I know Quinn like the back of my hand. She’s a sucker for tattoos, and I’m covered in them. I’m built like my father, tall and framed by a healthy bulk, easily towering over her. My charcoal hair is styled in a faded undercut, the longer strands slicked. Rebellious tendrils straddle my brow deeply set in shadow, giving me a resting pissed face that oddly attracts others like moths to flame. Dantë claims he can see the fires of hell within my hazel eyes, though they’ve served me just as well as everything else.
She’s hot. Show her what she’s been missing.
I inch closer, crowding her body with mine just enough for my heat to bleed into hers. Her lilac perfume wafts to me, daring me to explore and discover exactly where she sprayed it. “I promise I don’t bite quite as hard as those vampires you love to read about.”
A subtle gasp of surprise escapes her lips.
My arrogant grin grows roots and sprouts. “Unless you ask me to,ma chérie.”
A warm flush of desire creeps up her neck, blooming in her cheeks. It fuels my bravado, and I reach for her curls.
Until she yips andlurchesback.
“Shit, s-sorry,” I stammer, palms up as I back off. “Are you all right? Forgive me, I—”
“For the love of God, Brontë, stop!” Quinn barks, a hand to her heaving chest. “I just—I’m sort of seeing someone at the moment.”
“That’s”—I try and fail to clear the discomfort lodging deep in my throat—“fair.”
An awkward silence passes as she catches her breath. I eye the toaster, wondering how fast it can put me out of my misery.
“Look.” Quinn moves closer, settling a palm over a tattoo of a weeping angel on my arm. “You have a heart of gold, but there’s nothing more we can do. You need to let this go before you get yourself hurt—or worse. Let Scull do his job, okay?”
Not a chance in hell am I doing any of that, but I nod along anyway. She tips onto her toes to peck my cheek, patting my bicep with a sympathetic wince.
“Enjoy the croissants. See you at work.”
I nod again, watching her take her leave out the front door.
“Well,thatwas a fucking disaster.” Dantë materializes from the hallway, visibly cringing. “I don’t know who’s in more pain: her or me.”
I sigh through my nose, thoroughly annoyed. “Shouldn’t you be upstairs filming thirst traps?”
His mouth opens for what I assume is a snarky comeback. But then his attention snags on the croissants. “Where are those from?”
“The fuck does that matter?” I snipe, still scrubbing the image of Quinn leaping out of her skin from my brain.
Dantë closes the lid and taps the elegantBprinted in pastel pink. “Thought so. It’s Beelzebub’s.”
I realize a beat too late that he’s waiting for a response. “Beelzebub, the demon?”
He skewers me with a glare sharper than a butcher’s blade. “Margot’s favorite café.”
Margot.His runaway fiancée who disappeared with our mother’s ring after he proposed last year, never to be seen again. The woman who ruined him for any other.
“Oh,” I utter, casting a longing look at the toaster.
“Oh,” he parrots, grabbing a croissant and biting into it with an aggressive snap of his teeth. His clever gaze snags on the report still lying atop the island, the brightest rays of sunset glinting off the evidence bag and its damning contents. “So, this vigilante of yours has pink hair?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, not bothering to hide what I’ve done. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been eavesdropping during that entire catastrophic encounter with Quinn. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“You should be thanking the angels I did.” He grabs his keys from the rack beside the fridge and heads for the door leading down to the garage. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Beelzebub’s.”
“For what?”
