He watched her like I watched her. He saw her just as I did. But I was the one who saw her first.
If it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have stacked my odds this way. But I’d seen enough of her to make me think that this might work. We had a connection, the two of us, bound in the months we’d spent locked up together and the death and carnage we wreaked during our escape. It was as though a chain bound us to one another and it wouldn’t be severed now. Not if I had anything to do with it. And if the screaming and shouting and raging I’d watched her display through the window was anything to go by, then I knew she felt it too.
She’d stood at the window looking out at me for a long time, her hand pressed to the glass and the rain washing down it making it appear as if she were crying. I had almost moved then. Wanting to brush those false tears from her cheeks and see that wild smile of hers once more. But of course, I could do no such thing through a pane of glass. So I’d just maintained my vigil, setting my stance and holding it as I waited. I’d made my decision and it was her.
Even discounting the pull I felt to my Rook, I wasn’t a man who could blend in anywhere easily. And more than just the authorities would be out for a piece of me once news of my escape spread. I had enemies upon enemies.
The skin in the centre of my chest itched just thinking about it. About the man I’d once been and the crimes I’d committed in the name of what I’d been then. It was so long ago that it almost seemed like someone else had lived that life. Followed those rules. Been that man.
The wind changed and the rain drove into my face, but still, I didn’t move. I was long used to the cold. I’d even spent time suffering the discomfort of wet clothes for hours at a time before now thanks to the punishments Madam Lucille had liked to dole out to those who she deemed disappointing - which I often had been in her books. It had felt good to watch her die, to see Brooklyn drive that taser into her flesh until her pitiful heart gave out. I relived the memory over and over in my mind as I waited for this to end, for the doors of that house to open and for my fate to be decided once again. I’d faced far harsher trials than this before anyway.
I watched through the windows as the Irish one came and went, prancing around the place like he was high on life, sinking whiskey and chain smoking while dancing around the front room with his shirt off to reveal a muscular chest stained with brightly coloured ink and marked with countless scars. He had lived a life which ran damn close to death, that one. I could see it in everything from the marks on his flesh to the look in his eyes and the tension in his body. He wasn’t just ready for the fight – he was the fight. A harbinger of the apocalypse fully invested in his duty to dance with death, and yet tempted by the joys of life which he chased through the dark.
Brooklyn scowled at him, starting to dance angrily to one side of the room to Twinkle Twinkle by Holy Molly and I could hear every word which escaped Niall’s lips as he sang along even through the thick glass and pounding rain. He was manic that one. I’d seen plenty like him in the facility. Up and down like a yoyo yet far less predictable than that. Men like him were impulsive and that equalled dangerous of the most volatile kind. Something that made him laugh one day was likely to make him kill another. At least it was with most people. But if the way he watched my Rook was anything to go by, he wouldn’t be turning on her.
She had him under her spell too. That made three heathens snapping at her heels and hoping for a taste of her. Question was, what would she do about that hold she had over us?
She was the real power here. And if the way she kept throwing furtive glances out at me and pouting petulantly was anything to judge by, then I might just have found my ticket to staying in this place. The chain which bound me to her was tightening with every moment that I spent out here, and I could feel her tugging on her end of it, wanting me closer and making my heart thump to a powerful beat as it ached to answer her call. And I would. It was all a matter of time.
So I let the rain crash over me and I lost myself in the sunshine within my own mind as I waited and watched her. Because if I had judged this little haven from the real world correctly, then it was my best bet at remaining as free as I was now, and I didn’t want to let that opportunity pass me by. Not to mention the fact that my sweet obsession was waiting for me inside that house and I wasn’t going anywhere without her, so death could come for me if it liked or that door could open and allow me back into the warmth of that house, because those were the only options I would allow. It was just a matter of waiting to find out which one of them it would be.
M ateo watched me as I shot cold looks at Niall, swaying my hips to the music as he tried to outdance me. I was a queen of dance, a dance master. And if Niall thought he could beat me with his shimmies and his slut drops, he was going to find out who he was up against. I wasn’t just dancing for me today either, I was dancing for Angry Jack who was stuck out in that rainstorm like a stray cat kicked to the curb.
Brutus had taken one of Mateo’s boots, chewing on it and growling any time one of us came close to him like we might want to steal it away from him. Mateo had made a few swipes for it, cursing under his breath in his sexy man language whenever Brutus took a chomp at his fingers. Mateo had looked to me for help, but I wasn’t going to take Brutus’s little bootie away from him. It was giving him the happies. Besides, Mateo still had a second boot which he could put his feet in all he liked.
Circus by Britney Spears came on and Niall leapt onto the coffee table, showing me up as he kicked a set of coasters into a wall. Mateo moved to pick them up, shaking his head in irritation as I leapt onto the couch arm to get higher than Niall.
“Ya think you can outdance me, Spider?” Niall scoffed.
“I once outdanced a fox in an alley,” I said proudly, rolling my hips and running my palm up between my tits.
“I once outdanced a goose in a parking lot,” he countered.
Dammit. How was I supposed to compete with that?
“If I win this round, you have to let Jack back in and he gets to stay here always and forever,” I demanded.
Niall roared an obnoxious laugh. “No.”
“Yes,” I snapped, leaping across the couch and landing precariously on the other arm, knocking a lamp flying as my foot shot out to balance myself.
Mateo ran to catch it before it hit the floor, picking it up and placing it back down with a frown drawn on his brow. I guessed he didn’t want more things to join smashy corner. There were lots of broken bits of things all swept over by the window and I realised Mateo must have cleaned up last night and put them all there because his collar wouldn’t let him get to the trash bags in the kitchen. I quite liked the ambience smashy corner created, it was like modern art, giving us a real sophisticated flare to our club. That was probably what Mateo had been going for.
“You’re too afraid to lose, Hellfire,” I taunted, lowering into a squat and tumbling back onto the couch cushions when I lost my balance. But I styled it out, so no one noticed. “You can’t handle the heat.”
“Oh, you think so, do ya?” he growled, doing a pirouette which sent the coffee table flying backwards. Niall leapt off of it, hitting the floor and spinning with such technique it made me stare for a long second. Damn, he was good.
Mateo bent down to pick up a bunch of books which had tumbled from the coffee table and Niall squatted at that moment, his ass grazing Mateo’s face on the way down and on the way back up. It happened so fast that Mateo hadn’t even had a chance to move aside.