Like, this is an actual conversation two grown men are having out loud.
“I think they’re just happy to be here,” Gideon murmurs quietly. He cocks a brow at me. “But who the fuck was she?”
“Who was who?”
“The girl King V. here had his hands on at the party the other night,” Seb grunts. I glance over to see that he and Carson are now finished their deep philosophical discussion concerning procreation in the Barbie-verse.
“Hi, yes, I have a question,” Carson says, raising his hand before turning to Sebastian. “Why in fuck where you looking at Bancroft during an orgy?” He smirks. “Shit, is this a love that dare not speak its name situation?”
Sebastian rolls his eyes and flips Carson off, then glances back at me. “I’m curious, too. Spill. I didn’t recognize her at all.”
“That’s because she’s not Syndicate,” Gideon adds slowly, his voice low and laced with suspicion.
“Oh shit, the plot thickens,” Carson growls, his eyes narrowing.
I shake my head. “She's…no one of consequence.”
“Yeah, but how’d she even get in the room?” Sebastian scowls.
“She used a guest password.”
I’d like to say I pushed all thoughts of Evelina Nikitin out of my head the very second I scared her off the other night before proceeding to lose myself in a harem of pussy.
But I did not.
Any of it.
Instead, I questioned the men at the door about the woman who’d just left. That's how I found out she used the guest password,arcana sub silentio, not the Syndicate members password. Which also means I figured out how the fuck shegotthat password, thank you very much Val for not locking your fucking phone.
So yeah, that's how she knew about the party to begin with. But it still leaves one mystery:
Why thehelldid she come to me?
I mean, yes, I know her basic reason. It would have been easy enough to deduce even if she hadn't told me. Six months ago, after Pavel Nikitin tried to kill his own son and my brother, Roman took the throne and had Pavel banished to Russia. If it were me, I would have simply cut off his fucking head, but I can appreciate complicated relationships with one’s father.
So that’s why she ostensibly needs help: because Pavel is walking around Moscow without power or money, with agigantictarget on his back.
That still doesn’t explain why his princess ballerina of a daughter is sneaking into Syndicate parties at members-only kink clubs to askyours trulyfor help, though.
My jaw tightens and my eyes narrow as I replay the feel of her pulse twitching under my fingertips. The softness of her skin. The delicious tremble of her fear. The faint scent of lilac and vanilla when I leaned close to her ear.
“Vaughn.”
I drag myself away from that particularly distracting train of thought and glance at Gideon. He’s holding up his phone, showing a text that's just come in:
Miss O
All set up here. Don’t fucking burn me.
Dark hunger flexes and cracks its neck inside me, and I turn to grin at my friends. “Go time.”
“Fuckyes,” Sebastian groans with a genuine undertone of sexual excitement in his voice.
“Think I just came,” Carson grins in the darkness.
The four of us make our way silently past the garden wall, through the rose bushes, around the pool, and finally into the huge house via the back door that Miss O was kind enough to leave open for us.
“Who wants to do improv with Miss O?” I hiss as we pause at the bottom of the grand staircase.
