That was what made him so savage and brilliant. He wouldn’t let anything get in the way of his agenda.
It might not have been an average girl’s dream, but I was freaking thrilled to be the obsession of this particular psychopath.
The other times, in the rare snatches of time we’d had alone together, I saw a different side of the Irish enforcer than I ever had before. He wasn’t softer, because he didn’t have that in him. If anything, he was more intense, scary almost in his laser focus. But that focus was all on me. As if his entire world had narrowed to the dimensions of my body, and his only motive in life was to get to the bottom of my soul.
It was exhilarating, as terrifying and intense as being the focus of the religious serial killer and only slightly different.
I tried not to dwell too long on the similarities. If I’d learned anything in my years studying psychology, it was to avoid self-diagnosis at all costs.
“Bea.”
Eric’s voice infiltrated my daydreaming, but it took me a second of slow blinking to pull myself from my thoughts and focus on the dark-haired man standing beside me at my desk in the sound studio.
I smiled at him. “Hey, honey, how are you?”
His scowl was fierce as he dropped to a crouch so he could be on eye level with me in my chair. He turned my seat to face him then braced himself against the arms, effectively caging me in. Immediately, my eyes darted to the door, knowing Priest was just outside taking a call from Lion. He would not like Eric being so close, and I had no doubt he would make that clear to him if he returned to witness this scene.
“What the hell, Bea?” Eric demanded, moving one hand to my knee to give it a little shake. His hand was hot on the bare skin between my knee-high socks and mini skirt. My gaze fixed on the cross inked into the back of his palm. “You’re basically being stalked by a madman, and you don’t fucking come to me? I thought we were close.”
“We are,” I agreed with a bright smile, hoping to distract him as I shifted back slightly in my chair so his hand would drop. “But I’ve got it handled.”
“Bea, you’re five foot four and maybe one hundred and fifteen pounds with rocks in your pocket,” he observed annoyingly. “How the hell are you going to defend yourself?”
I bent closer to him, watching the way his gaze fell to my glossed lips, and plucked the knife from its thin holster around my thigh. He was leaning close, lips parted, when I pressed the dagger to his throat.
My smile cut into my cheeks painfully, wide and pretty. “Don’t judge a book by its cover, Eric. You’re the last person I would’ve assumed would do that. You and I both know monsters hide in all kinds of packages.”
“So, you’re a monster now?” he asked dryly, but his throat worked hard as he swallowed against the pressure of the steel.
I pulled away with a light laugh and spread my thighs to slot the knife carefully back into the pink holster. Eric watched me with dark eyes.
“No,” I agreed as I tossed my curls over my shoulder and crossed my legs primly. “But you better believe I know how to play with the best of them.”
Summoned like a demon by the mere mention of him, Priest appeared in the doorway. I let myself indulge in a long, reverent look at him. In his Fallen cut and a thick boiled cashmere winter coat I knew Cressida had bought him for Christmas last year, he looked like a poorly civilized heathen, his hair pulled into a messy cue at the back of his neck, pieces falling into his glowering face, a lock stuck in the thicket of his russet eyelashes. I’d never seen a man with hair like that, a deep, dark red that look like spilled blood and rust and perfectly complemented the cinnamon freckles dusting every visible inch of his skin. I could see the handle of his curved hunting knife in its holster at his hip under the open jacket and the cling of mud to his heavy motorcycle boots from his nights spent on the beach and grass of Zeus’s back yard.
His entire powerful frame leaned slightly forward as if into a howling wind, braced and ready to attack at any provocation and, seeing Eric, so close to me, it tensed further, a long, lean human weapon.
“Back the fuck up,” he ordered in a voice that was both bored and threatening, as if the idea of enforcing his words was too easy to bear and he was aggravated he even had to voice them.
Eric glanced over his shoulder, irritation in every inch of his body, then froze when he caught sight of the large redhead. “I’m not even touching her. What the fuck is your problem?”