“You know what?” Sabine said in a tight voice. “I’m gonna give you two a minute. I’ll wait in the parking lot, then you can tell me why you’re here, Dan.”
She hurried past us before I could disagree, her heels clicking on the concrete as she gave us space. I glowered after her, then threaded my arms into Leon’s coat. It was warm and smelled like him, and that made it so very hard to cling to my anger. Especially when he closed the gap between us and tucked his hands around my waist, pressing his forehead to mine.
“Mon cœur, I told you the Guild can’t be trusted,” he whispered with a growl of chastisement. “Why did you come here?”
I drew a breath, inhaling his calm energy. “Why did you come here, Bunny? You questioned Sabby?”
He brushed a kiss over my lips, soft and teasing, and backed me into the wall. “You’re damn right, I did,” he murmured. “Jude, too. If I could get my hands on Carlos, I’d have interrogated his smug ass, as well. When it comes to your safety, DeLuna, there are no lines I won’t cross.”
Oof, that shouldn’t make me so fluttery inside, but it does.
He kissed me again, harder, and I groaned into his lips.
“I’m mad at you, Marx,” I grumbled, my voice totally lacking the heat of anger.
He hummed a thoughtful sound, his fingers flexing against my back having somehow made it under my T-shirt. “Because I questioned your friends? Or because of that shit with meathead back at the house?”
Anyone else would already know what I had to be mad about, but Leon was genuinely curious about which point had me more upset. Like he was still trying to fully understand how I reacted to the things he said and did. It made me realize how lonely he must have been, after Layla died. He had no friends, no one to really interact with, and every time he was on a Guild job, he was wearing a false identity like a skin suit.
“You’re impossible,” I whispered, cupping his face and leaning into another damning kiss. His lips coaxed mine apart, his tongue sliding in to tangle with mine as he held me tighter. He always held me like he was scared to let me go. Like if he loosened his grip for even a moment, I might slip away.
Pushing him back slightly, I tipped my head back to meet his gaze once more. “Leon… Kai made a pretty heavy accusation tonight. Are you on the Circle?” It needed to be asked. As ridiculous as I’d found the idea when Kai threw it out, I couldn’t just brush it aside so easily.
Leon brushed the tip of his nose over mine, his warm breath feathering my lips. “DeLuna, mon cœur… if I was, I could never tell you. You know that.”
My heartbeat stuttered at that, and I drew a sharp breath. Leon wasn’t hiding from my gaze, though. He wasn’t being cagey or secretive. His emerald eyes were intense and sincere as he waited for me to respond.
“What am I supposed to do with that answer, Marx?” I asked in a pained whisper.
He wet his lips and visibly swallowed. “Trust me,” he replied in a hoarse voice. “You’re supposed to trust me, DeLuna. Can you do that?”
It was a loaded question, the hidden depths more perilous than an iceberg. He wasn’t asking if I could just take his non-answer at face value, he was asking if I could trust him… and I was pretty certain no one had been able to do that for him before. Not even Layla, or she wouldn’t have hidden her data away. My heart ached for him.
“Don’t make me regret it,” I murmured, giving him a tiny nod. “Or I’ll cut your balls off and make you eat them while you bleed out.”
His grin split his face, delight making his eyes dance. “Fuck, I love you.”
What?
He crushed his mouth to mine, kissing me with ferocity as he pushed me harder against the wall. Suddenly I was glad I’d opted for a skirt.
A sharp, feminine scream cut through the night, and a chill of panic zapped through my whole body.
“Sab!” I gasped, but Leon was already in motion. He raced for the parking lot with me just a few feet behind him, searching for where the scream had come from.
“Fuck!” Sabine shouted from somewhere nearby. “Danny!”
I found her moments later, on the ground between a couple of parked cars. She straddled her attacker, both of them fighting for control of a long hunting knife that pointed up at her throat.
