My jaw clenched so hard there was a painful pop.
A beep from my phone on the ground beside my mattress pulled my attention to it.
No surprise, it was Lion coordinating the last vestiges of what I was convinced was an idiotic fucking plan to take down this killer.
There was no way he wouldn’t be prepared for us. This wasn’t a backwoods hick set out to purify his race or some bumbling idiot with a knife in a dark alley.
This man had come to play, and he was doing it hard.
They planned to replace Bea with a lookalike cop, a young rookie by the name of Marla Bennet who was about the same stature and shade of blond as my girl. The cops didn’t understand Bea had a special quality that couldn’t be replicated. An innocent light that throbbed like a torch in the dark, attracting the creatures that lurked in the shadows inexorably toward her.
This man was obsessed with Bea. I was obsessed with Bea. In this way, we understood each other. We were both psychopaths set out to claim her, but the similarities ended there.
I would not relinquish my claim.
He would not have her. Not now, not ever.
The closest he would come to her was me when I ripped him apart with my bare hands for scaring her.
My brave girl, so sweet and courageous, was fucking terrified. I watched as the dream turned dark in her mind, as she whimpered and twitched.
He had followed her even there.
Unacceptable.
I put my scarred, inked hand on Bea’s milky shoulder and shook gently before rolling her into my chest. Her body was boneless and sleep-warm against me. Without waking, she nuzzled into my body and gave a little, contented sigh.
Something turned over in my ribs.
“Bea,” I called into her ear. “Wake up, Little Shadow.”
“Hmm?” she murmured, cuddling so close it seemed she wanted to crawl under my skin.
The urge to laugh moved through me.
“Wake up, now. I’m gonna fuck you before we have to leave.”
Instantly, almost comically, her eyes snapped open, and she tilted them up to mine. The blue was so vivid, utterly untouched by any other pigment but that pure, bright azure.
“Are you fucking me because you want to claim me before I go face my tormentor?” she questioned.
I didn’t answer verbally. Instead, I bent down and pressed a searing kiss to that pink mouth.
She hummed as I pulled away, lashes fluttering. “Right. Well, I’m more than happy to indulge you, but Priest? I want you to know, no matter what happens, I’m going to be okay.”
“There is no fuckin’ way you can promise that.”
Her hand lifted between us, fingers trailing in that way she’d made into habit along my bearded jaw. “It’s not. I couldn’t live with myself if I let another person suffer or die for me. I don’t have it in me to be so ruthless.”
“I do,” I suggested unemotionally. “I could stop you. If you think I haven’t been lyin’ here thinkin’ of all the ways I could forcibly stop you from doin’ this, you’re fucked.”
Instead of an insult, she found humour in that. “You wouldn’t do that.”
I snorted because that was fucking debatable.
“Tabby would do the same thing for me,” she continued. “She practically took Phillipa and me under her wing after everything happened with my dad. Without Seth and her, we might’ve been social pariahs even with Grandpa being the pastor.”
“You don’t know that,” I argued reasonably. “You don’t know what the hell someone’s capable of sacrificin’ until they’re faced with the hard choice and no option out of it.”
“Maybe that’s true. But this is my hard choice, and it’s the only one I’m comfortable making. You once told me you were a killer, sin-stained and covered in blood. I accepted that. Can you accept that I’m the kind of woman who will always put her loved ones first?”
I scowled because the fairmindedness of her argument was impossible to refute. How could it be possible that she accepted a killer with so much more grace than I could accept her saintliness?
I grunted in affirmation. That was all I was willing to give.
She smiled up at me, brighter than the rising sun above us. “You can fuck me now.”
I rolled on top of her, already hard, hard since the moment I woke to her in my bed. “I’ll fuck you, and then we’ll do this harebrained fucking plan together ’cause I’ve got your back even when you make choices I disagree with. But you don’t leave my goddamn side the entire exchange, and if shit gets fucked, we’re outta there. No questions asked, Bea.”
“No questions asked,” she agreed a second before my mouth descended on hers, and all conversation was forgotten.
I should’ve known it would all go to shit and been better fucking prepared.
* * *
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