King Among the Dead - Lauren Gilley Page 0,77

had to in order to show her an evasion or a block.

“Like this.” He pinched her wrist between his fingers, and with his other hand turned it, and showed her how to duck out of his grip. His hand felt like a steel band, but she managed to wrench free. Because it was really that simple? Or because he’d let her?

“Good.” He stepped off the mat and went for his water bottle, scraping sweat-damp hair off his face.

Rose took her own drink, and studied him: the tension across his shoulders, the harsh set of his jaw. He swished water around in his mouth and stared off unseeing into the middle distance.

He swallowed and said, “Tonight’s target used to box. A bare-knuckle underground ring. He’s handsy. Prefers pummeling people to death rather than using weapons – blunt, edged, or otherwise. He–”

“Beck.”

His head whipped around, as if startled. His brows went up.

She’d bitten it all back, but she realized she couldn’t anymore, and she wasn’t sorry about it. It needed saying. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “that maybe we should keep a little lower profile.”

He frowned. “What?” It wasn’t a question he usually asked.

“We’ve been…visible…lately. And busy. Castor hasn’t reacted yet, but I have a bad feeling that he will. Maybe we should back off a little.”

“Back off?” He sounded dumbfounded.

“For a while, anyway.”

He stared at her, expressionless – save the tic of a muscle in his cheek. “Are you frightened?” he asked, finally, his voice flat.

No, she thought. But that wasn’t true. She didn’t want to lie to him, even if the truth wasn’t anything he wanted to hear. “I’m afraid that this is too easy. All these targets. I think they’re low-hanging fruit. I think Castor is setting a trap for you, and I’m afraid you’re going to walk right into it.”

The way his expression shifted, she thought slapping him would have been kinder. He put his back to her, and braced his hands on his hips, head bowed.

“I’m sorry, but I’m worried,” she said. Now that it was out there, she saw no sense in walking it back.

He turned his head a fraction, just far enough to reveal the flash of one eye. “You think we should stop.” Said like an accusation.

“I think we should be careful.”

He held still a long moment. Then he turned to face her, his chin tucked, head tilted, so he was looking up at her through his lashes, in that way that hollowed his already-thin face and gave him the sharpened look of a predator.

A look she could usually read well: either he was driven by the thrill of the hunt, or he was in his intense, post-hunt phase, when he wanted to smoke, and drink, and fuck until he came back to himself. But neither of those things was true now, and she had the sense his crackling, barely-contained energy was directed at her, now.

She wasn’t afraid, though. Never that.

She met his stare, was braced and ready, his hands tightened to fists when he said, “You doubt me.”

“I’m worried about you.”

He stalked toward her, slowly, his hips shifting side to side, all his speed and strength tangible in the lazy way he moved. “If you don’t want to come with me,” he said, voice silken, and awful as he drew up in front of her. “You can stay behind.” It sounded like an accusation. It sounded like it pained him.

“Beck.” She reached toward his face, wanting to soften him, to bring him back; he was racing toward the brink, and if he was doing that now, during a random afternoon’s training, how much worse would the fall be after the next hunt?

But he tipped his head, just far enough to avoid her touch.

She froze, hand hovering in the air. And then her fingers closed. And she pulled her hand back. And then she did something she hadn’t ever done with him: she got angry.

It boiled up in her gut, a hot flush that left her cheeks burning, and her lungs working. “I’m not afraid,” she said – snapped. His face smoothed, and his head kicked back, nostrils flaring, eyes widening. It was too late to dial it back, though, and she wasn’t sure she would have even if she could. “I’m not scared of the work, Beck, and you know it. You know I’m not.

“But you’re obsessive – even more so than usual. I will help you kill every last person who ever even met Tony Castor if that’s what you need to