Leon didn’t hesitate, pulling a silenced Glock from the coat I was wearing and shooting Sabine’s attacker through the shoulder. It was enough to make him drop the knife but not enough to kill him.
“Holy fuck,” Sabby gasped, looking up at us with huge eyes. From the direction of the Club, security guards were calling out for her, and she shook her head at Leon and me in sheer panic.
“Here,” I said, using the sleeve of Leon’s coat to wipe the blood splatters from her bare thigh. “Go. We’ll take care of this.”
She nodded quickly, climbing off the bleeding man—who Leon was currently gagging with a hand over his mouth. “Shit, Dan, you came to talk to me, and I—”
I shook my head, giving her a push to get her moving away from us. “Doesn’t matter,” I whispered, “but I’m staying at the old D’Ath house if you want to come over tomorrow.” Not because I still needed girl talk, but because I could see how rattled she was. I wanted to hug her and remind her that this was a hazard of our job, but there was no time.
Security was getting closer by the second, so Sabine pulled herself together and wobbled out from our hidden position.
“Sabine,” a gruff male voice said, “you okay? We heard you scream.”
My friend gave an embarrassed laugh. “Yes, fuck, I’m so sorry. I just rolled my ankle. Stupid stripper heels aren’t really made for walking on gravel, you know?”
Leon shot me an impressed smirk, still covering the guy’s mouth on the gravel below us. Not that he was much of a concern, seeming to have just passed out. A bullet through the shoulder had that effect.
We waited until Sabine and the security guard had returned inside, then Leon and I manhandled the unconscious attacker into the passenger seat of the Aston Martin—because no way was he fitting in the trunk of either of our cars.
“He’s bleeding pretty heavily,” I commented, wiping my hands on my black skirt. “We’ll have to be quick to get answers.”
Leon flashed me a wild grin, then grabbed my throat in an achingly firm grip. “I’ll keep him alive, my sweetness. I wanna see you work so bad it already has my dick hard.” He pulled me closer with that hand around my throat, then kissed me so hard it was like he’d stolen the air straight out of my lungs.
I moaned as his fingers pressed into my fading bruises, tipping my head back and letting him devour me. When he released me, my knees wobbled.
“Race you home,” I told him with an evil grin. “Winner gets head.”
He barked a sharp laugh, but I was already sprinting back to my stolen Stingray, determined to get back to the house before him. I wanted my pussy licked while I punished a motherfucker for trying to hurt my friend.
37
Clearly, I underestimated my Bunny’s skills. He drove like his own mortality was chasing him, taking corners without even slowing slightly. Of course, it only made me push myself harder in a stubborn attempt to beat him.
As it was, he arrived back at the house just a second before me, and he wasn’t shy about gloating victory as we carried the dead weight of Sabine’s attacker inside.
It didn’t distract me from the fact that Kai’s motorcycle was missing, though. Where was he?
A tiny thread of fear and worry ran through me at the fact that he was gone. Like, was he coming back? Logically, I believed that of course he was. But part of me couldn’t fully commit to torturing the douchebag who’d attacked Sabine, while worrying about Kai.
Things had been… tense. And now he’d taken off. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to give up that easily, though. Not after everything else. He’d be back. I was sure of it.
Leon seemed to understand I didn’t have the energy for a drawn out torture session, and he extracted the information we needed from our victim in minutes. It was actually staggering how efficient he was, how calculating and ruthless. It was like art.
“Why send a beta mercenary on a job like this?” I asked Leon with confusion as he handed me his gun, wrapping my fingers around the grip lovingly. “Why not assign an executioner, like that terminator who came after me in London?”
Leon’s lips curled in a cold smile, and he waited while I fired three quick bullets through the trussed up man’s head before answering. “None of the executioners are currently available for new assignments,” he told me, taking the gun back when I offered it. He placed it aside, then rinsed his bloody hands in the sink.
“Oh?” I asked, curious. “How come?”