She says nothing but grins in pride.
I can’t help myself anymore. I know she is hurt, but otherwise, I would have thrown her on her desk and made her come until she screams my name.
Instead, I lean down and kiss her on the forehead.
I take in her scent.
This wonderful prepossessing scent of devouring presence.
Only then do I tilt my head and whisper in her ear.
“The moment you are healed up, I’ll give you twenty with a cane for that and make you come three times in a row because you earned it.”
I listen to her breathing change over my words, and I enjoy every moment of it.
She turns her face slightly to my ear and whispers, “Whatever you wish, Mistress.”
A huff escapes me, and I shake my head in more disbelief as a wide grin appears on my face.
Oh, we are going to have so much fun, little princess. If we’re still alive in forty-eight hours. And I know I won’t, unless we find a way to kill the Lords all in one shot.
“Get up,” I tell her.
“Can’t,” she says, “My chest.”
I laugh, and she looks humiliated.
“I’ll have to mark this day in my calendar,” I say as I bend down to lift her up. “The day I ruffled Lilian Anne Knightley’s feathers, not once, not twice, but thrice.”
She curses me and flattens her clothes.
“So,” I say, “Now that you made me stay, what’s your plan?”
“First of all,” she says. “You tell me your real name.”
I snort and say, “Kat.”
“Now, you tell me exactly what you found out and how,” she says, and I see her switch back to the bossy baddie I got to know her as.
I tell her how I tracked down the little present for her and how it all started.
“Thanks for that, by the way,” she says sardonically. “Never had a better gift.”
“It was unique,” I say and laugh. She wants, too, but flinches immediately. Her chest is still healing, and she should be anywhere but here. “Please tell me you run prints on him.”
“Doug,” she says, and Hannigan unfreezes.
“We did,” says Hannigan, and I hold him in highest regard for not showing an inch of judgment of what he had just overheard. “And he was in contact with the employee we uncovered.”
“They’re all part of the Lords,” I say and carefully add, “I had Zeus create a movement map on them. They triangulated in a warehouse, where I got into a little dispute with the Lords.”
I open Lilian’s laptop with the closed Zeus system, enter the password, and show them the rest of what I found.
“How the hell did you crack that password?” she asks me.
“I saw you enter some digits, that’s what sped up the process,” I say, shrugging. She stares at me.
“So what are you? Hacker? Contract killer? Vengeance murderer? Spy?”
