Page 7 of Stolen

She waggled her eyebrows at him. “I can’t tell you all my secrets.” She grinned. “But the alpha of the territory told my dad to take me away and not bring me back until I knew how to fucking behave. He suggested locking me up until I turned twenty-one.” She grimaced. “He didn’t do that, but I did get shipped off to my uncle’s for a while.”

“Because he could keep you in line?”

She snorted. “As if. Because he lived in a remote enough place that the next crazy thing I did wouldn’t result in major newspaper coverage.”

Gunn was fascinated now. “And did it? The next crazy thing, I mean.”

“It did not. Almost got me killed though. But my dad and I made up because of it, so that was good. I mean, I love my mom, but I was always kind of a daddy’s girl. He’s the one who named me.”

“Thinking you were going to be a little blond angel? Must have sucked for him when he realized how things were really going to go.” He grinned at her. He knew she knew he loved getting her riled up.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Watch out, or I’ll change this to a Care Bear tattoo. Or maybe a cute baby kitten.”

“As long as it says ‘I love pussy,’ I’m fine with that.”

She gave him a backhanded smack on his thigh, dangerously close to the jewels. He grabbed her wrist, and she twisted out of his grasp. “Fine. I’ll just give you a dick tattoo, if you’re going to be one.”

“I’d be fine with that too.” He wouldn’t, though. He couldn’t stop looking at the angel’s wing. A strange kind of longing swept through him, and he suddenly really, really wanted it.

Michelangela was still talking. “I think… a dick wearing a tutu.”

Okay, now she was going too far. A man had to have his dignity. He pulled her closer and growled in her ear, “If you did that I might have to punish you.”

He felt the flush of arousal wash through her, but she said, “You can try. I’ll kick your freakin’ ass.”

He didn’t think she could. Probably. They’d sparred together, and she was good. Dangerous, even. But they’d never really put it to the test—they always ended up naked before they could.

All the same, it was hot that she was willing to try. He loved badass woman.

Fuck, he loved this woman.

The shock of that rushed through him. He’d never put it into words, not even to himself. The sudden realization threw him, and he automatically deflected. “So where the hell did your dad come up with Michelangela?”

He’d always wondered that. He’d never heard of anyone else with that name.

She rolled her eyes. “It came from some ancient TV show about crime-fighting mutant ninja turtles. Of all things. I mean, seriously? Turtles? But my dad was obsessed with it. There were four of them, all named after Renaissance artists. Don’t ask me why.”

She ticked them off on her fingers. “Rafael, Donatello, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. My dad’s name is Rafe—Rafael, really—so for some reason he decided that his kids had to be the other turtles. Enter me and my little brothers. But since I was a girl, he went with Michelangela.”

Gunn would love to know how her dad had gotten away with that shit. “Your mother didn’t object? Or, I don’t know. Kill him?”

“If you knew my dad, you’d know my mom has to pick her battles when it comes to vetoing crazy shit. And no. He can be annoying as fuck, but strangely, nobody’s killed him yet.”

Despite her words, he could hear the deep affection in her voice whenever she talked about her family. She adored them, and it was obvious they adored her. She had the inner confidence and optimism of someone who had always known they were deeply loved, that there was someone there to back them up whatever happened.

He envied that.

He said lightly, “Now you’re making me really want to meet them.”

She gave him a level look. “You don’t want to meet them.”

He didn’t have to ask why. Her family—her dad and the leaders of her wolf pack—were some of the most prominent, influential Enforcers in the entire country. Shifter police, only on a national level.

And Gunn was a criminal. Mikey knew that—at least, she knew he worked outside the law. She’d had to get special permission from her superiors to work with him on this mission, when they found out they were going after the same goal from opposite directions.

She and her people thought that he was an asset she was working; his boss thought she was an asset Gunnwas working.

What Gunn couldn’t tell her was that he and the people he worked for did things other people wouldn’t do, in order to take down worse people than him.