I did what I usually do—I dissembled. I smiled. I held my pink martini up to my lips, ignoring Grim getting closer and closer, instead focusing on the man in front of me.
Whispers turned to roars. Grim stopped just behind the man I was talking to, tall enough to stare over his head and straight into my eyes.
Grim crooked his finger.
A heady mix of adrenaline and fear buzzed in my body.
If I didn’t acknowledge him, he’d go away.
But if I did…
I focused all my attention on the guy in front of me, oblivious to death at his back. I think he said something flirty, because he reached out to touch my cheek.
It happened so fast. One minute he was touching me, the next blood splattered my haute couture dress. I blinked through the spray. The guy fell in a heap.
On the ground.
Blood jeweled the handle of Grim’s gun where he’d smashed it on the guy’s head. Before I could react, Grim grabbed my bicep, dragging me across the body. Screams sounded, and my world went up in flames.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
The blood was slippery at my feet, and I nearly fell. Grim yanked me upright, and my shoe came off, stuck in the red puddle.
“Did he die?” I repeated.
Grim pulled us out of the ballroom at such a speed I had to either run to keep up or lose an arm. I looked over my shoulder, at people bending down to the body, at my disappearing world, at my lonesome shoe lost in the blood.
It was almost like the end of a fairy tale, when the prince rescued the princess. Except… I stared forward, at Grim. In this world, the princess ran away with the monster.
Grim stopped only when we were outside. A black car was waiting, Crowne security mysteriously absent.
I ripped my arm out of his hold. “What did you do?”
Grim grabbed my chin, tilting my neck so I had to meet his black gaze.
“What didIdo? Nah, baby, what didyoudo?” His touch was gentle, too gentle for the edge in his voice. Smoky, sliding inside me, until I couldn’t see or think.
I nearly choked on it.
“This is on you.” Still with one hand free, he pointed his gun toward the house at my back. “You’re the Reaper’s girl. Does that guy look like the fucking Reaper?”
The Reaper’s girl.His.
Grim let me go and yanked open the back car door. Wraith and Raze sat on black leather seats, staring at me. I stepped back.
“I thought the whole point of being, you know,youwas staying low-key. There’s no going back from this!” The car rumbled, filling my nostrils with the sharp smell of gasoline.
Grim snaked his hand around the back of my neck, and I swallowed at the sensation of him against my tattoo.
His jaw clenched, eyes lethal—he waspissed.
And it filled me with excitement.
“You thought this was another one of your Rich Girl games.” Grim pressed his fingers into my still sore tattoo until I gasped. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
Still holding me by the neck, he shoved me into the car. He placed his other hand above my head, protecting me from the top. I had a half second for my gut to squirm at that, when I was in the car, in the clutches of two other Horsemen.
“But you will,” Grim said.
