“You strutting in like your ass fucking hurts because of the way I owned it, plus the scent of my brother and Matteo all over you, is going to put a stop to any rumor people may have that we are fake. We have never let another woman wear our scent. Ever.”
Matteo enters at the right time. “Straight to the point, as always, Val. And, Layne, I assure you, we have never been close enough to Claudia to let her sink her desperate claws into us. We can have a chat about our pasts later—it will be a quick conversation—but right now, we really do need to leave.”
And then he waves me over, his eyes all but devouring every inch of my body as I walk toward him.
“For the rest of my days, I’m going to be thankful Gucci shot me.” He presses his lips together when I do a pirouette for him.
It scares me how quickly I’ve become comfortable around them.
“Are you serious? The other man’s name was Gucci?” I laugh, accepting the underwear Matteo passes over.
“I was planning to shoot him just for that,” Matteo says, latching my bra for me.
“I can dress myself.”
“I get to touch you more this way,” he murmurs, dipping down for a kiss on my shoulder.
“There is that,” I muse. Happily. Because that is how I feel. Happy and safe, which initially, was the reason I agreed to jump into this deal.
“Who are we having lunch with?”
“Assholes,” Dante adds as he rushes past us over to his bedside table to grab his watch.
A man putting on a watch should not have my nipples hardening, but I ache.
“You okay?” he asks when I start trying to shake some sense into my head.
“Yeah.”
“Are you reading the room right?” Dante pushes gently, not accepting my lack of a real answer as an answer.
And I glance around. The three of them are looking at me with the same burning intensity that is smoldering in my thoughts.
“Looks like.”
“Good girl,” he praises before helping Matteo dress me.
Except, where Matteo focuses on clothes, Dante dresses me in weapons. As soon as Matteo helps me climb into a pair of padded panties, thank god, Dante slides my knife holder up one leg before standing.
“If we ever get separated, I want you to go back to the pack that helped you when you first arrived. When we leave the house, we start talking as if people are listening. You don’t mention their name, but I want you to know we know. Ahmed knows. And this tracker shows me where you are.”
The tracker he mentions is apparently in the tracker gun that looks like it’s off a fucking sci-fi movie set. It’s huge.
I take a step back just as Matteo is holding a wrap dress open for me to put on. But I snarl at Dante. “Are you serious? Who the hell are we having lunch with?”
He shrugs, looking half apologetic while also getting a stubborn look of determination in his eyes. “Our family. And, yes, I am serious. It’ll hurt, but it’s probably not as uncomfortable as having my brother’s dick up your ass.”
“Fuck off,” Valentine snaps. “She fucking loved my cock.”
I pull a face, half arguing with the both of them. And that’s when Dante strikes. The noise of the gun scares me more than the pain of the implant. I still react, though, almost instinctively landing a punch and yelling at him at the same time. “Dante! I didn’t say yes!”
“It wasn’t up for discussion.” He shakes his head as if he’s surprised I’m having an issue with it before he grabs my hand to check my knuckles. “You being a bit pissed at me is something I can handle if it means you are safe. Sorry, baby.”
The dangerously good-looking dirtbag ruins any argument that was building on my tongue about independence and overkill by being overly sweet in a very Dante manner. And then he nearly fucking wrecks me by cupping the back of my neck and pulling me close, whispering in my ear. “We’re not going to leave you, lose you, or let you get away.”
25
Valentine
