Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,80
brown eyes that she lined with black makeup, and dark brown hair. She had those big pouty lips that held all kinds of dirty promises. It was the kind of mouth that my friend Parker referred to as DSL—dick-sucking lips. But then, Parker was an incubus and I was sure that he was well acquainted with mouths like that. My thoughts stopped there, though. Lynnette was a siren and sirens were their own basket of troubles. Not to mention I was quite happy with Trixie.
“I’d watch it, Lynn. I’d hate for Trixie to find out that you’ve been saying bad things about her.”
Lynnette made a noise in the back of her throat as she rolled her eyes at me. “Like I’m scared of her.”
My grin never wavered. “And here I always thought you were smarter than that.” Her lovely mouth popped open on a gasp, her tanned cheeks flushing red in her anger. I continued before she could unleash whatever tirade was forming in her brain. “Have you seen Reave?”
The color immediately drained from her face and her mouth snapped shut with an audible click of her teeth. “Mr. Roundtree hasn’t been in recently,” she said quickly, her voice barely above a whisper.
“When did you last see Mr. Roundtree?” I demanded, unable to keep the sneer out of my tone.
“It—it’s been a while. I don’t remember.” She refused to look up at me, her eyes locked on the menu tightly clenched in her hands.
“Then I guess I’ll have a look around.”
As I started to walk away, Lynnette grabbed my arm in a tight grip. “Don’t do this. You don’t want to mess with him, Gage,” she urged with wide eyes as she struggled to hold me back at the entrance to the restaurant. “He’s dangerous.”
Lynnette might have been aware of who Reave was, but she didn’t appear to know that I was now involved with the bastard. Even better, she didn’t know what I was. Reave might have used the restaurant as a headquarters. Hell, he might have owned the joint, but at least Lynnette had been kept out of his business ventures. I didn’t know Lynnette very well, had only spoken to her a handful of times when I had come into the Strausse Haus or run into her at any of the local bars, but she seemed like a nice person. She needed to keep her distance from the dark elf.
I gently squeezed her hand before prying it loose from my arm. “I know what I’m doing.”
Frowning, she pulled her hand from mine and stepped back, returning to her place behind the hostess booth. She seemed to shrink inside of herself, her shoulders slumped and pulled in as if to protect herself from Reave and maybe even from her own dark thoughts. The fear in her eyes was yet another reason that this area needed to be free of Reave.
With a mental shove, I pushed those worries down as I entered the main dining area of the restaurant. Lunchtime was never a particularly busy time for the Strausse Haus, as there weren’t many businesses close by that would bring in patrons. For the bulk of the places in the immediate area, business came at dinner and later when people stopped by to drink and unwind. Looking around the restaurant, I found fewer than a dozen of the tables and booths containing guests, while there were only three people seated at the bar, nursing drinks.
I wound my way toward the back of the restaurant, where the light was a little dimmer and there was only one occupied table. My eyes briefly fell on the semicircular booth where I had first met Reave, but it was empty. I had a feeling that the booth was kept vacant, available only to Reave.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something large rise from the one occupied booth near me. Jerking around, I swallowed a curse as the tension immediately eased from my frame when my eyes fell on Freddie “the Moose” Bukowski. He worked as muscle for Reave, and wasn’t the brightest guy I’d ever met. He didn’t seem the type to hurt a fly, but somehow he had gotten sucked into Reave’s employment.
“Hi, Gage! It’s good to see ya,” Freddie said with a fast and eager grin. The mountain of a man reminded me of an overgrown St. Bernard puppy who was convinced that he was a lapdog. He leaned a little closer. “It’s good to see you not