Wyatt shifts in the chair, still catching his breath, watching us with quiet heat in his eyes.
Max turns her head to look at me, lashes heavy, a smug little curve on her mouth like she’s proud of herself.
I pinch her jaw gently. A warning.
“Don’t look so pleased,” I murmur. “You earned that.”
Her laugh is soft and breathless. “Did I?”
I lean in, bite the side of her neck, just teeth and light pressure, then let my lips brush the mark. “Next time,” I say, low enough that only she can hear, “you’ll decide if you want to be good…or if you want me to make you pay again.”
Wyatt reaches for her hand and squeezes it.
“Hellcat,” he murmurs.
She laughs and I just know I’ve created a monster. The brat dynamic has been thoroughly rewarded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE NIGHT KEEPS changing its shape, moving like a kaleidoscope. The house is there and not there, a black cut-out against the sky. I’m trying to find the door, but the path shifts. The grass turns to gravel, turns to slick mud, turns to nothing at all.
A man appears in front of me. Adrian Mercer. Neatly but unremarkably dressed in a tie and ill-fitted jacket.
“It’s Maxwell, right?”
Behind me, someone presses a hand to my mouth, too tight. “Hold the fuck still.”
Silas.
Adrian Mercer tilts his head, a slow, sick, satisfied smile spreading across his face.
The darkness opens behind him and spreads, wide as a van door, a gaping maw, an open throat.
He steps toward me, smile too big. Too many teeth. I pull back and try to twist away—
I wake with a start only to find that I’m pinned in place by a heavy weight behind me. For a second I don’t know where I am, the panic from my dream drumming inside of me.
Breath on my neck, a heavy arm. I breathe and blink, breathe and blink.
Slowly, the room comes into focus. The faint outline of the dresser, the pale square of the window. I look down at the arm over me and recognize it. The wolf tattoo on the back of Ryder’s hand. The fuzz of blond hair over the ink that runs all the way up his forearm.
I remember his hand at the small of my back last night, steering me up the stairs when my legs went soft, his mouth at my ear—“Bed, Max”—a gentle order. Wyatt had peeled off toward the basement, stiff and careful with his ribs, and Ryder had come upstairs and laid down with me and held me.
His chest rises slow and even against my back, his hand splayed on the sheets in front of me. I shift carefully, testing whether moving will wake him.
“You okay?” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
I swallow. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
But I kind of did. It’s easy to wake these army men. They sleep with one eye open.
“Mmph,” he groans and pulls me in tighter.
His breathing slows again, heavy and even against my neck, and I know he’s about to slip back under.
“Ryder,” I whisper, catching him before he’s gone.
A low sound vibrates in his chest. “Mm?”
