MAEVE
I was scrollingthe online argument between Ethan Todd and NYNancy, the username of the woman who was baiting Todd into a debate at Apex, when Bram entered the living room.
“Let’s go.”
I looked up and blinked. My eyes felt glazed over from staring at my phone for so long. My brain too.
Aloha had set up the bot farm and the social media posts directed at Ethan Todd had started rolling in. It was subtle so far, hard to tell which posts were real and which ones were part of the campaign we’d launched to draw him out.
But it had started, and I could hardly look away.
“Where are we going?”
“I have an errand and you’re coming with me.”
Remy and Poe were working. I’d stopped asking what that meant — I didn’t care, it didn’t matter — but they’d taken their Hunt masks so I was guessing it was the kind of work that involved hurting people.
It probably should have bothered me more, but I trusted the Butchers, knew they weren’t out there hurting innocent people who were just trying to live their lives. They were trying to keepthe darkness that was part of us — all of us — from reaching the people who lived outside of it.
I stood and looked down at the jeans and sweater I’d thrown on that morning in an attempt to wear something other than leggings or tracksuits. “Do I need to change?”
Without my job at Lushberry, I didn’t have any reason to dress up. My face was almost entirely healed but I’d become reclusive in the two weeks since the Butchers had brought me back from Romania.
And to be fair, there weren’t a lot of reasons to leave the loft. It was cozy and comfortable, easy to fall into a soothing rhythm of cooking and baking, watching movies with the Butchers, fucking.
Lots of fucking.
“No,” Bram said, pulling me into his arms. “You look perfect, as always.”
I looked up at him, touched his face. “So do you.”
And he did. He wore a simple T-shirt and his leather jacket, but he didn’t need anything else to showcase his muscled chest and arms, his thighs that seemed barely contained by his jeans.
My cunt pulsed at the sight of him. I knew now what it felt like to have all his power driving into me, all his rage focused instead on my pleasure, and I couldn’t get enough.
Bram opened a drawer in the kitchen and grabbed a Snickers, but I took it out of his hand before he could stop me.
He scowled. “Hey!”
I threw the Snickers in the trash and handed him one of the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, still cooling on the counter, that I’d baked that morning. “It’s trash. At least you know what’s in the cookie.”
“Fine.” He ate half the cookie in one bite.
We headed downstairs and I put on my coat before stepping outside where the gray-and-white cat was waiting. He hissed and Bram took a step back.
I had to suppress my laughter. Bram was a thousand times bigger than the cat, a thousand times more deadly, but he seemed legitimately scared of the feline.
“That thing’s a fucking demon,” he said.
I picked up the fuzzball and he immediately started nuzzling my face and purring. “He’s a sweetheart. Look at him!”
I was starting to understand why June had been so obsessed with animals.
“He hates me,” Bram said.
The cat hissed at Bram as if to prove his point.
“He just needs to get to know you.” It was a feeble attempt at smoothing over their tumultuous relationship but it was the best I could do.
