“What the fuck are you doing?” the third man drawled.
“Draping my jeans around her shoulders. It’s all I’ve got.”
“Don’t you fucking dare. She was marked by theHawks.”
“She’s freezing,” the guy with the unzipped jeans said.
“She knew what she was signing up for. We don’t mess with another man’s property. You should know that better than anyone.”
“Sorry to interrupt” — I was almost proud of myself for the ability to be sarcastic after witnessing their lazy back-and-forth— “but I’m not anyone’s property. And I can hear everything you’re saying.”
“Good for you.” The third man returned his attention to his friend, who was standing there with his jeans unzipped like it was the most natural thing in the world. “This is our first Hunt. We’re not going to fuck it up by breaking the rules.”
“Not to mention the fact that the Hawks are fucking insane,” Scraped Knuckles said.
“I’m not scared of those fucking hotheads. But it took us forever to get in. We’re not fucking it up our first time out. Let’s go.”
Scraped knuckles shrugged apologetically at me and zipped up his jeans, then followed the other two as they continued past.
They were merging with the shadows when the bossy one turned around. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re chained to the wall. You’ve been marked by the Hawks. You’re wearing their collar. What are you now if not their property?”
I didn’t have a chance to answer before he disappeared into the darkness with his friends, but the question echoed in my mind.
What had I done?
13
JAGGER
We moved quicklythrough the tunnels, circling back to where we’d left Cassie chained to the wall. We’d heard her shout after the sprinklers turned off, and if we’d heard her, one of the other teams might have heard her too.
It shouldn’t matter — she’d been marked, claimed — but it was easy to get caught up in the Hunt, to forget the rules, to think you could get away with breaking them.
Shit, we’d tried to fuck with Maeve Haver after the Butchers had claimed her. Bram had almost crashed Vigo’s windpipe.
What could I say? We could get caught up in the Hunt too.
“Think Bram’s going to come for us?” There was a gleeful undertone to Vigo’s question. The crazy fucker probably wanted Bram to come for us, just to see what would happen.
And the thing was: I got it. We did shit all the time just to see what would happen.
But fucking with Bram was an experiment I hadn’t planned to run, especially not in the Hunt, which was supposed to be no-consequences fun.
“Let him come,” Hawk said.
It was easy to say here in the tunnels, the Butchers nowhere in sight. But I kind of liked having the use of my dick. I didn’t relish having it yanked off my body and stuffed into my mouth by Bram Montgomery, and while anything usually went in the Hunt, I had a feeling the rules would be different when it came to Bram’s little sister.
Which didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to risk it.
I definitely was, especially after seeing her stripped bare, her skin as pale as porcelain, her tits as ripe as peaches in July. Seeing the chain clipped to her pale pink nipples, snaking between her thighs, had made my dick hard, and I was more than ready to get back to her and play.
We’d already committed the cardinal sin of fucking with Cassie Montgomery. Might as well enjoy ourselves.
We were almost back to the spot where we’d left Cassie on the wall when heavy footsteps sounded from the darkness in front of us. A minute later the new team — the Bulls, still wet from the sprinklers — stepped into the purple glow of one of the overhead bulbs.
The one on the right stared us down. “Your girl is freezing back there.”
His tone was clearly disapproving.
