughts imploring me to give up on any high road because I’m too far gone, I’d like to be a man I can look at in the mirror.
Thirteen defeating years. Hasn’t happened yet.
I try. The shelter I manage for abuse victims through our erasing business. Ivy. Celeste. Felicity.
Maybe someday.
But not with Rena.
