didn’t flinch.
Of course, she didn’t.
Instead, she watched me unblinkingly as she slowly raised her small hand and pressed it tight to mine over her throat. The rightness of it surged through me, hot where I was cold, scorching through all the icy chambers of my heart until it burned. Until I was lit up like an old house and quickly going down in her flames.
“I will keep you safe,” I said in a voice that sounded strangely like a vow. An oath when the last promise I’d ever made was to make promises no more. “Everyone who knows me fears me, and those that don’t yet, will learn to.”
Priest
“Like hell you will,” Loulou said, pushing between Bea and I so that I was forced to drop my hand if I didn’t want to seriously hurt my Little Shadow. “You’re the one who almost killed her already.”
“She needs a man on her,” King acknowledged, stepping up beside me in a show of solidarity that meant something to me when it shouldn’t have. “Whoever did this, did it for her.”
Loulou slanted me a suspicious look, but Bea poked a finger into her shoulder and hissed, “Don’t even think it, Lou.”
I blinked dispassionately at Loulou. “You think I’d hurt your sister?”
She tipped her chin in the air and crossed her arms over her chest. “I think under the right circumstances, you could hurt anyone.”
Everyone around us was quiet, interested. It was a stand-off between the club Queen and its leashed beast. The tension was palpable in the air, but it did nothing to stir my blood. What did I care if Louise Garro liked me or not? This was my club long before it had been hers and it would be for the rest of my fucking life. I’d lived for The Fallen when I had nothing else to live for, and I’d die for it, for them, even for this bitch staring me down, because that was my definition of loyalty.
Of love, if I had any of that in my metaphorical heart to give.
“I’d sooner hurt you than her,” I said finally, bored now. I took the blade from my pocket and flipped it open to clean under my fingernails. “I’d sooner hurt anyone else than Bea.”
I knew if I looked at my Little Shadow then, there would be hope stamped on her face, and I didn’t want to acknowledge I’d put it there. I was speaking the truth, but she was too ready to read deeper into it.
Thoughts were the echo of emotion. They were never eloquent, but they got the point across. In my experience, words were even more useless.
Loulou understood me in a way Bea couldn’t because she was too involved. Lou’s eyes flashed. She knew what I was, a stone-cold killer, and she knew what I had to offer, obsession, not love. She didn’t want that for her sister.
I couldn’t blame her.
“I guess that’s fair enough,” she conceded, looking over my shoulder at her husband. “But I still don’t want you on her for this.”
“Lou,” Zeus rumbled. “Priest is one’a the best brothers we got. You want her safe, then he’s a good bet.”
“The best,” I corrected.
Bat stifled a snorting laugh behind a cough.
“I could do it,” Kodiak said in his monotone. “I’m not so good as Priest, but I could keep her safe.”
A growl ripped from my throat before I could think to curb the impulse, and suddenly, I was lunging three steps across the room to get in the large man’s face. “Like fuckin’ hell you will. I’m the scariest motherfucker in this place. If it’s good for anythin’, it’s this.”
“Maybe you’re too invested,” King suggested mildly. “Never seen you lose your shit at a brother like this.”
My eyebrow curved high on my forehead. “Oh? You think this is losing my shit, do ya?”
Cleo shivered behind her dad, Axe-Man, and moved closer to him, prompting a grim smile to cross my face.
I wanted to pound my chest, bare my teeth, and flourish my knives to prove to them all just how motherfucking dangerous I was. If something evil wanted Bea, they’d have to get through me first, and I doubted they would expect someone who could match the depth of their moral depravity blow for blow.
“Priest,” Bea said softly, moving toward me with her hand extended.
I held still, vibrating like a plucked cord with tension as she placed that hand on my chest. It made me realize I was barely breathing and hardly blinking. The need