Page 3 of Prince of Wrath

No.

My little spitfire wanted to crush him. And she had, easily. She became the most successful agent the NHL had ever seen, and only in partial thanks to my influence. She had a natural eye for up-and-comers. But with her charm and intelligence, she was a killer in negotiations. She had surpassed her peers and had racked up sums of money that other humans would kill for.

Though the company she kept had never been worthy of her, tonight was too much to stomach.

The trust-fund nepo baby she had drooling over her had been given everything on a gold platter. His father was a wealthy television executive who had paid Todd’s way through college and had given him a prime job with plenty of underlings to make decisions for him. But Todd’s biggest fault was that he had his fingers inside of what was mine.

I watched him scurry up the stairs, and then Sloane stood to pull her dress down. Her heart was pounding so loud for me that I knew she could feel my presence. Closing the distance, I wound my fingers around the loose curls at her back. Once she registered the gentle tug on her silken strands, she froze.

“Did you miss me?” I whispered, bringing her into my chest.

Her breathing quickened. “What do you want, Seere?”

I buried my nose in her hair. Coconut, lime, and gin filled my lungs. She shuddered against me.

“It’s been too long since you last checked in, Sloane. Your mortal life is so short, you know. It would be a shame for me to not be present for too much of it.”

“You’ve found me. Now leave before Todd comes back and you lose control again.”

Her ferocity and scathing tone roused me in more ways than one.

“Do you like this one?” I asked, reaching a hand up to her chin and directing her face toward the stairs. “Because I don’t think he’s good enough for you.”

“According to you, no one is.”

She was right.

There wasn’t a human alive good enough for her. And seeing her leave with that lowlife had grated on my last nerve.

“He can’t fulfill you,” I said into the column of her neck. The words raised goose bumps on her skin. “That fire inside of you would be smothered to cinders in his hands.”

The sounds of footsteps coming down the stairs pulled her attention away.

“I’m not sure what hit us, but we’re going to have to take his party back to sh—” Todd’s eyes bulged at the sight of another man’s hands on the woman he had claimed for the night. “Who the fuck are you?”

The challenge in his voice twisted my lips. Sloane tried to step out of my hold, but my hand slipped from her neck to her chest, holding her still.

“Why don’t you introduce me to your friend, my little flame?”

Her heart thrashed against her sternum.

“All right, asshole,” Todd said, “I don’t know who you are or how you got on the boat but⁠—”

“But what? What are you going to do to me, Todd?” I stepped around Sloane and slipped my hands into the pockets of my slacks. “Are you going to punch me? Finally use that semester of boxing lessons you took in boarding school?”

His face contorted in confusion. “How . . . How would you . . .”

The puzzle of who I was and where I had come from was too much for coherent sentences.

He watched me as I made a slow, deliberate path around him. Once, then twice.

“I know more than that, Todd,” I finally answered. “I know you steal money from your father’s firm. And that when you were twelve, you convinced one of your sister’s friends to take off her pants so you could play doctor.”

Every sin he’d committed came flowing through me in quick succession. Flashes of women he’d raped after feeding them shots at the fraternity house. Dozens, if not more. Every misdeed down to unpaid parking tickets until the moment his fingers had entered my territory.

“Does your fiancée know you stole then sold her mother’s engagement diamond before replacing it with glass? Or better yet, does she know that you’ve cheated on her thirteen times this year? It would have been more, but you’re not as charming as you perceive yourself to be. Isn’t that right, darling?”

I shot a look at Sloane, whose horrified expression was fixed on the man who had prodded her cunt only minutes ago.