"Scared, Princess?" he sneered at me, and I scowled.
"What do you know," I commented to Kody in a voice dripping false sweetness, "kicking him in the balls did reset his personality after all."
Flipping Archer off, I quickly descended the ladder into the artificially lit room below, only to find another locked door right in front of me.
"Can't be too careful when you're torturing and killing people, you know?" Kody said, stepping off the bottom rung of the ladder behind me, then pressing his thumb to another biometric scanner to open the next door.
I raised my brows, nodding as the door slid soundlessly open. "I guess not."
With Kody's hand resting on the small of my back, I drew in a deep breath and stepped into the next room. This one had less lighting, just one spotlight illuminating a chair in the middle of the room.
Or rather, the bloody, beaten man tied to the chair.
"Princess," Archer said behind me, his big dick energy just radiating all over my back, "meet Hank. Hank tried to kill you last night."
The man raised his head just enough to glare at me, then he spat a glob of blood at my feet.
"Finally," Hank grunted, "the bitch herself."
15
Movement from the shadows startled me, but the solid fist that cracked across Hank's face brought a smile to my lips.
"Spit blood at her again and I'll rip your fucking toenails out," Steele promised the guy, then swept his sharp gaze over me like he was checking that none of the blood had touched me.
It was sweet, in a scary-ass killer kind of way, but still, I forced the smile off my face in favor of a hard glare. Just because Kody had softened my ire didn't mean that Steele automatically got a free pass. He had some serious grovelling to do.
If he even wanted my forgiveness, that was.
"Hellc—MK." Steele's brow furrowed as he corrected himself mid-word. Logically I knew he was honoring my wishes by not using his adorable nickname for me... but a girl can have regrets, right? I liked him calling me Hellcat. "Are you okay? Were you hurt last night? Kody turned his fucking phone off and didn't send a full update like he was supposed to."
I flicked a glance at Kody, who just shrugged like he gave zero fucks. I mean... come to think of it, he gave plenty of fucks—that's why he hadn’t answered his phone. But Steele probably didn't need to hear that part.
"I'm fine," I replied, but was almost drowned out by Archer's scoff.
"Yeah, she's just fine," he muttered, snarky as fuck. "Kody gave her a full physical to make sure." The inflection in his tone made it abundantly clear what he meant, and Steele's frown deepened.
Hank started laughing. Apparently he was suicidal as fuck.
"Trouble in paradise, Maxy? Your buddy fucking your girl, eh? Shoulda just let me shoot the bitch and save you the trouble of doing it yourself."
Oh wow. He really did have a death wish.
Steele turned his back on me, leaning over Hank for a moment. There was a disturbing crunch, then Hank howled in agony as Steele straightened back up.
"Interrupt me again when I'm speaking to my girl, and I'll break the rest of them," he told their prisoner with a cold calm that gave me shivers. Looking past him, my eyes widened when I saw three of Hank's fingers on his right hand sticking up from the arm of the chair at an unnatural angle.
Wrinkling my nose, I clenched my teeth to keep from gagging. But seriously, broken fingers were all kinds of vomit-inducing. "Was that necessary?" I asked Steele instead.
"Yes," he replied, giving no further elaboration.
Now that I could take a better look at him, I found he was splattered all over in blood. Hank's blood, was my guess. It should have horrified me, but... it didn't. Not even a little bit. Just like the night of Bree's party when they'd beat the shit out of Zane's Reaper guy, the only identifiable emotion running through me was excitement.
Yeah, I was all kinds of fucked up. But so were these boys, so in some ways we were a match made in heaven. Or, you know, the other place.
"So, where are we at on this prick?" Kody asked, moving farther into the room and flicking a light on over a table on the far wall. It was covered in tools. Tools that were smeared with blood. He picked up a pair of