I shrugged, even though my pulse was kicking hard against my ribs. “No.”
Lie. Big lie.
I pushed my fork around the perfectly cut steak, trying to shift the energy of the conversation. “Actually… I’ve been meaning to introduce you to someone. One of my advanced students. Tasha. She’s beautiful, and she can actually keep up with me on the pole. I think you two would—”
“I’m not interested in your students, Indigo.” His voice was still soft, but there was pure steel running right under it now. “I’m interested in you.”
There it was. The definitive line I’d been trying to blur this entire time.
I forced a small, tight smile. “Cooly…”
“I know,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You’re married. You’re figuring shit out. I’ll wait. But I’m not gonna pretend I’m here for anybody else.” He gave me that slow, hungry smile again. “Eat your steak, Midnight. Before it gets cold.”
I ate. Because it was easier than arguing.
When we finally left the restaurant, he walked me out to my car with his hand resting firmly at the small of my back. He left after helping me into the driver's seat.
I was buckling my seatbelt when my phone rang. Maya.
I answered on the second ring. “Hey.”
“What the fuck are you doing, girl?” Maya’s voice was half-hiss, half-shout through the speaker. “I just drove past you. You're out here laughing with the Nigerian like Malachai ain’t a whole psychopath? I saw Cooly feeding you steak, Indigo. Feeding you. Like a whole husband.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head back against the headrest with a heavy sigh. “It wasn’t like that. He didn’t feed me, he cut my steak.”
“It looked exactly like that from the road. You better tell Malachai before he finds out some other way. Because trust me—men like him and my husband always find out.”
I swallowed hard, the back of my throat tight.
For the first time since I’d come back to Florida, I actually considered it. Telling him. Coming clean about the lunches. About the flowers. About how Cooly was pushing harder every single time we saw each other.
Because Maya was right. I had married a whole crazy man who threatened me a lot, and I didn’t want him actually thinking I was doing something foul behind his back.
Chapter 33
Malachai
Indigo had passed out after I fucked her senseless in a candlelit room—she called it romantic. Now she was lightly snoring, her thighs still sticky with me. My shirt swallowed her body, her platinum hair spread across the pillow like spilled moonlight. I left her sleeping and came downstairs to clean my guns on the dining room table. I was thinking about going back to work now that she was back and safe.
Then the doorbell rang.
Just after midnight. That was strange.
I screwed the suppressor onto the Glock, chambered a round, and walked barefoot across the cool marble to the front door. Through the sidelight, I saw him.
Cooly.
Standing on my porch in black sweats, standing with that same calm that was so annoying to me. In his left hand, he carried a large black gift box tied with a blood-red ribbon.
I opened the door, my gun already raised.
Cooly looked straight down the barrel like it was a microphone. He smiled, flashing his gold grills in the moonlight. These had fangs on them.
“I know what you’re thinking, want to paint the night with my brains,” he said, his eyes locked on mine. “But I brought insurance. Take a look.”
I glanced past him. There were five men lined up behind him and five SUVs idling at the curb.
“So let’s be civilized for five minutes,” he added.
